BEAT GIRL AKA WILD FOR KICKS (1959) - (d) EDMOND T. GREVILLE

Yeah, baby! An all wrong, distaff Rebel Without A Cause. Which makes it, of course, all right with us. Starlet Gillian Hills headlines as a mixed-up, muddled-up, thoroughly shook-up, not-so-sweet sixteener bored to tears with her life as a wealthy, upper-class art student. Daddy doesn't appear to love her, you see, and when Daddy brings home a gorgeous, grown-up, French version of Gillian as his new wife, well, for Gillian, that's the living end. So Gillian starts hanging out with beatniks Oliver Reed and Adam Faith in a local coffee bar where she hopes to get the low-down, dirty no-goods on her stepmother. Just so happens the answer can be found in Les Girls, a strip club run by pederast Christoper Lee. And what a strip club it is. Herein the girls not only doff their clothes and push their charms in the face of the Johns, but hump the stage, the curtains and anything not nailed down as well. Male members of the 50s audience must have delighted in such shenanigans and pinched themselves to see if they were dreaming, what with all the bare breasts and buttocks parading across the drive-in screen.

Not content with making life miserable for dear old mom and dad, Gillian takes to sneaking out in the dead of night to party with her psychopathic pals, instigate dangerous car races on isolated backroads, and engage in games of chicken with oncoming trains. Our little minx finally goes too far when she invites the gang back to her parent's posh pad and proceeds to wake stepmom up with a riotous, improvisational striptease in the foyer. Enter enraged Dad stage left to throw the bums out, at which point Gillian, in a bratty rage, decides to reveal stepmom's deep, dark secret: 'tis a pity, but she's a ho (apologies to John Webster), Daddy-O! With that, Gillian runs off to Chris Lee and the strip club to begin her career as a prossie-in-training, that is, as an ecdysiast.

As if the story wasn't risible enough, the dialogue, obviously written by studio hacks, tries way to hard to be "with it." This results in lines veering dangerously close to sheer gibberish. The acting, too, never rises above pathetic. Adam Faith, in particular (with Oliver Reed a close second as a sex-mad retard), disgraces himself with his desperate attempts to emulate Elvis in the two songs he is allowed to perform. At least Adam doesn't try to dance with his sidekicks; if one can call the spastic and clumsy movements of the cast, "dancing." Nijinski these kids ain't. The incidental music by The John Barry 7, on the other hand, surprises with its inventiveness. It's deliciously sleazy - "The Stripper" has since become a cult classic- in the club sequences, and wildly reelin' and rockin' in the cavern club dance bits. (Available in the racier version from Trash Palace)