JUNGLE STREET/JUNGLE STREET GIRLS
UK, 1960 , 75 minutes, Black-and-white.
David Mc Callum, Jill Ireland, Kenneth Cope, Brian Weske, Edna Dore, Thomas Gallagher, Martin Sterndale, John Chandos.
Directed by Charles Saunders.
A brief British drama of 1960, a time when there was a focus in British theatre and screen on “kitchen sink� themes, a focus on ordinary people, working class people, their problems, their day-to-day lives.
It is surprising to see how much running time is given to striptease acts in a sleazy little club, not in Soho, but, apparently, in Shepherd’s Bush. It is the Adam and Eve Club. (One presumes this was provocative enough at the time, single acts of striptease, more suggestive than complete, nothing compared with the frequency of pole dancing in subsequent cinema.)
The film focuses on an angry young man, Terry Collins, not just with a chip on his shoulder but a huge log, continually aggressive, but also passive-aggressive at home and with his friends. The film opens with him attacking an old man in a side street, wanting to rob him, but actually killing him. He is also seen at home, his mother devoted to him, his hard-working drinking father continually criticising him, threatening violence towards him. He is seen working at a garage. But, he spends a lot of time at the Adam and Eve Club, talking with the lecherous boss, with the manager who has been in jail but who realises that he is the killer of the old man, especially when he is interrogated by the police. He tries blackmail on the young man.
In the meantime, a robber who is good at safe breaking, Johnny, Kenneth Cope, gets out of jail, goes to see Terry Collins, who was abandoned him after Johnny took the fall, goes to see his former girlfriend, Sue, who is both faithful and fickle.
The main action concerns robbing the club safe, Terry scoping it out, Johnnie agreeing, then knocking out one of the security men, succeeding in blowing the safe, but the security man, tied up, is able to set off the alarm. The final drama consists of Terry bludgeoning Johnny so that he is caught. Johnny gives up Terry who has gone to confront Sue. There is some pathos when the tailor, who lives opposite Sue, intervenes and is accidentally shot, with his comment about old men and their being disposable by the young.
The film is marked by the appearance of David Mc Callum, giving a somewhat overwrought performance as Terry Collins, no redeeming features whatsoever. His wife of those years, Jill Ireland, is Sue.
Not a particularly good film, B-budget, a touch of the lewd, a comment on the criminal mentality of the 1950s into the 1960s.
