Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

BelSports 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.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Martin Bradley 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.

James Hitchcock "Beat Girl" (released in the United States as "Wild for Kicks") is a "Swinging Sixties" film made during the fifties. (Although it is listed on here as dating from 1960, the year it was released, the opening titles state "copyright MCMLIX"). It is one of the earliest British films to document the growth of youth culture, and is set against the background of the world of jazz clubs and coffee bars celebrated in Colin MacInnes's novel "Absolute Beginners", also from 1959. (The novel was itself to be made into a film, very different in style to this one, in the eighties). The teenagers we see here are described by the American term "beatnik", although they formed part of what was later to become the characteristically British "Mod" subculture. Two features of this subculture were preferences for jazz music over rock, which was associated with their hated "Rocker" rivals, and for coffee over alcohol. Although many teenagers would have been too young to drink legally, this latter preference owed less to a strict regard for the law than to an association of alcohol with an older generation they looked down upon. As one young man says here, "Drinking is for squares!" Scenes of young people listening to and dancing to music are set against a family melodrama. Paul Linden, a successful London architect, has recently remarried; his first marriage appears to have ended in divorce some time ago. His rebellious teenage daughter Jennifer, an art student, takes a strong dislike to her new French stepmother Nichole, who at 24 is much younger than her husband. Paul is a modernist in terms of his architectural practice, but in terms of just about everything else he appears to be highly conservative and disapproves of Jennifer hanging out with the local beatnik community. (From the viewpoint of 2015, Paul's designs for his pet project, "City 2000", seem almost ludicrously dystopian, but in the fifties and sixties we were probably supposed to take this sort of concrete brutalism seriously).Paul would be even more disapproving if he knew about some of Jennifer's other extra-curricular activities. The Soho coffee club where she and her friends meet is across the street from a strip club, something for which Soho was notorious around this period. She befriends Greta, one of the strippers at the club, who knew Nichole when they worked together in Paris. It turns out that Nichole was herself a stripper in her youth, a fact of which Paul is blissfully unaware, and Jennifer resolves to find some way to use this information against her stepmother. Her involvement with Greta brings her to the notice of Kenny, the sleazy manager of the strip club.Because of its adult themes, the film was highly controversial in its day. It is strongly implied that Nichole and Greta were not merely strippers in Paris but also prostitutes, although the dreaded P-word is never used. We actually see some of the performances in the strip joint, and although there is no nudity some of them are highly suggestive. It is therefore unsurprising that the film-makers had difficulty getting it accepted by the British Board of Film Censors. Delays in getting it certified explain why it was made in 1959 but not released until 1960; in the end it was given an X-certificate, meaning that it could only be seen by adults and thereby excluding many of the teenagers who must have been its intended audience.The film is notable for the remarkable performance of Gillian Hills as Jennifer. She was only 14 or 15 when the film was made, younger than her character who is supposed to be 16, but even at that age was able to project a disturbing mixture of innocence and sensuality, similar to that of Sue Lyon in "Lolita". Gillian possessed the looks of a young Brigitte Bardot, with a touch of Jane Fonda thrown in, and it has always surprised me that she never went on to have a bigger acting career, although she did become a successful singer in France. (Two actors seen here in smaller roles, Shirley Anne Field and Oliver Reed, did indeed go on to be major stars). The film's other attractive feature is John Barry's score, his first film commission. I had always associated Barry with the quasi-classical music he wrote for films like "Out of Africa" and some of the Bonds, but here he shows that he could also turn his hand to jazz, with a bit of rock thrown in.Despite the contributions of Hills and Barry, and David Farrar as Paul, "Beat Girl" is not a very good film. It can never decide whether it wants to be a youth musical (the X-certificate probably scuppered that ambition), or an adult film in the sense of a serious drama for grown- ups or an "adult" film in the sense of "as close to soft-core porn as the censors would allow in 1959". It might have worked as a teenage film had the sex content been toned down, or as a serious drama if more attention had been paid to the relationships within the Linden household and if we could believe in the too-decorous Noëlle Adam as a lady with a shady past. In the event, however, it tries to do all three, and ends up falling between three stools. 5/10A goof. When Jennifer and her friends travel from Soho to her home in Kensington we see their car travelling through open countryside. Both Soho and Kensington are in central London and no conceivable route would have taken them outside the London conurbation.

bkoganbing Beat Girl is the United Kingdom's answer to some of the American made teen flicks that were popular drive-in movie fare at this time on our side of the pond. The Beat Girl here is Gillian Hills who is very upset that her dad David Farrar has married this knockout of a young bride in Noelle Adam. She's French, she could be a Brigitte Bardot clone and in a most Freudian turn of the plot the daughter is in a jealous rage over Adam who is only about seven years older than her.But when Adam comes down to the coffee bar that Hills and her friends hang out at, she finds an old friend who works at a nearby strip joint who knew her when. It seems that Farrar has not been told the whole story of wife's background and now Hills has something on Adam.What she doesn't count on is the sleazy owner of the strip joint who has a taste for jail-bait. Christopher Lee in a little time out from Hammer horror films is the best thing about Beat Girl. Also in small roles are Oliver Reed and Nigel Green.British pop star Adam Faith and Peter McEnery and Shirley Anne Field play Gillian Hills's disaffected youthful companions. Faith has a couple of songs in the film which are the other main feature.Beat Girl was trashy when it was first out and age hasn't improved it any. In the final analysis Hills just proves to be a spoiled brat and the London bobby's advice to Farrar about her needing a good walloping is long overdue.

kidboots Before I had even seen this film, I was reading quotes like "possibly the best J.D. drama U. K. has ever produced". I still think "Violent Playground" could be the best (U.K.'s answer to "Blackboard Jungle") but I was really looking forward to this film. It is okay, more like "Dragstrip Girl" meets "Escort Girl" with a lot of gritty British realism thrown in for good measure. Adam Faith wasn't that famous in America but in England he was a huge star. He had an unusual style of singing, similar to Buddy Holly and "Beat Girl" was supposed to showcase his singing after his first few recordings flopped. Because of his collaboration with John Barry, after "Beat Girl" he was on his way. "I Did What You Told Me" is one of several rock and roll numbers sung by Adam Faith in this film.Paul Linden (David Farrar) is just back from the Continent with a new wife, Nicolle (Noelle Adam) - his 16 year old daughter Jennifer (the beautiful and voluptuous Gillian Hills) is not happy. She is a "poor little rich girl" who is looking for love and affection, but instead has a bedroom full of clothes and the latest fads from her often absent father. Her new stepmother is determined to give her a proper home life. Jennifer, an art student, hangs with a beatnik crowd at the "Off Beat" - a local hang out for teenagers. Most have a home life they are running away from. Parents that are reliving the War and can't understand "Jazz". The kids want to feel different from their parents, they "live for kicks" and want to be a person in their own right. They all have bad memories of the War and use phrases such as "square", "kook", "he sends me over and out" to build up a barrier between themselves and anyone who is not hip. Towards the end the gentle "beatniks" are superseded by the young and violent "teddy boys".Nicolle meets Jennifer for lunch and she also bumps into an old friend, Rita, who is a stripper. Jennifer, now taunts Nicolle, every chance she gets with a song "take it off, take it off", and begins to haunt "Les Girls" the strip club where Rita works. She also catches the eye of the sleazy manager Kenny King (Christopher Lee) who has dishonourable designs on her. Jennifer throws a party that gets out of hand - she performs a provocative strip tease but is stopped by the appearance of Nicolle. Nicolle reveals her childhood was similar to what Jennifer has experienced. Jennifer, who is really a frightened little girl is involved in a murder and things come full circle when Dave (Adam Faith) declares (after having his car trashed by some teddy boys) "Only squares know where to go"!!!Shirley Anne Field, who actually had her best year in 1960, with roles in "Peeping Tom", "The Entertainer" and "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", had the small role of "Dodo", one of Jennifer's friends (she even sings a song - "It's Legal". Oliver Reed has an extremely small role of "Plaid Shirt", a juiced up beatnik. The very catchy song played over the credits and through the movie is "The Beat Girl Song".Recommended.