Beat Girl (Edmond T. Gréville, 1959)
What we're gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time. When the only people that existed were beatniks and squares. Edmond T. Gréville's British morality tale centred around spoilt, little, Kensington girl Jennifer (Gillian Hills) Linden, is a fascinating time capsule into the proto-hippies of the late fifties and early sixties. Jennifer's routine mostly consists of cotchin' in a greasy spoon with her dosser mates and listening to popstar teen idol Adam Faith strum his guitar in between rounds of milk. Jen isn't too happy with her father, since Daddy-O returned home after a long absence with his twenty-four year old, brand-spanking new French bride, Nichole. Described as "ancient", by Jen and her chums, she's livid that she now has a new stepmother and is determined to give her a tough time. She comes up trumps as she discovers mère dukes, was a "peeler" (stripper) back in the day. From there, the film switches up a gear as our right little tearaways go raving at her swanky crib and in subterranean caves. Remarkably, it's actually way cooler than that veritable crustyfest like in Matrix Reloaded (2003). Jen and chums also take time out to play "chicken the rail", by placing their noggins on a train track before an oncoming train. Splendid.
The supporting cast are a recognisable bunch of British actors from past and present. Shirley Anne Field and that bloke who was in The Mark of Satan; one of the better episodes of Hammer House of Horror, complete Jen's teen cypher. The legendary Oliver Reed has a very minor role as a rival beatnik. The always excellent, Nigel Green plays a marvellously entertaining master of ceremonies, and then you have the G.O.A.T, Christopher Lee as the sleazy club owner of Les Girls, with the most British sounding name ever - Kenny King. Edgar Wright's Last Night In Soho was amongst my favourite films from last year, so it's worth noting that the strip club featured in it took obvious inspiration from Les Girls, in both the exterior and interior scenes.
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| "Wondering whether to have a burger or chips Or what the shrapnel in my back pocket could afford" |
Got to admit, I was a little uncomfortable seeing Christopher Lee playing a character trying it on with Jailbait Jennifer. The man was practically like a grandfather to me during my childhood, so it comes as a shock to the system seeing him perform a scene like that. Can't honestly say the same for his acting peers, with the notable exception of the gentleman of horror, Peter Cushing; the ying to Lee's yang. The Cush however, did stray from his moniker at times, like that time he offscreen raped Veronica Carlson in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), and then there was his out-of-turn lead role in the utterly depraved Eyes Without A Face (1960) rip-off, Corruption (1968). Edmond T. Gréville and Christopher Lee teamed up a year later with a remake of The Hands of Orlac. That's not the only occurrence of Beat Girl's cast and crew working in other film's, since Shirley Anne Field and Oliver Reed appeared together in Hammer's 1963 sci-fi chiller The Damned. It was a much smaller network back then.
The one character that
rubs me the wrong way is Jennifer's dad. Poppa Linden should have taken a
page from Tony Soprano's book when laying down the rules to his daughter,
and he is the major reason Jennifer turned out to be such an annoying brat.
Being a successful busy architect, he seems to be away a lot, so he's either chasing
French women with tattooed-looking eyebrows, or
trying to realise his life's work - a post-modern city that reminds me of the ghetto flats in Highbury & Islington from my youth. The 3D model of
his passion project always gets the loudest laugh from me in this film, since Dad's ego is far too big to see through the urban shithole it would be by the seventies. Jennifer calling him out on this project might be her biggest saving grace in sympathy I have for her. She deserved better
from him. Money can't buy love and all that.
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| "She young as shit, should I hit it? Man fuck it, I'm horny (you dirty old man)" |
Admittedly, Beat Girl was not a film that grabbed me initially, but I found it an interesting curiousity over the years and became a fan after repeated viewings. It serves as an amazing look into an era of Britain that's always appealed to me; since my earliest Gen X memories of London were never transferred accurately to screen until witnessing John Landis' classic An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Dio's Rainbow in the Dark music video. Beat Girl predates all that and that's its major draw; accurate, or not. The portrayal and representation of rebellious youth in film has always been a major interest to me, largely because they are prime visual examples of the generational divide in modern human history. Obviously, Beat Girl is an exploitative example, tapping into juvenile deliquency and titalation, but I still find it a fascinating introspective into the teen angst of the Post-War generation (before they veered off into insufferable hippies); a generation that tended to berate and look down on Gen X'ers, like myself. We get to see some of that Baby Boomer psyche, and even if they're jive-talkin' beatniks, that's still a worthy reason to dig this movie out.
Gillian Hills went on to have minor appearances in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), but she eventually landed a major role in the Spanish giallo (should be called amarillo, am I right?) The Killer Wore Gloves (1974).
Kind of kicking myself, since I used to have a bootleg DVD of it back
in the day and lost it. Barely remember much of it, but I think it's the
film where you hilariously see mountains in the backdrop for a film supposedly set
in London. Here's hoping one of the boutique labels release a quality
print of it, instead of it being only available via age-restricted
blurry YouTube videos.
Finally, there seems to be a bit of confusion with Beat Girl's release date. The BFI state it as a 1959 film, while the likes of IMDb and every other resource site have it up as 1960. Based on the Gillian Hills supplemental interview on the BFI blu-ray, she states she was around fourtheen at the time of filming, which falls in line with the BFI date. From what I can gather, the film was submitted to the BBFC in 1959, but didn't gain a national release until 1960, without major cuts made to it. Opted to categorise it as a product of the fifties, otherwise I would have had to include Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago as a 2021 movie if I didn't stick to this same principle. Anyhow, who am I to argue with the British Film Institute over the release date of a Brit flick? Wouldn't be cool, Daddy-O.
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