Steineded How sad is this?

Console best movie i've ever seen.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

marktayloruk Found Roy a thoroughly vile human being but didn't like Bob either. "For his own good"-merely an excuse from someone who'd always hated him,with or without good reason. Was rather hoping that the battered Roy would seize his gun, wound Bob,and do a runner-the cops' explanations to their superiors would have been good for a laugh! Oh-Joan Collins as teenage virgin.VERY old film!

hildagrenshaw Interesting film. It was filmed in Leamore Street in Hammersmith. My Mum lived there. The film crew gave them ice creams and skipping ropes to play in the background of some scenes (though on a quick look through the film, I didn't see much of this). The beginning shows them running down a high street and I suspect this was the main street in Hammersmith.I have just bought it for my Mum's 70th birthday as she had never seen the film due to it being an X and of course, there were no DVD/Video recorders in those days!Feels a bit over acted in places, but an interesting historical document of life in the 1950s. Joan Collins is impressive though.

mcjules This movie made when Western civilisation was going to be torn down by the outbreak of Juvenile Delinquents, and the pimply youth were building forces in the US as well, so follow Cosh Boy with "When Youth Runs Wild" (1945). The US film is not as funny as the UK one but still has all the traditional delinquent-syndrome markers.Cosh Boy is a real hoot, especially the strange pitch of their voices or, perhaps this is the what delinquency does to the vocal cords. Making their coshes in trade classes at school was a goody, what or where was the teacher while these illegal instruments were being turned out. Suppose the old prostitutes were lucky that the boys weren't doing metal work at school or they would have been done over with knuckle dusters. Loved the 50/50 split: ten bob for you and fifteen bob for me, and the cosh wielding drongo didn't notice the shortchange.Loved the fashion. The best was the bloke in the two-toned car coat with tied waist topped off with a Homberg hat. Sooo hip.

ianlouisiana It's easy to laugh at this rather smugly here in the 21st century when it's so safe to walk the streets and drunken yobs don't blight our town centres every weekend and our youths are not indiscriminately killing each other,and we can leave our doors open all night and hug a hoodie...yeah,right. Like the infinitely better "The Blue Lamp","Cosh Boy" is an Issue Picture.There the resemblance ends.Whilst the former was a noir masterpiece,one of the most seminal of all 50s British pictures,the latter is a catchpenny bandwagon-jumping appallingly made load of tosh made to cash in a genuine fear of "Teddy Boys","Cosh Boys" and the like that held the post-war public in its sway. Because the fact that the movie is awful should not be a reason to dismiss the fears of the audience who went to see it.My father who'd fought the Italians and Germans in the African desert was a firm believer in corporal and capital punishment,as were many of his generation.No amount of sophistry will deny the fact that now our country is a far more dangerous place than in 1953 when he could happily walk the dog to the newsagents with a better than average chance of getting home unscathed. The movie "Cosh Boy",terrible as it was,brought the issue of violent youth out into the open,much the same as "Cathy come home" did for the disenfranchised 15 years later and the masterly "Scum" raised the profile of the treatment of young offenders. All these movies caught the public's attention and - ultimately - Parliament's. At a time when the Authorities were more prepared to deal robustly with bad behaviour,exemplary sentencing paved the way for the decline of the feral youths of the day.It may have all been appallingly judgemental but it worked. So..."Cosh Boy" is a lousy movie with dreadful acting and all put together for what it would cost nowadays for a haircut at Trumpers...... but it served a purpose.Lewis Gilbert may well have intended to make a piece of sensationalist dross,pure and simple,but he ended up with a movie that changed things for the better for ordinary working-class Brits.Our present bunch of Arts Council subsidised Armchair Socialists would do well to note that.According to his diaries,Kenneth Williams auditioned for a part in this movie.Tragically he didn't get it - he might have lifted it to a whole new level.