User Reviews

This little British film begins like a boring drama about teenagers, and their revolt against society. But the following is rather better than that. It tells the story of a young girl who gets away from her town to go to London, to her auntie's home. London, the big city and its high lights. But also its dangers. All kind of dangers. Especially men. All kind of men. The female lead falls in love with a youngster like her, a handsome night club singer who happens to be a petty hood, nothing more. And our young girl is also harassed by an elder man, who is himself in love with her. A wealthy man. And, of course, the young lover of the girl is searching for the big money. Easy money...

You can guess the following. After all, it begins like a drama and ends like a real film noir. But it's not THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, GUN CRAZY or BONNIE AND CLYDE.

But please don't miss it. This little feature is very rare.

The real star of this drama of teen angst and future regret is Christina Gregg, 17 years old and running away from an abusive relationship with her father. She heads to London to stay with her grasping but loving aunt (Hermione Baddeley) whose over protectiveness can be stifling. Handsome club singer Jess Conrad is obviously too old for her, but that doesn't stop her from continuing to see him, not knowing that he's a petty criminal on the side, robbing houses and eventually getting shot which leads her to go on the run with him. Hopefully the obviously tragic ending will teach her a lesson as evidenced by the look on her face as the film rolls to an end.

Well done but predictable, this is highlighted by a sequence where Gregg rides into Piccadilly circus and gets views of some of the most famous spots there including the Talk of the Town nightclub. It truly is the Las Vegas and Broadway of London, and it's obvious through her eyes that she feels like a new life is beginning and desperately wants to be a part of it. Unfortunately, this does not include the famous song by the Four Seasons (written four years later) which would have been a great theme for the film. The music in the background however is quite similar. A pretty good B quota quickie that has decent acting and a tight script, only marred by the fact that you already know what's going to happen at the end.

When TV reared it's ugly head in Britain one section of the population who were not in thrall were the teenagers - they had their pop idols, so that's who movie producers went after. Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard and, to a lesser extent, Adam Faith, all found fame in As while Jess Conrad plodded along in the Bs. Contrary to the character he played in "Rag Doll", Jess was a big pop star, who in the same year as this movie, was voted England's "Most Popular Male Singer" in the 1961 N.M.E. Annual Poll. Don't let the fact that he is a pop singer and the story being propelled by music fool you - this is a gritty crime drama about desperate people with some very noirish scenes - Carol's desperate run along a night highway etc.

Like a forerunner of "Bitter Harvest" this tells the all too familiar story of Carol (the "rag doll" of the title) who is fed up with being pawed by customers, the desolation of the diner and the unpaternal eye of her step father who thinks nothing of using her as payment for a whiskey debt. (Patrick Magee gives everything he has to his few brief scenes). After almost being raped by one of the customers, with her step father turning a blind eye, she heads for the bright lights (some terrific location shots of London, circa 1960, complete with some dazzling Christmas displays) and straight into the arms of Angie (Hermione Baddeley), a fortune teller at the fun parlour, who just happens to be a procuress for the local "Mr. Big" Mort Wilson (Kenneth Griffith - that man again!!). Being able to hold her own against the hot headed cave man tactics of the truckies from the diner she is no match for the oily suaveness of the city slickers.

Poor Christina Gregg, it seems she was destined to play young girls at the mercy of men only after one thing - a year later she appeared in "Don't Talk to Strange Men" where she was "groomed" by an unknown stranger she happened to start chatting with through answering a call in a public phone booth - here she is "groomed" by Mort, the sleazy owner of a number of cafes which are in reality a front for a prostitution racket. Despite her looking like a young Jean Simmons is it any wonder Gregg left films soon after, probably wanted to get away from all the turgid teen drama.

She meets and falls hard for aspiring pop singer Shane (Conrad) and while she believes in him, he has no illusions about his talent. There is a reason he can't get on in the music business and is often knocked back at auditions - he is a habitual criminal. He blames his marriage to Carol on the fact that he can't get anywhere but he is really planning a robbery in which a night out at the flicks will give him an alibi!! But the night goes wrong and the film ends on a note of despair as both he and the distraught Carol are hunted down in the English countryside.

Just a fabulous film with a gripping plot that belies it's B movie status.

"Rag Doll" is just a little "B" (only 63 minutes) and its director, Lance Comfort, tended to grind this kind of thing out rather than give it much in the way of style. It does however have some interesting assets.First, for those curious about what London (especially the West End) and its night life looked like in the early 1960s, when this was made, there is much location footage. Later in the story the gangster musician, when he needs an alibi for a break-in he's about to commit one night, gets tickets for him and his girlfriend to see the John Wayne movie "The Alamo," which we see on a marquee. Second, there are several well known performers. Patrick Magee, famed for his roles in Samuel Beckett plays, appears early on as the heroine's stepfather, a small town bar proprietor, whom she soon deserts.(Though he is rather wasted.) When she gets to the big city, she's accidentally befriended by Princess Sophita,a fortune teller in a downtown arcade who later calls herself Auntie, this provides a nice role for one of the great British character actresses, Hermione Baddeley. Auntie also works in one of four coffee bars owned by the middle aged Mort Wilson (Kenneth Griffith) who in turn becomes the girl's protector. Partly out of jealousy and partly out of concern for the girl he orders her to stay away from the hunky,leather-jacketed Shane, a young musician who has a gig in Mort's place and who she falls heavy for. In one of the numbers we see where Shane plays, his back up band consists of what would later become the Dave Clark Five! The girl, not knowing much about music, asks Mort what he thinks of them and he quips, drily, "They make a living." Here is where Mort makes one of the moralistic speeches typical in this kind of exploitation film, denouncing the teenagers and making the point that the seductive musician (who we will later find out is a crook) has named himself after a character in a Western! Jess Conrad, who plays this role, was one of several good looking aspiring British rock and roll actors who were modelled at least partly on the success of America's Ricky Nelson. That is pretty blatant as soon as he straps on a guitar and starts to sing. He also looks somewhat, from today's perspective, like the young Tom Cruise. The denouement does not go well. The girl gets pregnant. The cops are on to Shane. The couple escape into the countryside where things go down in one of those Sturm und Drang finales But for what this was meant to be- part of a double bill- there is enjoyment to be had if you don't expect too much.

A naive teenage girl, Carol (Christina Gregg), runs away from her unhappy life with her alcoholic guardian (Patrick Magee) and their truck drivers café to London. Alone and vulnerable in Soho, Carol is taken in by nightclub and arcade owner Mort Wilson (Kenneth Griffith) and a fortune teller, the Princess (Hermione Baddeley) who give her a place to live and a job. Carol falls hopelessly in love with pop singer and Soho crook, Joe Shane (Jess Conrad), after hearing him sing at Wilson's club. Despite warnings from Wilson and the Princess about his criminality, Carol gets pregnant with his child and marries him. Carol thinks she can settle him down by getting him to focus on his musical talent but, as she is about discover, with Joe its a case of once a criminal, always a criminal. He tells her that he can lay his hands on a lot of money and that they can begin a new life together in Canada. He gets Carol to be his alibi by having the pair of them go to a cinema and, instructing her to retain their ticket stubs, he slips out during the film and breaks into Wilson's house and steals his money. But, Wilson catches him and shoots him in the shoulder fatally wounding him. But, Joe who is also armed, fires back and shoots Wilson dead...

An enjoyable second feature crime drama from b-pic veteran Lance Comfort. While it is undeniably a very minor offering and no classic it survives as a time capsule into an era of British filmmaking that has long since gone. Conrad, who had some minor pop hits back in the early sixties but found greater success as an actor, is suitably cocky in the role of the young thief and Christina Gregg, who appeared in another of Comfort's better b-features, The Break, is very good as the young, vulnerable and naive teenager who thinks she knows best and ends up paying a terrible price for falling in with Joe despite being warned before hand. Other notable members of the cast include Patrick Magee - a familiar face to fans of British horror films and veteran British actress Hermione Baddeley (Brighton Rock, Room At The Top). Some of the rock and roll styled incidental music composed by Martin Slavin isn't actually bad and music buffs will observe that the backing band in Wilson's club are no other than The Dave Clark Five who would soon go on to become one of the era's top beat groups. Although most of these films tended to be studio bound, Comfort manages to give the seedy Soho setting a real sense of place and atmosphere and he is most ably assisted in this by the excellent b/w camera-work of Basil Emmott who shot several of these films for directors like Comfort and Vernon Sewell.