Beat Girl (1960)

When her father (David Farrar) returns from France with a new wife (Noelle Adam), a rebellious young teen age girl (Gillian Hills) does all she can to undermine the marriage by exposing her stepmother's past. Directed by Edmond T. Greville, this is a time capsule of "beat" England toward the end of the 1950s. Kids hung out in coffee bars, danced in underground cellars to a wild new beat, lived for the kicks they could get, all the while rejecting their "square" parents. The film doesn't have the weight of something like REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE but it's fun seeing the "Daddy-O" hipsters and the existential "get your kicks now because the Bomb is coming tomorrow!" crowd getting lost to a rock 'n roll rhythm. A good portion of the film takes place in a strip club run by Christopher Lee and those strip numbers are pretty graphic for 2017 and one can only imagine what 1960 audiences thought! The film features the first film score by the great John Barry. With Oliver Reed, Shirley Anne Field, Peter McEnery, Nigel Green, Delphi Lawrence and British rock 'n roll idol, Adam Faith.