Watch My Boys Are Good Boys For Free

Powerful

Excellent but underrated film

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It was interesting to read the above reviews. gbuttkus' insights into the production gave the film a new interest to me.When I first saw it - I was surprised that Ralph Meeker was in it - I could remember him from "Paths of Glory" and "Kiss Me Deadly", I thought he was such an underrated actor. The next shock was Ida Lupino (one of my favourite actresses) and then Lloyd Nolan. What were they thinking!!! Perhaps they were doing it as a favour to Meeker.Ralph Meeker was executive producer so it was obviously a subject he felt strongly about.Tommy is ticked off with his dad for failing to bail him out of a detention centre (as Dad says "I've bailed you out 5 times already"). Things aren't much better at home - Mom (Ida Lupino) treats Dad like dirt. She also has no time for their son, Tommy, but treats her pupil Priscilla, like a princess. (Priscilla, is the brains behind the weekend armoured car robbery).Tommy and some of his detention centre mates have decided to rob an armoured van on the weekend. One of the kids, Chunky, looks as though he would be more at home on a "Happy Days" set. The detention centre is peopled with happy, laid back guards that think their "boys are good boys". They are pushovers for any kid out of kindergarten."Chunky" pretends to faint because of lack of food and the guards not only believe him they run around looking for chocolate bars. That gives the boys ample time to steal the guards keys, tie them up and escape.There are a few crazy car chases .Ralph looks permanently hung over - what with the lines he has to speak and putting up with Ida's tirades, who can blame him!!!! David Doyle's speech about why "my boys are good boys" showed why he shouldn't be working in a tough detention centre.You will never guess the ending - but maybe you will!!!!

This film is available on Mill Creek Entertainment's Action Classics 100 Movie Pack. After watching Trained to Kill: USA (the real reason I bought the box set) I switched to the next movie My Boys Are Good Boys, at first I assumed it was about rebellious youths and the whole movie would take place in the reformatory where they are held, but the story seemed to have more surprising twists and turns then an episode of 24. A somewhat easy escape leads to the youths robbing an armored truck. This is one of the best stories I have seen in a long time. What was also surprising was the performances. More notably David Doyle who played Harry Klinger the reformatory guard giving his my boys are good boys speech, Kerry Lynn as Priscilla, and the always hungry Chunky played by Robert Cokjlat. This film is a classic and a joy to discover.

In 1977, when I was still endeavoring to be an actor, Colleen Meeker, Ralph Meeker's spouse, spread the word that any actors who were hungry enough to work for "nothing", to get a "film credit" --she had the project for them. Keenan Wynn, who had been approached to be in the film, helped to get me an audition, and I was cast as the "reformatory guard".Remember there were no direct-to-video films made at that time. Until a couple of years ago, I was not even aware that this film made it to VHS. Most of the actors, myself included, agreed to turn their paychecks back into the production kitty, in lieu of promises to be paid when the film finally opened. Well it never officially opened in any theater that I was cognizant of. There was a full page ad taken out in Variety, and I saved that. I had heard a rumor that the film was shown once on late night local LA television.So it was an under the radar production. I never received a dime for doing it. It was not a SAG sanctioned picture, and therefore there never were residuals forthcoming. We thought of it as a slim-budgeted tax write off for Ralph Meeker's production company. It gave the opportunity for several over-the-hill burned out Hollywood stars to have one more Hurrah in front of an actual camera; specifically Lloyd Nolan, Ralph Meeker, and Ida Lupino (called Lupe by her friends). David Doyle was still pre-CHARLIE'S ANGELS at that point. My scenes were with him.It was directed by Bethel "Buck" Buckalew, aka Peter Perry, and Arthur P. Stootsberry. He cast himself as a cop in one scene. He was one of those just under the surface Hollywood Indie movers and shakers that had been around, and busy, since the 60's; semi-functioning as an actor, producer, writer, second-unit director, and sometimes director. He made, or was a part of production companies that made dozens of terrible, crappy, yet wonderfully bizarre non-union almost-seen-by-no one films; like KNOCKERS UP (1963), and CYCLE VIXENS (1978).As the other reviews and comments have suggested, the plot of the film, such as it is, had to do with some malcontent teenagers, bad boys from a reformatory, and one bad girl, who robbed an armored car. Ralph Meeker drove the armored car, as the security guard. His bad son planned the robbery to "hurt" his father. At the time, I was actually embarrassed to have my name associated with the pic, but after all these turgid decades, looking back in fond retrospect --I no longer want to disassociate myself from it. I love it. Recently I watched the film with 30 film club members, and we all laughed and enjoyed the movie. It was very camp, all those 70's hair-dos and clothes, car chases, and wretched vapid idiotic dialogue. It reminded me of viewing an Ed Wood film. Lloyd Nolan was the only actor to rise above the material, besides myself of course. The film is now, according to the internet, building a cult following. Go figure.

When you think of movie versions of armored car robberies, you might envision this: Tough, ski-masked ex-cons packing automatic weapons, car chases, shootouts, helicopters, the mastermind. My Boys Are Good Boys has elements of this Hollywood stereotype--but it mostly deviates from it. (Don't look for blown-up buildings or police shootouts.) The film casts well-known actors Meeker and Lupino as parents of two of the teens who rob the car. All of the teen bandits in this movie are unknowns, but their acting is adequate. The teens plan the robbery from inside an LA County boys reformatory, with the outside assistance of a female teen, Priscilla, played by Kerry Lynne. Apparently Priscilla has a "bio" mom but lives with her divorced dad (Meeker) and his step wife (Lupino). This is important but I don't want to give away the ending.The writers have taken-up an unlikely idea: "Hey, let's have TEENS rob an armored car instead of grungy ex-cons! It hasn't been done before!" The writer's next hurdle was how to get a teen gang to do it. So they wrote the plot to include a group of incarcerated reformatory boys to pull the heist. Predictably, the group has some trouble trying to break-out of their complex, but once out are picked up by the stepsister of one of the boys (Priscilla) in an SUV. (This is at a time when they still called SUV's "cars.") A baffling attempted assault happens against Priscilla by a "Plain Clothes" or "Off-Duty" (?) cop just before the gang starts its run--this is resolved at the end of the movie. Sort-of. The "cop" seems to be in the movie because the producer said, "Hey, we gotta add more violence and tension to this movie to change the rating or make it hip!" The Criminal Mastermind (there is more than one mastermind) is Priscilla's stepbrother, Tommy. Tommy and his bandits and his stepsister commandeer the specially-targeted armored car, and eventually achieve their goal of a big heist. After some trouble, the boys break back into the reformatory to pretend they had never left.The adults in this movie play various parts such as investigators, parents, clerks, guards, cops. I feel that veteran actor Lloyd Nolan plays some of the best scenes in this movie. Especially good is his grilling of the gang at the reformatory--well-written and directed.I had remembered actor Nolan from various works but I did not know who the actors Lupino or Meeker were until after I viewed this movie. If you are under thirty you may not know anyone in this film.The movie includes the use of some implausible "Batman-like" fainting gas as a goofy device, but you just sort of ignore that because...you saw it on Batman! Also, the movie is too short. Fifteen or twenty-minutes more could have fleshed out the characters and plot and made the movie more enjoyable. Some of the music is effective for setting mood. The title song, MY BOYS ARE GOOD BOYS--is not that great, considering it is a theme. I think that I could have written a better one! Most of the musical score is sort of a electronic synthesizer/country music type. Cheap, no doubt--and it didn't age well. (It is a little better than the funk or disco seen in other 1970's movies, though. I rarely buy DVD's but I bought this movie with 49-other DVD's in a bargain set. I feel that there are only 5 or 7 good movies out of the set, this is one of them. But that's not saying much. Still, because I'm as much of a historian as a movie lover, I will watch the movie again. The work is good for a hoot when you want to relax with something short and familiar, and see what the suburban Los Angeles area was like in 1976 or 1977. (I think it was shot then but released later, not sure.) It is surprising to see what appears timeless after more than 25-years. And what in our culture has disappeared.