Bronco Bullfrog

I got the feeling that there was little or no script just an idea that was built upon as they went along. It was the first and last piece of acting any of the cast did and it shows, there is very little passion coming from any of them, delivery was all very wooden. I've tried to find out what happened to any of the young cast, Sam Shepard, Jo, came to the showing of the restored film in Brighton and Anne Gooding, Irene, had died, of what it didn't say. Everyone must have got 'proper jobs'.

There is no explanation as to why Jo is called Bronco Bullfrog. He spends a lot less screen time than Del and Irene so why the film is call Bronco Bullfrog is a mystery to me.

What's good about it? The snapshot of late sixties London, barely any cars, prefabs, dreary streets before the culture explosion of the Olympics. No CCTV or mobile phones. The Stratford of today and dockland areas are unrecognizable here. Woolworths dominating the high street, men's shirts for 20/- pre decimal.

The soundtrack by Audience is perfect, some from their Friends's, Friend's, Friend album.

All in all worth watching once.

Currently an offering on Criterion (8/2024). Recent restoration actually produced a rather beautiful piece of film. Non-actors working from a non-script seems to somehow capture the times better than if it had been a carefully crafted story. Almost cinema-virite, almost documentary style most like a collection of home movies from 1970. Or better yet what the world (East end London) would have looked like with YouTube and camera phones in 1970. Seems like something that should be taught in film school which is saying something about a film rescued from a dumpster/bin. This ain't Hollywood and this ain't got no happy ending but that isn't what film is all about.

It´s a social realistic film. We follow some kids in the late teens, some in school and some at work. There is not really a story or the story isn't that important. Boy meets girl meets no acceptance from home so they run away. They team up with Bronco Bullfrog who has escaped from borstal. The best thing about the film is that we can follow normal working class kids in East End in London during the era of the Skinheads. So we get a non political view from skinheads, even if you may call them Suedeheads or whatever subcategory you like. There is no actors in the film, everybody is handpicked from the streets. The "bad" acting helps the real feeling. But you could always asked more from the director regarding the tightness of the film. I rated it 7 of 10.

It was interesting to see this long-forgotten independent English feature, which was barely seen when it came out. But the kind of over-excitement that tends to pronounce any "rediscovered" film some kind of classic would really be wrong-headed in this case. The main problem is that while it's understandable to want to cast nonprofessionals in order to get a more "realistic" ambiance in this kind of drama, you still have to give them SOME kind of basic training so they don't look like deer before headlights in front of the camera, just reciting their lines and holding themselves stiffly as if for a still photo. And that's exactly what happens here.

The adults playing parents are OK, but the juveniles are stilted, and the two who were deemed good-looking enough to be leads are so wooden we feel nothing for them. Eventually the barely-there plot hinges on their running away to have some alone time (since both their single parents are hostile towards their being together), and I guess we're meant to root for Young Love, but these two can't express anything--whether love, lust, or just some basic intelligence.

The only real point of interest is the location shooting, and glimpsing a side of (East) London that obviously never got the least "Swinging." There's also a decent enough rock soundtrack. But whether we're focused on the mildly criminal doings of the first half or the runaway couple of the second, there's no narrative tension, and the actors are stiff as boards. A 5 is actually a very generous rating in terms of any entertainment or dramatic value, but I boosted it up from a 4 just for the sake of it providing a time capsule.

I'm only a few years younger than the protagonists and can remember the clothes (though I don't believe these people were really suedeheads) and the cars and the caffs etc. And for a bit of nostalgia and as a visual snapshot of life at the time, it's worth a watch. But the bottom line is that using non-professional actors to portray people just like themselves doesn't get us, necessarily, anywhere nearer naturalistic realism than the smarmiest of drama school brats would. So it proves. It's mostly dreadfully wooden, all muttered lines, rigid stances and strange pauses, to the extent that the plot, basic though it is, is difficult to follow.In fact some passages are downright mystifying in that respect. It gets a bit better as it goes on but whichever critic called this a 'masterpiece' is just being silly.