The Party's Over

"The Party's Over" is nothing special. What makes it interesting is knowing that it ran afoul of the British censors for depicting things that were back then considered "inappropriate".

Oliver Reed plays the leader of a group of young beatniks in London. They're the sort of folks who live only for thrills, without a care in the world. Things get particularly unpleasant when a young woman hooks up with them.

I couldn't tell if the movie was trying to take a position on the direction that the UK's younger generation was taking. With the youth starting to move away from the stodgy social order that defined England for much of the 20th century, Swinging London was becoming the face of the country. This movie casts a more cynical face on that.

Anyway, it's an OK, not great movie. Guy Hamilton would later direct four James Bond movies. Incidentally, "Dr. No" (not a Hamilton movie) got released the same day as the Beatles' "Love Me Do", sixty years ago this month. Good times.

Due to sensitive nature of the subject matter this film was never widely seen.It concerns a young American girl who comes to London and gets involved with a bunch of no-good hooligans known as the "Pack".What happens after a very wild party that goes horribly wrong is what led to troubles with the censor as it includes necrophilia as well as other assorted horrors.Not for every taste (to put it mildly!)but interesting to see for those who can stomach it for the young rising stars involved,including a very young Louise Sorel.

I've got a soft spot for British B&W films from the late 50s & early 60s, just before London was set to swinging. It was the era of kitchen sink, Angry Young Man realism. When the opportunity to catch this film came along, I jumped.

Like its later, mid-to-late 60s American counterparts, Party's Over tries to capture an emerging counter culture, but fails. Clunky dialogue - although quick, clever and sprinkled with slang - isn't enough to prop up a story based on a group of dissatisfied folks who do nothing but talk, smoke, drink and 'groove.' We see them walking home the next morning, like vampires from a night of blood-letting.

There's a peppy soundtrack by John Barry and, as others have noted, Reed's performance dazzles. Almost everyone else makes the most of their parts; it's not their fault that their characters are so shallow.

The reviews here mentioned an event that is a turning point in the story. I'm glad they did because the version I saw on Tubi completely cut the scene.

That did it for me. Plus, the Carson character as the Yank was very annoying and was an instant buzz kill every time he'd crash a groovy scene. Grateful to have experienced what I did, but I wouldn't recommend the Tubi version to anyone. I guess you get what you pay for.

The opening bars of the jazz-style theme alerts us to the likely seedy nature of this gritty tale of a young woman who arrives from a wealthy upbringing in the USA in 1960s London. She falls in with a rather Bohemian band of reprobates known as the "Pack", a group of young people who live a pretty disparate existence - sex, drugs, rock and roll - you know the story - and Oliver Reed is quite effective as their leader "Moise". Tragedy ensues, though, and the group must face up to some of their excesses with varying degrees of honesty and success. It's trying to be visceral, this film - it swipes at the tribal, almost feral nature of relationships amongst the group who have a moral compass all of their own. Although Guy Hamilton spares us the worst of the physical manifestations of their behaviour, our imagination is quite capable of plugging the gaps. The censors had a whale of a time with this - and even now, it isn't hard to see why - some of the taboos it addresses would still be treated gingerly even today - 55 years later. The photography does much to enhance the earthiness of the production, close ups proving particularly effective alongside the score. Reed really steals the film, too - with the young Louise Sorel "Melina" - the aforementioned daughter; and Katherine Woodville "Nina" - maybe the only one of them with any semblance of what we might call decency - adding (gunpowder) to the mix too. It's nowhere near as potent as it was, but as an example of groundbreaking cinema it has to be worth a watch.

THE PARTY'S OVER is an interesting time capsule piece that brings to life Beatnik culture in the mid 1960s. Given that nobody knows who the Beatniks were these days it's invariably a dated production, once controversial but now very tame in terms of execution and the old-fashioned black and white photography. The recently deceased Bond director Guy Hamilton had his name taken off the credits due to dissatisfaction with the film's censorship.

The film depicts a social group in which hedonism and ruthlessness are the order of the day. The idea of a gang of youths going around causing havoc without giving a thought for the consequences of their actions is an interesting one which has been explored many times in the cinema, perhaps to the extreme in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

Added to this is a main mystery storyline in which a youthful investigator comes over from America to search for a missing girl. The actor playing him is Clifford David, later to essay the role of Beethoven in BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE. What happened to the girl forms the crux of the storyline, and eventually the mystery is revealed through some flashbacks which were once controversial, although they feel very tame and ordinary by modern standards; worse happens on an evening soap these days. Still, THE PARTY'S OVER is worth a watch, even if just to see Oliver Reed's surprisingly sensitive turn as the gang leader. His role is reminiscent of his one in THE DAMNED, but with greater nuance; he truly was an underrated actor.