Walking Back

An unlikely pooling of the talents of horror film luminaries director Rupert Julian ('The Phantom of the Opera'), designer Anton Grot ('Mystery of the Wax Museum') and cameraman John Mescall ('Bride of Frankenstein). After a remarkable opening sequence starting in outer space before gradually homing in on Earth (like the prologue nearly twenty years later to 'A Matter of Life and Death'), we are then assailed with an unapologetic display of raucous drunken hedonism interspersed with moralising subtitles about modern youth. The behaviour of these kids makes the youngsters in 'Rebel Without a Cause' look like a Sunday school class, even down to a more destructive version of the later film's 'chicken run' using a car 'borrowed' from a neighbour's.

All this antisocial behaviour goes entirely unpunished in a fashion that would never had got past the Hays Office even a couple of years later. The photography of the frequent scenes depicting cars being driven like maniacs is sensational.