MartinHafer "Cosh Boy" (also known as "The Slasher") is an incredibly Oedipal picture that takes advantage of post-war worries that the youth were running amok. It begins with Roy Walsh and a friend committing a mugging (a 'cosh') and soon getting caught. They are placed on probation and Roy acts very contrite and decent in court...and almost immediately after, he's planning his next crimes! His idea is to use the Youth Club his probation officer wants him to attend. He and his gang will go there...and use it as a cover for their criminal activities. In the process, Roy discovers a pretty young lady (Joan Collins)...who he treats like dirt.Through the course of the film, Roy continually ups the ante--with his criminal behaviors getting worse and worse. He clearly is without a redeeming quality...though his co-dependent mother makes excuses for him. The only one who sees right through the punk is his mother's boyfriend...he knows that Roy needs a very firm hand. But here is where it gets rather Freudian...as Roy throws a weird temper tantrum and swears no one will have his mother as she is HIS! What's next? See this weird little film.James Kenney is quite good as Roy--snarling, nasty and incredibly two- faced..as well as hopelessly in love with his mother..though he and his mum don't seem to realize it. My biggest complaint, however, is that the film tries to say that who Roy is turns out to be because he has a super-permissive mother. In fact, the preachy prologue says exactly that! Oversimplified to say the least! Overall, it's not a great film at all...but it IS entertaining and worth seeing!By the way, although the film seems very tame by modern standards, it received the brand new X-rating--which was very unusual for the 1950s. Perhaps this was because the film talks about teenage pregnancy and is a tad violent...all of which would lead to a PG or PG-13 rating today."Get up you little rat...you're making me sick!!!"--best line in the film.

malcolmgsw Difficult to realise that this was amongst the first films released with an X certificate.It was probably to ensure that impressionable teenagers did not have the opportunity to copy the antics of the characters in this film.Joan Collins shines amongst the dross.Having seen her boyfriend is beaten up by a gang.She then goes with the leader of the gang who treats her roughly.He also has a huge Oedipus complex,and almost seems to be doing a rather poor impersonation of James Cagney in White Heat.There are also parts of this film which are reminiscent of Brighton Rock and The Blue Lamp.The gang stages a raid on a wrestling arena which goes wrong.The leader shoots a member of staff.Subsequently they have a discussion about who would go down for the crime which clearly reflects the Derek Bentley case.The climax is so overblown it is quite laughable.

bkoganbing Although the play Cosh Boy never made it to Broadway, probably too British in its subject matter, the original actor who played the lead on the London stage got to recreate his role for the screen. In the tradition of Richard Attenborough in Brighton Rock, James Kenney is mesmerizing and unforgettable as the dirty little punk who with his gang robs little old ladies of their monies.If anything Kenney is far more loathsome than Attenborough, not even a hint of surface charm. In fact the hardest part of the film to take seriously is having young Joan Collins surrender herself and her virginity to this creep. Still his love 'em and leave 'em attitude is just one more reason to hate this kid. I've seen very few leading villains so lacking in any redeeming qualities. Possibly Lee Marvin in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one.For those of us Yanks for who the film was retitled The Slasher for release by Lippert Pictures here, a Cosh is a kind of truncheon used to whack someone into unconsciousness or beat them severely. That's what he and his gang use. He's the bane of the existence of his poor mother Betty Ann Davies who agonizes over what she did wrong in raising him. She has a new man in her life, American Robert Ayres playing a Canadian, who thinks the kid just needed a good attitude adjustment that was never given him by a father who is not in the picture. In the end Kenney has to account for all his many sins.Besides a very young Joan Collins viewers should take note of the two Hermiones in the film, Hermione Baddely as the mother of Collins who wants to Cosh the Cosh Boy after she finds out what Kenney has done and Hermione Gingold playing a not disguised at all prostitute who is a friend of the Davies/Kenney family. It's a poor section of London these folks live in with evidence all around of the recent war. Kenney's gang hides out in the bombed out buildings still not repaired by 1953. Cosh Boy is still quite a riveting piece of film making and Kenney is unforgettably evil.

angryangus After reading some of the extremely negative reviews I feel I have to add my tuppence worth. I watched this film recently and I can't believe some of the reviewers watched the same movie. Bad acting? I couldn't see any. All the actors were stage-trained and while I could see some of that reflected in several of the performances it didn't detract from, but rather added to, the underlying documentary approach to a subject that was much in the public and political mind at that time (and still is today). James Kenney, who I've seen in several movies, gives an outstanding performance of this young undisciplined hoodlum whose hysterical vileness and strutting arrogance propped up with a false bravado that finally cracks like a mirror at the end of the film....well, crime couldn't be shown to pay, could it? And yes, the police of that time were quite willing to let parents or guardians punish their young 'uns if they thought it would do any good. Parents would insist to the policeman, "Leave him to me!" if he brought shame on the house...I know! Alternatively the policemen themselves would give you a clip on the back of the head with their hand (painful) or flick you with a rolled up cape on the bum (very painful). You wouldn't go running to your Dad crying about it for he'd give you another clip saying you must have deserved it.Social history tells us of how Britain, with four million men in uniform during the war years saw a generation of youth largely grow up without the guidance of fathers or older brothers. Juvenile delinquency figures during and after the war went through the roof and with many de-mobbed soldiers bringing looted pistols and revolvers home with them there was a steady supply of weapons filtering down to the criminally-inclined classes, and resulting in a massive increase in crimes of robbery, assault and murder by those who were 'tooled-up' and who were quite willing to kill their victims rather than let them live to identify their attacker and possibly end up making the acquaintance of Mr Pierrepoint and his neck-adjusting service (which he performed...on a career-best 405 occasions!).For the time, and of the time, Lewis Gilbert's film stands up well in my eyes compared to the rose-tinted comedic films depicting similar disenfranchised youth such as the funny 'Hue and Cry'…which I also enjoyed enormously.Taking a film out of its time-period to deliver judgement can't be right. There were many films made back then (and even now) that are shoddily made with poor acting, dire scripts and non-existent production values that deserve all the brickbats they get, but 'Cosh Boy' isn't one of them....in my humble opinion.