Rent Beat Girl (1959)

Teenage Kicks. - Beat Girl review by Steve

Jaw-dropping teenage exploitation flick, which borrows a few conventions from the Hollywood juvenile delinquent films of the rock and roll era, but this quirky British variation on youth gone wild is a different beast. The Beat Girl is sixteen year old Gillian Hills, who explodes onto the screen like a Kensington Bardot.

The rich father of an alienated teenager brings his sexy new wife home to his modernist penthouse. The stepmother is an older version of the girl, who feels challenged and tries to undermine her dad's new found happiness by getting wild for kicks in a Soho jazz cellar with her beatnik pals. Including a surly rocker played by Adam Faith.

And the naive art-school kid gets drawn into a nearby strip club run by a predatory Christopher Lee. To a degree, this is dated and absurd. But the film keeps turning up moments of quality, or extraordinary eccentricity. Mostly it's Gillian Hills, who isn't much of an actor, but she is astonishing. Then there's the strange aura of atomic era nihilism.

And a (still) steamy strip routine (by 'Pascaline'). But the film survives because it is so stylishly directed by Edmond Gréville, and elevated by John Barry's big band-rock and roll score; particularly the Beat Girl theme. Of course, the beatnik dialogue is corny, but so outré that it attracted a cult. As has the film. It sends me. Over and out- daddi-o.