The last hurrah for Robert Aldrich's dream of a studio, which followed Too Late the Hero and Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? and The Killing of Sister George into the red, and forced him to become a jobbing director again.
All of Aldrich's films are worth watching - except The Choirboys - and this is no exception: a tough, unromantic adaptation of James Hedley Chase's famous pulp novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish. Its about a rich heiress (Kim Darby, surprisingly sexy here), who is kidnapped by one gang, then kidnapped by another. The dimwit killer in the second gang (Scott Wilson) falls in love with her - he's such a vicious moron its hard to have too much sympathy and hard not to feel glad when he's shot full of lead. The vicious family of the killer are good value - with that old stand-bye, blood thirsty "Ma" - and there is plenty of action.
Although there are no stars, the acting is solid. But its too long and I know that Aldrich is trying to challenge audience sympathies by making the psycho hero sympathetic and stil be a psycho, it just makes it an unpleasant film to watch. Despite the craze for Depression-era violent films at the time (Bonnie and Clyde, Big Bad Mama, etc) it is not hard to see why this flopped.
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