Beat Girl (1960)

the audience applauded

Overrated and overhyped

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Hard to believe that this tale of beat girls, beat boys and sundry strippers was once considered scandalous and had an 'X' certificate slapped on it when it first appeared. It's another warning on what can happen when you let your teenage daughter listen to jazz or worse still, jive music! Of course, it's mostly terrible but it has built up something of a reputation as a cult movie in recent years. (The club scenes and a chicken run stolen from "Rebel Without a Cause" are surprisingly good).David Farrar is the rich architect who remarries; his new wife is Noelle Adam and she has a shady past and newcomer Gillian Hills is his pouty teenage daughter who resents her. The cast also includes Christopher Lee, Adam Faith, (not at all bad), Peter McEnery and a young Oliver Reed, (billed here as Plaid Shirt). The director was Edmond T Greville who brought a middle-aged man's disapproving eye to bear on the proceedings.

***SPOILERS*** Troubled youth movie taking place in London with confused and mixed up Jennifer Linden, Gillian Hills, getting in with the local cool or beatnik crowd just to have her feel wanted in a world that offers her nothing but pain and hardships. It's Jennifer's dad architect Paul Liden, David Farrar, who just came back from his three month trip to France that makes thing far more difficult for her then they already are. Paul had married former strip tease artist Nichole, Nichole Adams, who had kept her secret life from him which Jennfier was to soon discover. It's at the local Les Girls strip Club that Martha, Margot Bryant,the top attraction ran into Nichole and in a flash her cover as an upstanding citizen in the community was blown out off the water.It was Jennifer in finding out about her step-mothers shady past as a strip tease artist as well as her and Martha doing a little hooking on the side that had her blackmail her and try to break up her marriage to her dad Paul Linden. While doing that Jennifer herself got stung with the strip tease bug and tried to get a job strip teasing at the Las Girls Club where Martha is working in. It's the sleazy owner of Les Girls Club Kenny King known as Double "K" to his friends, Christopher Lee, who has plans for the under-aged Jennifer in taking her along with him to Paris and breaking her in, if you know what I mean, for the job of taking her clothes off in front of dozens of wild and aroused men before giving her a job at his strip club.***SPOILERS*** Everything falls apart at the end of the movie with Nichole attempting to save her step-daughter Jennifer from Kenny King's clutches with her husband Ralph taking on her drugged up and drunken beatnik friends who made themselves at home in his house and refuse to leave. Jennifer for her part got trapped in Kings office where he makes his move on her with Ralph Nichole and the police trying to come to her rescue.The surprise ending has Kenny King get all that's coming to him but the person that he gets it from makes no attempt to escape the law. Since he or she knows that no jury on earth would ever convict him just for taking out the garbage and trash, Kenny King, out of the neighborhood and making it a much better to live in.

UK early rocknroll films at top of Netflix queue got me this incredible gem. The snide superior pans in other reviews here are dead wrong.1) the heavily repeated John Barry 7 theme song is so good, you still want to keep hearing it after the movie, a masterful extended loop.2) the ingénue lead is more sultry than Bardot at her best, super strong as BB was. BB could instinctually portray mischievous, but this lolita is the embodiment of scheming side glance, icon of teen noir in a single static medium shot with a patina of grainy chiaroscuro.Yes, Espresso Bongo had the provenance of the highly meritorious stage play it bowdlerized and film production values that gave dimly lit black & white a sheen, but EB characters were sitcom cartoons, no match for BG's tragic archetypes.Espresso Bongo and nearly all teen films were made years after Beat Girl, and parody a late 1950s Leave it to Beaver stereotype projected on modern settings. Beat Girl is earnest in its perspective of post WWII dregs trending towards a rat warren atomized future of 1984.3) the dialogue is infra dig, not hackneyed. Pay attention to the concise staccato phrasing. Rewind every time Adam Faith speaks and you too will be cooler than anybody else you will ever meet for parroting his existential bon mots, not least that real rebels don't fight; that's for squares.4) I have seen any number of rock and roll movies. None have as low a clinker quotient in their song roster as this. When Adam Faith singing near blue grass grade stripped down rockabilly is the least, your soundtrack is mighty strong.5) I've seen ink on the Teddyboy trend, but nowhere have I seen it portrayed on screen as much as in BG and as matter of fact therefore realistic.The only question for me is whether I surrender precious media shelf space and hard earned coin to own this treasure. From the fence, I lean toward yes.

On viewing this film on DVD (which was an atrocious copy but legal disc)it just goes to show how bad British film makers were at this time, as always London is portrayed as a seedy underbelly of sex, vice and moronic teenagers, fair enough but the makers of this film might have hired a decent scriptwriter!.Some of the dialogue is priceless especially from Adam Faith as the leader of this group of silly teens, he spouts the most inane sayings like "play down girl! play down girl!"...or something like that to our hot hot teen lead player who of course does not get on with rich Daddys new French wife (were'nt they all in that period!)and goes on the warpath against her and Daddy being a real naughty little lady hanging out with all these grubby coffee drinkers around seedy Soho clubs.Before the end of this film...if you can stick with that long you will probably have make an appointment with your doctor to get your toes uncurled, if thats not enough the theme tune (by The John Barry 7)will drive you nuts as its played what seems like every time they go in to a club.Unless you are a fan of really bad movies you would be wise to steer well clear of this rubbish, if you are a fan then may I suggest a double bill with another British pop turkey The Golden Disc, what a pair of....erm classics that would be!