Bloody Kids

this film impressed me greatly, bleak but powerful especially in it's ending and Poliakoff's early, terse screenplay is excellent. Although made in the late 70's the film has aged remarkably well and still feels relevant. I recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting and intelligent look at British youth culture.

A cute boy with a cold, manipulative, feckless demeanour convinces his friend to pretend to stab him at a football game with a penknife and a fake bag of blood. Unsurprisingly, he gets stabbed for real, and the boy goes on the run. While in hospital, the apparently psychopathic youngster spins tales about his friend being a budding Norman Bates, saying that he talks about hurting people and draws his violent fantasies.

Meanwhile, the fugitive meets a charming reprobate who takes him joyriding in a stolen car, vandalises a shop window, and in the movie's most bizarre scene, appears to attempt suicide.

The whole thing has a grim, depressing, aimless feeling to it. The movie never lets you into the minds of the characters, so you don't know what they're going to do next, nor do you understand why they did what they just did. The characters seem to live in a world without reason, and just make things up as they go along.

The movie is watchable, with impressive performances from the young leads, who surprisingly never did anything else.

This little-seen and under-appreciated film accurately captures the bleakness and alienation of youth like few other films succeed in doing. It was shown on New Zealand television about 20 years ago and I've never had a chance to see it again. But I remember great direction, music, and atmosphere. Takes its place among the late-70s/early 80s British classics, the quality of which seems to be gone forever - see Meantime, Made in Britain, and anything in that period by Mike Leigh. To think that this was made by Stephen Frears who now gives us dreck like Mrs Henderson and The Queen is truly dispiriting.

Poliakoff (writer) and Frears (director) both have a fascination for the darker corners of urban life that most of us never see. Bloody Kids is early work for both of these great masters and has the rough edges one might expect from youthful experimentation. But this piece demonstrates the pace, momentum and lyrical qualities that Poliakoff can create and amazing visual imagery by Frears. Some of the work is reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, but this piece has a quite unique presence of its own which I found both haunting and gripping.

Not the greatest work by either Stephen, but early signs of greatness and certainly worth a look.

Although an interesting snapshot of 2 days in the life of a couple of Southend scallywags, it's hard to find any message in all this pointless rebellion. Is that all the 70s were about, even in Southend?

What does make this movie worth 90 minutes of your life is the glimpse of the past it offers. To most viewers, I suspect, there are a surprising number of familiar faces in the cast, some from very early in their careers.

On a detached level, it offers an enjoyable tour of Southend as it was a quarter of a century ago. Aside from the retail ownerships, it looks to have changed little.