The Leather Boys

Dot and Reggie are two London workingclass teenagers who marry soon after Dot leaves school. During the honeymoon, spent at a holiday camp, signs of conflict appear. Dot wants to enjoy the camp entertainments, whereas Reggie prefers bed. At home in their flat Dot shows herself more interested in hairstyles than in cooking or housework. Reggie seeks refuge from quarrels at his grandmother's house where he shares a room with Pete, a fellow motorcycling enthusiast. During a tonup race to Edinburgh, Reggie makes it up with Dot, but when he returns to their flat later he finds another man in her bed. Pete now proposes that he and Reggie sail to New York. However a chance encounter in a dockside pub reveals to Reggie that Pete has a homosexual past. In revulsion, Reggie leaves him, and each is now alone.

"The notoriously long delay in putting this film completed in March, 1963 into the cinemas has made it the protomartyr of the crisis in the British film industry. The fact that it has only one star and touches, however delicately, on the subject of homosexuality, presumably outweighs the wit, feeling and artistry that have gone into the direction, acting and photography. The Canadian Sidney Furie once more gets strongly naturalistic playing from young British actors, while carrying the action along vigorously. He draws full value from the funny or anguished lines in the numerous rows and reconciliations, and portrays the potentially horrendous wedding and holiday camp scenes with a brisk straightforwardness that leaves it mainly to the spectator to decide his own attitude to the way of life they represent." ("Monthly Film Bulletin", n. 361, February 1964, p. 21)

Director: Sidney J. Furie.
Screenplay: Gillian Freeman, dal romanzo di Eliot Gorge.
Director of photography: Gerald Gibbs.
Editor: Reginald Beck.
Art director: Arthur Lawson.
Music: Bill McGuffie.
Sound: Derek McColm.
Cast: Rita Tushingham (Dot), Colin Campbell (Reggie), Dudley Sutton (Pete), Gladys Henson (la nonna), Avice Landon (la madre di Reggie), Lockwood West (il padre di Reggie), Betty Marsden (la madre di Dot), Martin Mathews (lo zio Arthur), James Chase (Les), Geoffrey Dunn (Mr. Lunnis), Dandy Nichols (Mr. Stanley).
Production company: Raymond Stross per la Raymond Stross.