The Swedish Wild One
Following Marlon Brando's hit movie The Wild One in 1953, film-makers around the world were having a crack at the troublesome teenager genre. Germany gave us Die Halbstarken (Teenage Wolfpack, 1956) with a young Horst Buchholz, and France came up Les Tricheurs (Youthful Sinners, 1958) featuring an equally young Jean-Paul Belmondo. Japan's contribution was The Cola Game (1959) in which young couples devised a game with a cola bottle, the winners having to make love in front of the rest of the gang. The Swedish entry was Raggare (1959) a term which denoted the greaser or hot rod movement in Sweden.Unfortunately, the British Board of Film Censors didn't like this sort of film at all, so having refused a certificate to Brando it was inevitable that his Swedish imitators would also suffer a censor ban. Under its new title Blackjackets, it was duly rejected on 13 January 1960. Undeterred, small distributor Cross Channel did their best to exhibit the film in as many cinemas as possible, and the London premiere was held at the Compton Cinema (for members only) on 26 January 1961. The film had a popular five-week run, even returning in January1962 for a further three weeks. The press were generally hostile, describing the film as distasteful and unacceptable. Kinematograph Weekly dismissed Blackjackets as "an ugly, nay, sickening social document." However, looking at the film today, it doesn't seem anything like as shocking.
The bad boy of the gang is Roffe, played by Bill Magnusson who smirks a lot and has a passing resemblance to Russ Tamblyn. Glamour is provided by the attractive Christina Schollin playing Bibban. Highlight of the first half of the film sees Bibban, who had been fraternizing with a square, thrown into a ditch and pelted by the gang with mud. To clean up, she takes a nude swim in a nearby lake, which is great news for Christina Schollin fans, although logic dictates she would have been a lot warmer in her own bathtub. The climax of the film sees Bibban crash the car and finish up incinerated, along with Roffe who had been hiding in the boot. Sadly, Miss Schollin messes up her big death scene by seeming to be knocked out before the car actually crashes.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Blackjackets is a strangely compelling film which certainly sticks in the memory. It was extremely memorable for Miss Schollin and the film's good guy Hans Wahlgren – they got married and had four children!
score 8/10
jimm-8 1 February 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3406878/35978
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