Beat Girl *** (1960, David Farrar, Noëlle Adam, Christopher Lee, Gillian Hills, Adam Faith, Shirley Anne Field) – Classic Movie Review 10,416

Director Edmond T Gréville’s 1960 exploitation drama Beat Girl [Wild for Kicks] is a rare British teen picture from this late-50s, early 60s period, about a rebellious teenage girl (Gillian Hills) who resents her attractive, young new French stepmother (Noëlle Adam), plans to destroy her architect father (David Farrar)’s marriage, and hangs out with the beatniks around the juke box at the Off-Beat café in London’s Soho, becoming a stripper.

Beat Girl features an amazing cast and a deliriously overheated script, views of London’s Soho in its heyday, striptease sequences with topless nudity, and chicken game scene, plus there is music by the John Barry Seven, all combining to make this amusingly kitsch entertainment that is delightfully easy to enjoy, relish or scoff at.

Beat Girl is hot stuff, despite the cheese-paring production and flat screenplay, with British pop idol Adam Faith (as Dave) and actor Peter McEnery (as Tony) in their first film roles, Christopher Lee and Nigel Green as strip joint operators Kenny King and Simon, Oliver Reed in a small role as Plaid Shirt, one of the beat youths, somebody called Michael Kayne as beat youth Duffle Coat, Haitian exotic dancer Pascaline as the exotic strip dancer with scarf, Diane D’Orsay (Moyle) as the strip dancer in white négligée, and Carol White at the start of her career as a beatnik (Girl at The Off-Beat Café).

Adam Faith plays Dave and sings ‘I Did What You Told Me’ and ‘Made You’ (music by John Barry, lyrics by Trevor Peacock) and Shirley Anne Field plays Dodo and trills ‘It’s Legal’ (music by John Barry). ‘Made You’ became a minor hit before being banned by the BBC for suggestive lyrics.

The British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) described the film as ‘the product of squalid and illiterate minds’ and made extensive cuts to all striptease and dancing sequences and the chicken game scene where the teenage gang lies on a railway line. Some versions of the film cut the striptease sequences, the chicken game scene, scenes in the strip club, and opening exposition scenes.

Also in the cast are Gillian Hills, Adam Faith, Shirley Anne Field, Peter McEnery, Claire Gordon, Nigel Green, Delphi Lawrence, Nade Beall, Margot Bryant, Norman Mitchell, Robert Raglan, Anthony Singleton, Carol White, Pascaline and Michael Kayne.

Oliver Reed also acted in the similarly themed 1965 beatnik movie The Party’s Over.

After Adam Faith was cast, John Barry was asked to compose the film’s soundtrack, because he was working with Faith as an arranger. The score is composer John Barry’s first film commission, performed by the John Barry Seven and Orchestra. It is the first British soundtrack released on a vinyl LP, hitting number 11 on the UK Albums Chart and pioneering the release of film soundtrack albums. Barry scored Faith’s next films, Never Let Go and Mix Me a Person, setting him off on his brilliant career as composer and arranger of film music.

It is filmed at MGM-British Studios at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, UK, and on location in London’s Soho and Chislehurst Caves, Kent. It was released in the US as Wild for Kicks.

The film got an X certificate, delaying its release in a queued behind a glut of X-rated films, unreleased until after other films featuring Faith (Never Let Go) and McEnery (Tunes of Glory). When finally released it performed reasonably well at the box office in UK, despite poor reviews.

Starlet Gillian Hills went on to have numerous small roles in 1960s and 1970s films, including Blow-up and A Clockwork Orange, and became a successful yé-yé singer in France.

The BBFC reviewer called Dail Ambler’s original screenplay Striptease Girl ‘machine-made dirt, the worst script I have read for some years’ in March 1959. The film was renamed Beat Girl and nudity was reduced.

Betty Uelmen, née Williams (11 January 1919–6 September 1974) was a British Fleet Street journalist, screenwriter and pulp fiction writer, publishing at least one novel a month as ‘Danny Spade’ in the Fifties and later turning to screenwriting as ‘Dail Ambler’.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,416

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