Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Micransix Crappy film

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

christopher-underwood Barely stands up as a film worth much attention on its own but is interesting for various reasons. There is a point about halfway through when two lads are speaking of their childhood, born down in the underground during the war and playing on the bomb sites that makes it perfectly clear this is about the generation immediately before the post war baby boomers. There are rockers, well teds but no mods as yet and big no-no of the day was striptease and games of 'chicken' the big thrill. Gillian Hills really was only 15 when she starred in this. Probably her greatest claims to fame were appearing in Clockwork Orange and being 'The Brunette' opposite Jane Birkin's 'The Blonde' in Blow-Up. Shirley Anne Field is great but is lumbered with a terrible song miming sequence towards the end. She would make Peeping Tom and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning the same year being quite 'the look' for several years. Christopher Lee is still on a very slow journey to stardom and not wonderful in this while a 19 year old Oliver reed almost ruins his career with some incredible over acting in a near nothing part. The Chislehurst Caves sequence is probably the best but there are some decent Soho scenes even if most of them are studio bound. Well worth seeing but more from an historical point of view than a dramatic one.

lazarillo Here's an odd little number. The title suggests that this is one of those 50's JD films focusing on "beatniks". There were any number of films like this in America, none of which gave an especially accurate depiction of the "Beat Generation" (as represented by individuals like Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, and William Burroughs). Well, this is a kind of British version of one of those, and it turns out that lines like, "I'm over and out dadd-i-o," manage to sound even more ridiculous when delivered in a crisp British accent.But aside from hanging out in coffee houses and dancing to jazz-style music, there's nothing particularly "beat" about the characters in this movie. Rather than a wild rebel, the lead girl (Gillian Hills) is more of a childish, bratty daddy's girl who is less than thrilled when her globe-trotting architect father brings home a much younger new bride from France. When she finds out her new stepmother was once acquainted with a stripper who works across the street from a coffee shop where she and her friends hang out, the younger girl decides to expose the French woman, but instead she gets HERSELF mixed up with the slimy owner of the strip club (played by Christopher Lee). By modern standards, of course, this is not very racy (even compared to similar movies in late 60's and 70's like "Daddy, Darling" and "So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious" where jealous teenage girls deal with unwanted stepmothers by seducing them into lesbian affairs!). But it was no doubt quite risqué for its time.It's odd to see Christopher Lee in a role like this since he had just hit it big with "The Curse of Frankenstein" and "Horror of Dracula", but those were still pretty disreputable items back then too. And he's good as always. Gillian Hill was kind of like the British Tuesday Weld in that she managed to play a teenager for about fifteen years. Her most famous role though was as one of a pair of young models who shag David Hemmings rotten in "Blow Up". She's not bad either. And in the supporting cast are a young Oliver Reed and Shirley Ann Field, who later appeared together as brother and sister delinquents in the interesting Hammer sci-fi film "These Are the Damned". This is certainly worth seeing.

David Ostrem I gave this a 10 because I only give two ratings, 10 or zero, pass or no pass. Let's talk about Brit Rock. I was 15 and growing up in the US when this movie came out and there was no such term as Brit Rock. When the Beatles, Stones, and the others came out I completely disregarded them. Who needs these guys doing Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley when we have the real thing. Eventually I came to appreciate what they were doing and soon developed a deep admiration for the British rock movement going back to the 50's. This movie, though fraught with awkwardness, has some very telling points. A very important point is made when the kids were discussing the war scars. We Americans knew nothing of that. To us rock was just a big jolly product. But these kids had a way more emotional need for it and they took it more seriously and they wound up exporting our own music right back to us and basically saved Rock and Roll. Now the bad part of this film is the pre posterous and thoroughly embarrassing "hip talk" although all the American rock films of the time did pretty well the same thing. And the plot is pretty tiresome but it still shows that basic need for rock, the big thing about rock has always been that need. It's like in the Lou Reed song, "her life was saved by rock and roll". Goofy as this movie is, it does convey that message.

riseley We don't have a television. We live better without the invading stream of swill. But there are times when I have a few free moments and my brain feels like jello and I just want to get passive and watch something stupid. It is when I want to watch something stupid that I miss the television just a little. Enter LikeTelevision.com – it streams old drivel from T.V.for free – and this morning I was really in need of some old drivel and even though I knew it was going to be stupid and frustrate me with its vapidness, I clicked on Beat Girl.Oh man, you can see this one coming from a mile away – from the very first shot of the lovely Gillian Hill, who plays Jennifer, wayward adolescent, you can see the "cautionary tale of the bad sixteen year old girl who gets in trouble because of sex" steaming your way like a rusty old tank. But, well, like I said, the brain is shot this morning (only got three hours of sleep – silly me) and I had nothing better to do and so I stayed with it. Part of what kept me with it is the fact the Gillian Hill is quite the beautiful young lady and I believe she is in every scene of this movie, it being the story of a rebellious adolescent.But please, even though this movie is from 1960, and about rebellious teens, do not confuse it as being anything like Rebel Without A Cause – which manages to hold up under the ravages of time. Beat Girl just manages to get sillier and sillier. I do not believe for one moment that a girl in the basement of a jazz club ever quipped to her boyfriend, "Oh, fade out." Hearing it actually made me laugh. It is exactly the kind of thing that a very stupid screenwriter from say, 1960, would include in a movie about rebellious teens. If there is any pleasure in this movie, it is in listening to these forced quips the kids make to one another. Some may have actually been genuine slang like "cool, man" but others like, "he's the hotdog daddy-o" I just don't buy. What we get from this movie is not what kids were actually like in 1960, but what a few creepy adult filmmakers thought they were like. Or perhaps the filmmakers knew they were not "actually" like this and they portrayed them like this to titillate the audience. Does that sound likely? Yes. Very.So, there I was, enjoying some of the little quips in the jazz club and the coffee bar when Beat Girl's hideous attempt at a plot rears its horrible head. Watch out, spoiler coming. I'm going to wreck the ending. Avert your eyes. You never would have guessed this: Beat Girl Jeniffer's rich architect daddy brings home a new twenty-four year old, dignified, French wife that Jennifer immediately despises. Attempting to connect with her new step daughter the new French mom, Nicole, intrudes into the coffee bar & jazz club scene. Jennifer is outraged and digs up this French woman's past which includes... yes... stretch for this... come on... prostitution! Oooh, daddy is not going to stand it. He married a whore.Yes... it really is that bad.The only face you might recognize in this movie is the face of a very young Christopher Lee, who plays a strip club owner who would like nothing more than to corrupt our lovely Gillian Hill and lead her into a good decade of stripping on stage before dumping her like used trash. If you don't know who Christopher Lee is then you never saw many great and creepy Dracula movies from the 1970s.So... hmmm... let me recap: crummy acting, no script, ridiculous characterization, no plot... what's left? Ahh Cinematography... um, think Ed Wood. How about the score and soundtrack? How about not. Stupid. Maybe there were a couple rockabilly knockoffs in there but at that point in the movie I was shoving my cat into my ear to stop the pain of listening.Dumbest gag in the movie: a kid falls asleep while drumming "to set the world record" and the last girl watching him walks off, quipping, "Well, not this time." What? Everything about this movie is stupid. Oh, and here's the ending I promised to wreck: It's a happy ending in which Jennifer is hugging the French woman and daddy and they are all one big happy family after the wicked Christopher Lee gets stabbed by some tramp.I am pleased to be recording my thoughts about this movie because in five minutes I will have no recollection of it.The history in my web browser will show trace signs that I watched it. I did a Google search for Gillian Hill and found out that she labored in the shadow of Bridgette Bardot but never achieved real stardom. Gillian made five albums that are remembered by French websites. No hits. In the 80s she disappeared due to an illness and when she reappeared she was married to the manager of the Scorpions. There is no Wikipedia entry for her and I believe there should be because she is a stunning little vixen in Beat Girl—and the only good thing about this movie—and I do NOT mean her acting.