Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

rdoyle29 David Farrar has just remarried to Noëlle Adam. His beatnik daughter Gillian Hills doesn't like him or his values or his new wife. She prefers hanging out in coffee houses with her friends Adam Faith, Shirley Anne Field and Oliver Reed ... dancing to John Barry music and talking wacky jive talk. When she discovers that her new stepmom has a connection to a stripper, she becomes involved with strip club owner Christopher Lee. Although this film's depiction of beatnik culture is far from accurate (Adam Faith sings for his friends quite a bit and his faux rockabilly songs don't exactly sound like beatnik fair) it is delightfully over the top and has an amazing cast for such junky fare. I really kind of loved it.

James Hitchcock "Beat Girl" (released in the United States as "Wild for Kicks") is a "Swinging Sixties" film made during the fifties. (Although it is listed on here as dating from 1960, the year it was released, the opening titles state "copyright MCMLIX"). It is one of the earliest British films to document the growth of youth culture, and is set against the background of the world of jazz clubs and coffee bars celebrated in Colin MacInnes's novel "Absolute Beginners", also from 1959. (The novel was itself to be made into a film, very different in style to this one, in the eighties). The teenagers we see here are described by the American term "beatnik", although they formed part of what was later to become the characteristically British "Mod" subculture. Two features of this subculture were preferences for jazz music over rock, which was associated with their hated "Rocker" rivals, and for coffee over alcohol. Although many teenagers would have been too young to drink legally, this latter preference owed less to a strict regard for the law than to an association of alcohol with an older generation they looked down upon. As one young man says here, "Drinking is for squares!" Scenes of young people listening to and dancing to music are set against a family melodrama. Paul Linden, a successful London architect, has recently remarried; his first marriage appears to have ended in divorce some time ago. His rebellious teenage daughter Jennifer, an art student, takes a strong dislike to her new French stepmother Nichole, who at 24 is much younger than her husband. Paul is a modernist in terms of his architectural practice, but in terms of just about everything else he appears to be highly conservative and disapproves of Jennifer hanging out with the local beatnik community. (From the viewpoint of 2015, Paul's designs for his pet project, "City 2000", seem almost ludicrously dystopian, but in the fifties and sixties we were probably supposed to take this sort of concrete brutalism seriously).Paul would be even more disapproving if he knew about some of Jennifer's other extra-curricular activities. The Soho coffee club where she and her friends meet is across the street from a strip club, something for which Soho was notorious around this period. She befriends Greta, one of the strippers at the club, who knew Nichole when they worked together in Paris. It turns out that Nichole was herself a stripper in her youth, a fact of which Paul is blissfully unaware, and Jennifer resolves to find some way to use this information against her stepmother. Her involvement with Greta brings her to the notice of Kenny, the sleazy manager of the strip club.Because of its adult themes, the film was highly controversial in its day. It is strongly implied that Nichole and Greta were not merely strippers in Paris but also prostitutes, although the dreaded P-word is never used. We actually see some of the performances in the strip joint, and although there is no nudity some of them are highly suggestive. It is therefore unsurprising that the film-makers had difficulty getting it accepted by the British Board of Film Censors. Delays in getting it certified explain why it was made in 1959 but not released until 1960; in the end it was given an X-certificate, meaning that it could only be seen by adults and thereby excluding many of the teenagers who must have been its intended audience.The film is notable for the remarkable performance of Gillian Hills as Jennifer. She was only 14 or 15 when the film was made, younger than her character who is supposed to be 16, but even at that age was able to project a disturbing mixture of innocence and sensuality, similar to that of Sue Lyon in "Lolita". Gillian possessed the looks of a young Brigitte Bardot, with a touch of Jane Fonda thrown in, and it has always surprised me that she never went on to have a bigger acting career, although she did become a successful singer in France. (Two actors seen here in smaller roles, Shirley Anne Field and Oliver Reed, did indeed go on to be major stars). The film's other attractive feature is John Barry's score, his first film commission. I had always associated Barry with the quasi-classical music he wrote for films like "Out of Africa" and some of the Bonds, but here he shows that he could also turn his hand to jazz, with a bit of rock thrown in.Despite the contributions of Hills and Barry, and David Farrar as Paul, "Beat Girl" is not a very good film. It can never decide whether it wants to be a youth musical (the X-certificate probably scuppered that ambition), or an adult film in the sense of a serious drama for grown- ups or an "adult" film in the sense of "as close to soft-core porn as the censors would allow in 1959". It might have worked as a teenage film had the sex content been toned down, or as a serious drama if more attention had been paid to the relationships within the Linden household and if we could believe in the too-decorous Noëlle Adam as a lady with a shady past. In the event, however, it tries to do all three, and ends up falling between three stools. 5/10A goof. When Jennifer and her friends travel from Soho to her home in Kensington we see their car travelling through open countryside. Both Soho and Kensington are in central London and no conceivable route would have taken them outside the London conurbation.

andrabem-1 "Beat Girl" is a very entertaining exploitation film, but it also has a sociological value - it shows the growing rock scene in pre-Beatles England, as well as the growing youth rebellion. There are many rock songs inspired in the sounds that came across the Atlantic that serve to spice the film up, but above all "Beat Girl" tells the story of Jennifer and her gang and the way she tries to get what she wants. She dares and dares (Jennifer's no chicken), till one day she goes too far...Jennifer has an understanding father whom she despises, a stepmother that she hates - excepting her gang, her rebellion is against all. Jennifer is sexy, charismatic and cynical, and the camera loves her, it's her film, and Gillian Hills is really something! "Beat Girl" is above all a good exploitation film. It shows scenes that were very daring for the time - Jennifer, the night clubs...For those that like exploitation films and rock, "Beat Girl" is a real treat.

kidboots Before I had even seen this film, I was reading quotes like "possibly the best J.D. drama U. K. has ever produced". I still think "Violent Playground" could be the best (U.K.'s answer to "Blackboard Jungle") but I was really looking forward to this film. It is okay, more like "Dragstrip Girl" meets "Escort Girl" with a lot of gritty British realism thrown in for good measure. Adam Faith wasn't that famous in America but in England he was a huge star. He had an unusual style of singing, similar to Buddy Holly and "Beat Girl" was supposed to showcase his singing after his first few recordings flopped. Because of his collaboration with John Barry, after "Beat Girl" he was on his way. "I Did What You Told Me" is one of several rock and roll numbers sung by Adam Faith in this film.Paul Linden (David Farrar) is just back from the Continent with a new wife, Nicolle (Noelle Adam) - his 16 year old daughter Jennifer (the beautiful and voluptuous Gillian Hills) is not happy. She is a "poor little rich girl" who is looking for love and affection, but instead has a bedroom full of clothes and the latest fads from her often absent father. Her new stepmother is determined to give her a proper home life. Jennifer, an art student, hangs with a beatnik crowd at the "Off Beat" - a local hang out for teenagers. Most have a home life they are running away from. Parents that are reliving the War and can't understand "Jazz". The kids want to feel different from their parents, they "live for kicks" and want to be a person in their own right. They all have bad memories of the War and use phrases such as "square", "kook", "he sends me over and out" to build up a barrier between themselves and anyone who is not hip. Towards the end the gentle "beatniks" are superseded by the young and violent "teddy boys".Nicolle meets Jennifer for lunch and she also bumps into an old friend, Rita, who is a stripper. Jennifer, now taunts Nicolle, every chance she gets with a song "take it off, take it off", and begins to haunt "Les Girls" the strip club where Rita works. She also catches the eye of the sleazy manager Kenny King (Christopher Lee) who has dishonourable designs on her. Jennifer throws a party that gets out of hand - she performs a provocative strip tease but is stopped by the appearance of Nicolle. Nicolle reveals her childhood was similar to what Jennifer has experienced. Jennifer, who is really a frightened little girl is involved in a murder and things come full circle when Dave (Adam Faith) declares (after having his car trashed by some teddy boys) "Only squares know where to go"!!!Shirley Anne Field, who actually had her best year in 1960, with roles in "Peeping Tom", "The Entertainer" and "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", had the small role of "Dodo", one of Jennifer's friends (she even sings a song - "It's Legal". Oliver Reed has an extremely small role of "Plaid Shirt", a juiced up beatnik. The very catchy song played over the credits and through the movie is "The Beat Girl Song".Recommended.