My Teenage Daughter

This is one of the worst movies I've seen, and that's saying a lot. Ruminations on "Rebel Without a Cause", but they could have called this movie "Film without a Director." It was so completely boring that it was almost unbelievable. They used the same annoying song five times (at least) in the movie. "Get with it!" says the song. Indeed. Do not not not get with this movie. ever.

The first problem with this film is that Sylvia Simms does not look or act like a 16 year old and Anna Neagle is about 10 years too old for her part.The second is that the fact that the film doesn't really acknowledge that teenagers as a group had arrived.Everything about this film is old fashioned.You think of all the American films coming out at this time with Dean,Presley etc and this film feels like it was made in the thirties.

Talking Pictures ironically advises parental guidance for this museum piece, in which bobbysoxer Sylvia Syms gets plenty from concerned parent Anna Neagle.

Directed by a 65 year-old veteran of silent films, as the daughter who learns the hard way that Angry Young Men (even those in tweeds and a cravat) mean trouble Sylvia Syms was supposedly seventeen but actually 21 when she made this (and is now 86)! And the sum of money that causes all the grief is just £40.

Another twenty years still lay ahead before one of the other teenagers - Wanda Ventham - would give birth to Benedict Cumberbatch. I could go on, but I think you get the picture...

After two films with Errol Flynn, the acting producing husband and wife team of Anna Neagle and Herbert Wilcox decided to try a film with a more modern theme. Not that musical comedy star Neagle was about to rock and roll, but she could play the mother of a daughter who was into that crazy new beat.

Teenage Bad Girl starts with Anna's daughter Sylvia Syms being a good girl. Syms is the oldest of two daughters to Neagle and she's pretty happy especially since she has a new man in her life, Norman Wooland. But Syms has met up with a new boy, a bad boy played by Kenneth Haigh who intrigues and excites her.

Pretty soon she's spending all her time with him to the exclusion of family, school, other friends and Syms has Neagle properly worried. It all ends in a senseless tragedy.

Teenage Bad Girl was no better or worse than some of the teen themed dramas that were starting to flood the market as the age of rock and roll dawned on this side of the pond. I'm sure it made some good money for the Wilcox/Neagle team although it certainly wasn't a typical Anna Neagle product. She and Wilcox would be leaving the big screen shortly and concentrating on British television.

I am appalled at the sensationalist title of ' Teenage Bad Girl ' and its original British title is so much better. In fact the film is much better than I expected watching it by chance on a television channel. The cast is excellent, and Anna Neagle gives a very good performance indeed worrying about her daughter who has quite simply met and fallen for a wayward young man who is psychologically disturbed. Sylvia Sims and Kenneth Haigh ( the original Jimmy Porter in John Osborne's ' Look Back in Anger ' and should have been chosen for the film role in Tony Richardson's version of the groundbreaking play ) play the lovers and because of a fatal turning of events land in a terrible situation. No spoilers but the frightening scene of this situation reminded me of Pushkin's ' The Queen of Spades. ' And as a the film's soundtrack uses Tchaikovsky's music ( not too well, but not too bad either ) I thought of the Opera of the composer based on the Pushkin story. As for the film as film I am not an admirer of Herbert Wilcox but this was much better than the rest of his work. It gives a portrait of 1950's life and it rings true, except for a few critical scenes towards the end when it becomes preachy. It is much better than most films of the time that dealt with teenagers in trouble and out of their depth in coming to terms with adult judgements and demands. Watch it if you can. It is not the trash that publicity showed it to be and has a cast at its best who give their best. Highly recommended.