Soapbox Derby

CFF films are always well worth watching but probably mainly for those born in the 1950s and 1960s as they take us back in time to a black and white childhood possibly seen through rose tinted specs. I had a "bogey" when I was a lad but without the fancy bodywork seen in this film the only bodywork being the body from a large pram, and the wheels.

In Soapbox Derby, which runs a hair more than an hour, we get 15-year-old Michael Crawford as head of a "gang" (more a club) called the Battersea Bats. They are keen to enter a soapbox derby and work hard on designing and fabricating a car. But a rival gang also wants to win. But they decide to steal the plans and copy the design rather than do their own work. More sophisticated and realistic than the US "Our Gang" shorts, the film shows the triumph of good work over those who steal and lie. Very watchable. The on-location shooting is excellent. Although the film ends with the bad boys losing the race (of course) and falling into mud (for a good belly laugh) it also has its dramatic moments as when one boy's little sister gets run over by a truck.

Crawford is especially spunky and shows his prowess at knockabout comedy. Cast also includes Mark Daly as Grandpa, Jean Ireland as the mother, and Denis Shaw as the odious Mr. Lender.

Also of interest in Soapbox Derby is a truly ugly little car called an Isetta, almost a 3-wheeled car with the single door on the front of the vehicle.

Battersea Power Station towers majestically over this fairly early Children's Film Foundation presentation starring a tousle-haired young Michael Crawford, attractively shot on location in glorious summer weather in the days when it's chimneys still belched smoke, bubble cars were considered cool and the leader of the rival gang of ruffians wears shorts. His father, though, is played by Denis Shaw - probably the meanest-looking heavy ever to appear in a CFF production - who himself does one hairy-looking stunt in a quarry before he and his ne'r-do-well son suffer the concluding ritual humiliation already becoming a CFF convention.

The strongest language any of the kids uses is "Oh, blow it!!"; but modern audiences are more likely to take offence at one of the boys constantly being called "four eyes".

As a Saturday morning cinema fan in the 60s, I was very surprised to realize that I had never seen this film. However, even after 60 years it is the epitome of all the things that made my childhood enjoyable; friendships, broken and restored, communal projects, gangs (in a non-violent sense) and kids doing dangerous things. Health and Safety, and the PC brigade would render it impossible to make this film today. The Battersea Bats, a group of pre-teen boys, have their HQ in a semi-derelict yard on the Thames near Battersea. They carelessly run along a wall ten feet above the river, fight and play in and around railway trucks before knocking a rival gang member into the miry waters, only to have a young Michael Crawford dive in to save him. Elsewhere, the titular soapbox is towed, with occupant, behind an Isetta bubble-car and a man is swung around in the bucket of an excavator! Before I forget; the plot involves the gang building a pedal-powered go-kart to race against their rivals the Victorias. A design is drawn up by Bats' boffin "Four-eyes" Fulton and a wonderful cart constructed. Unfortunately, skullduggery is afoot and the plan is incorporated into the Victorias' soapbox. Worse, the Victorias steal and try to dump the Bats' cart. Being a kids' film you know it will be recovered and the outcome of the final exciting head to head on the racetrack is never in doubt. Upon leaving the cinemas, you would be thinking how marvellous it would be if you built a soapbox like the one in the film. You never did of course, but it was fun dreaming. With regard to Michael Crawford, I worked out that, although his character was supposed to be around 12, he was almost 16 at the time and, in a foretaste of his Frank Spencer antics, he performed the dive into the river himself. And coincidentally "Four-eyes'" sister is named Betty, the name of Frank Spencer's wife in Some Mothers Do Have 'Em. I noticed that some of the boys lived in flats on Deeley Road SW8. If you Google it on Streetview, you will see that the flats still look the same today as they did in the film.

Just saw again. Shows one reason I want to turn the clock back - only drawback nonBattersea accent . I speak as someone from there! Otherwise - why can't life and today's kids be like that?