With his snub nose, chubby cheeks, and giant hair, ARCH HALL, JR. seems like an utterly improbable choice to star in pictures. Yet the kid's got More

With his snub nose, chubby cheeks, and giant hair, ARCH HALL, JR. seems like an utterly improbable choice to star in pictures. Yet the kid's got something. Whether playing hero (as in Wild Guitar or Eegah) or heavy (this film and his signature role, The Sadist), his creepy yet effervescent coolness gave him a certain star quality -- even if only to shine in the six flicks produced by his dad, ARCH HALL. It's often been assumed that Hall Sr. -- who produced the films as "Nicholas Merriwether," appeared in them as "William Watters," and released them via his own distribution company, Fairway-International -- pushed his son into stardom. True or not, Arch Hall Sr. was apparently quite a character and a big-budget comedy based on his Army exploits, The Last Time I Saw Archie, was directed by Jack Webb, starred Robert Mitchum as Hall, and was released by United Artists in May of 1961. It was a commercial flop and Webb went back to television, never again directing a theatrical film. The real-life Hall got the last laugh, however, as The Choppers, the first of his quirky low-budget father-and-son collaborations hit theater screens six months later. Arch Sr. plays TV reporter Jim Bradford who morosely chronicles the activities of The Choppers, five car stripping teenage delinquents: "Torch," whose dad is a drunk; Tony "the Snooper," who has "one too many stepfathers"; Ben Shaw, "whose brain hasn't caught up with his biceps"; Flip Johnson, an abandoned child "who doesn't know if he's 16 or 19"; and the leader of the group, Jack "Cruiser" Bryan (16-year-old Arch JR.), who comes from a wealthy family and zips around in a sleek hot rod. Driving a poultry truck as cover, the boys prowl abandoned country roads where they reduce unattended autos to rubble, then sell the parts to a junkyard run by a fat sleazeball Big Moose (BRUNO VESOTA) and an old coot named Cowboy.- Something Weird
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