Cosh Boy

It's a shame that COSH BOY (strangely re-titled THE SLASHER) is so extremely dated, holding back what's promised by the edgy image of British teen actor James Kenney as a street thug "teddy boy" (name of youth gangs in England)... because Kenney not only delivers his dialogue strongly, but listens just as intensely...

Too bad most of his words are aimed at his dotting mother, about to marry a man who can't wait to punish her oldest son... and she's more important than the fellow gang members, who sporadically hit the streets to "cosh" (violently mug) their victims...

On the peripheral is a romance with Joan Collins, injecting the kind of wispy hysterics to suit what's ultimately more a melodrama with crime genre elements than the sleek crime-noir it could/should have been instead...

Yet despite the flaws, director Lewis Gilbert, during the few scenes that matter involving the young gang working together before turning on each other, brings the viewer straight into the action... that is, when the distractions haven't taken over, in this case, almost entirely.

Just seen this on TV. Watched the whole thing (not just the last 15 minutes), and agree with most of what's been said - the dodgy accents, the usual brace of Hermiones, Sid James doing his avuncular desk sergeant bit, etc etc. And as the stepfather Robert Ayres gives the best performance as a piece of wood I've seen since the log in Twin Peaks. Don't think I've ever seen a film before where the fuzz make themselves scarce for ten minutes so stepfather can give his stepson a bloody good thrashing! But...making allowances for the conventions of the time, you can tell it was made by someone who knew what he was doing, and several things kept me watching: the location shots of blitzed London; Joan Collins, who was rather affecting given the limitations of her role; and James Kenney as Roy the hoodlum was really good - overwrought, sure, but convincing nevertheless. I was reminded of Gary Oldman at his most psychotic.

Interesting film. It was filmed in Leamore Street in Hammersmith. My Mum lived there. The film crew gave them ice creams and skipping ropes to play in the background of some scenes (though on a quick look through the film, I didn't see much of this). The beginning shows them running down a high street and I suspect this was the main street in Hammersmith.I have just bought it for my Mum's 70th birthday as she had never seen the film due to it being an X and of course, there were no DVD/Video recorders in those days!Feels a bit over acted in places, but an interesting historical document of life in the 1950s. Joan Collins is impressive though.

This was known in England as "Cosh Boy."

A cosh is a blackjack or bludgeon and cosh means mugging someone.

Nice performance by James Kenney as a juvenile delinquent who runs a gang that beats up little old ladies and steals their money. Kenney played the lead on the London stage and does an excellent job.

He becomes involved with one of the gang members' sister (Joan Collins) with disastrous results.

Both of the Hermoines are in this film. Gingold looked like a drag queen.

Post-war juvenile delinquency was going on everywhere, including Britain.

Amazing to see 20-year-old Joan Collins, who as of this writing is still with us 70 years later. The film is worth it just for that.

'Cosh Boy' (1953) - Lewis Gilbert.

Highly regarded writer/director Lewis Gilbert's gloomy, surprisingly gritty expose of violent opportunist street crime is certainly no less hard-hitting an experience today than upon its initial somewhat more controversial theatrical release in 1953. Due to Gilbert's tough-edged feature's rather blunt, relatively unfiltered examination of criminality it was granted an 'X' certificate, its abrasive depictions of anti-social teenage delinquency, petty larceny, violent street crime, and the increasingly criminal machinations of the gang's milk-faced, gimlet-eyed, plainly sociopathic gang leader Roy Walsh (John Kenney) and his greasily subservient entourage of shiftless, pallid-looking hoodlums were, perhaps, a little too vividly rendered for the time!

The existentially bleak 50s melodrama 'Cosh Boy' is a consistently fascinating thriller, being a remarkably grim, wholly unsympathetic view of teenage terror-twerp 'Walshie's' extraordinarily callous crime spree, his ill temper and frequent immorality seemingly boundless, robbing his own family, dispassionately getting his innocent girl (Joan Collins) in the family way, and fatefully shifting from a leather-bound cosh to a deadly firearm in the film's frantic, razor-edged, nerve-strafing climax! There are especially frank moments in the punchy narrative when it is almost as though Gilbert is foreshadowing the socially conscious, agitprop cinema of Alan Clarke and Ken Loach, since his intense young protagonist Kenney roils with the similarly splenetic rage of a young Gary Oldman! 'Cosh Boy' is far more than a nostalgic cinematic curiosity, aggressively maintaining a dark febrile energy undiminished by time with the breathtakingly beautiful Joan Collins expressing a heart-wrenching fragility as the naïve Rene Collins.