GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

loza-1 Roy Walsh is a young delinquent, who makes a pound or two out of coshing old ladies and stealing their handbags. He has a gang with him who cycle to their scenes-of-crime. They include a simpleton; there's a character played by a young Johnny Briggs, and a strange character who looks and talks like a forty-year-old.Walsh is a nasty character, who displays no remorse. He treats his gangsters badly, especially the simpleton. He has an affair with the simpleton's sister (Joan Collins), whose accent slips like a 4-man bobsleigh. Their short, loveless affair results in her getting pregnant. Walsh is not impressed, tells her to clear off. We are told that Joan Collins has "done herself in". In fact she is lying alive in a hospital bed, although she has lost her baby. The screenplay has all the features of having been jotted down on the back of a cigarette packet at the last minute. There is no layering in this production. There is no explanation why Walsh is like this.Walsh's gang upgrade from coshing old ladies to using a revolver to rob the takings at a wrestling match. The gun goes off, wounding a staff member.The police catch up with Walsh. But first Walsh is caught by his brand new Canadian stepfather. The police stand aside, while Walsh's stepfather does what everyone thought he should have done ages ago. He takes off his belt and starts whacking Walsh. This is one of several films that looked at post WW2 juvenile crime. "The Blue Lamp" was the best of these, in my opinion. But "Cosh Boy" is one of the worst films I have seen. It is badly scripted, badly acted. It is ridiculous that eight years after one of the biggest incidents of violence and vandalism known to humankind, all this film could offer as a remedy for youth crime is walloping a kid with a belt. How pathetic.Watch out for Sid James playing a station officer in a short scene.

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.

allankelb this film screened in the early am last night on abc1 in Australia. I note that some reviewers thought the acting was poor however I found that the actor who played the lead role was brilliant, I grew up on the wrong side of town so I am familiar with what these creatures are like, these types are universal regardless of time and place.That actor really nailed the archetype snivelling, gutless psychopath, I am surprised that this actor did not goonto bigger and better roles. I wonder if Peter Sellers saw this film as one of the thugs has a comical high pitched voice identical to one of Sellers many voices! And the young Joan Collins, what a beauty!

angryangus After reading some of the extremely negative reviews I feel I have to add my tuppence worth. I watched this film recently and I can't believe some of the reviewers watched the same movie. Bad acting? I couldn't see any. All the actors were stage-trained and while I could see some of that reflected in several of the performances it didn't detract from, but rather added to, the underlying documentary approach to a subject that was much in the public and political mind at that time (and still is today). James Kenney, who I've seen in several movies, gives an outstanding performance of this young undisciplined hoodlum whose hysterical vileness and strutting arrogance propped up with a false bravado that finally cracks like a mirror at the end of the film....well, crime couldn't be shown to pay, could it? And yes, the police of that time were quite willing to let parents or guardians punish their young 'uns if they thought it would do any good. Parents would insist to the policeman, "Leave him to me!" if he brought shame on the house...I know! Alternatively the policemen themselves would give you a clip on the back of the head with their hand (painful) or flick you with a rolled up cape on the bum (very painful). You wouldn't go running to your Dad crying about it for he'd give you another clip saying you must have deserved it.Social history tells us of how Britain, with four million men in uniform during the war years saw a generation of youth largely grow up without the guidance of fathers or older brothers. Juvenile delinquency figures during and after the war went through the roof and with many de-mobbed soldiers bringing looted pistols and revolvers home with them there was a steady supply of weapons filtering down to the criminally-inclined classes, and resulting in a massive increase in crimes of robbery, assault and murder by those who were 'tooled-up' and who were quite willing to kill their victims rather than let them live to identify their attacker and possibly end up making the acquaintance of Mr Pierrepoint and his neck-adjusting service (which he performed...on a career-best 405 occasions!).For the time, and of the time, Lewis Gilbert's film stands up well in my eyes compared to the rose-tinted comedic films depicting similar disenfranchised youth such as the funny 'Hue and Cry'…which I also enjoyed enormously.Taking a film out of its time-period to deliver judgement can't be right. There were many films made back then (and even now) that are shoddily made with poor acting, dire scripts and non-existent production values that deserve all the brickbats they get, but 'Cosh Boy' isn't one of them....in my humble opinion.