Excellent but underrated film

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Competently made jd film, with Arch Hall Jr. as the lead delinquent. Together, he and his teenage buddies mount a clever operation to strip abandoned cars along a deserted road. Their base is a rundown auto yard run by a cowboy clown and an escapee from a fat farm (VeSota). There, Moose and Cowboy run the operation and fence the goods, mainly for their own profit. Trouble is an insurance company has sent in an investigator to help out the cops who've hit a dead-end.Still looking like the Pillsbury doughboy, actor Hall nevertheless delivers a pretty good performance, along with the rest of the cast that also includes former star Tom Brown as a cop. But it's really VeSota who steals the movie looking like a squatting toad. He's quite a commanding presence. Good thing whistle bait Gaba's along to furnish sexy eye relief from all the guys, especially VeSota. The action's filmed along barren LA-area roads making you wonder why anybody's there. Still, the meager budget is used wisely to deliver realistic results. Then too, Hall Sr. let a pro (Jason) direct, which may account for the uptick in quality from his other, often campy, productions. All in all, the 70-minutes amounts to respectable drive-in fare that fans of the Halls can catch without embarrassment.

This movie essentially begins with five young men who turn to a life of crime by stripping cars which they find along the road and selling the parts to an auto salvage yard. Although they are quite good at what they do the problem is that they soon become a public menace and rather than laying low for a month or two they continue on at the same rate even though the police are getting closer to discovering who they are with each passing job. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this film was quite typical for its time and probably won't appeal to everyone. In that regard I suppose it's an acquired taste. The acting was adequate for the most part with the most annoying detail being the slang dialogue which just never seemed to stop. Even so, the plot was still interesting and the presence of Marianne Gaba (as "Liz") certainly didn't hurt this film in any way either. Again, some people may not like this movie for various reasons but I didn't think it was too bad and as a result I have rated it as about average.

Arch Hall, Sr.'s first attempt to make his son Arch Hall, Jr. a star was with this tale of juvenile delinquency Choppers. The film sat on the shelf for two years before being released in 1961. That fact in and of itself should have convinced the senior Hall that his son was not destined for stardom other than in family made vehicles.The junior Hall is a kid with a souped up hotrod and a gang who specializes in stripping cars. They're a real fine group of rejects and they've been taught the car stripping trade by Bruno Vesota and his sidekick Britt Wood who did a year as a sidekick for Hopalong Cassidy back in the day.Tom Brown who also saw better parts in his career and in his salad days played juvenile in much better films than Choppers is the detective from the auto theft squad.Shot on a G-string budget Choppers did not make Arch Hall, Jr. a star. But that didn't make dad give up. Even worse films than this followed.And people get down on Ed Wood.

For a movie that rhymes "Monkeys in my Hatband" with "I can do a handstand" for the lead character's big song, this movie was pretty good.It's a movie with a moral that if parents don't look out for their kids they will start stealing car parts and shoot a bunch of cops. Does anybody know what he meant by "Monkeys in my hatband"?I don't get it. Perhaps watching this movie on the roof of a supermarket in center city Philadelphia made it a bit more entertaining.I hope that Arch Hall Jr. is one day recognized as the genius he is.