Made on the cusp of the sexual revoloution.This film now seems dated and rather laboured.Part of the problem is that the film is not allowed to reach a dramatic conclusion.Instead we have a ten minute discussion on the pros and cons of pre marital sex.The conclusion is predictable.
5 Reviews
Not what you expect! But interesting.
Infofreak5 January 2002
'The Yellow Teddybears' is misleadingly packaged as a "saucy" 60s sexploitation movie, which is nowhere near the truth! It's actually a serious message movie about teenage pre-marital sex. Dated as all hell, it's almost like a Smiths fan's wet dream.
The movie concerns a girl's school where a group of "bad girls" wear a small yellow teddybear on their uniforms to symbolize their loss of virginity. The ringleader of these girls, Linda, fears she is pregnant by her boyfriend Kinky, who is a window washer by day, and wanna be pop singer by night. Desperate, and unable to confide in her uptight parents she seeks the help of a local woman of the world who suggest an abortion. However she has no money and the price she must have to pay could be even worse than the prospect of shame as a single mother. Meanwhile, Linda's concerned biology teacher gets wind of the meaning of her students yellow teddybears and when she confronts them about it she ends up being accused of leading the girls astray.
While dated and corny in many ways 'The Yellow Teddybears' is interesting as a snapshot of pre-"Swinging Sixties" England before The Beatles and The Pill changed young people's lives forever.
The movie concerns a girl's school where a group of "bad girls" wear a small yellow teddybear on their uniforms to symbolize their loss of virginity. The ringleader of these girls, Linda, fears she is pregnant by her boyfriend Kinky, who is a window washer by day, and wanna be pop singer by night. Desperate, and unable to confide in her uptight parents she seeks the help of a local woman of the world who suggest an abortion. However she has no money and the price she must have to pay could be even worse than the prospect of shame as a single mother. Meanwhile, Linda's concerned biology teacher gets wind of the meaning of her students yellow teddybears and when she confronts them about it she ends up being accused of leading the girls astray.
While dated and corny in many ways 'The Yellow Teddybears' is interesting as a snapshot of pre-"Swinging Sixties" England before The Beatles and The Pill changed young people's lives forever.
aka THE YELLOW TEDDY BEARS
jobla12 February 2002
THE YELLOW TEDDY BEARS is available on VHS in England. The print is quite good, but it's the censored domestic version. There was also a "Continental" version that added nudity (however, the nudity was provided by adults, not the "schoolgirls"). It is dated now, but it's fun to see films that were once shocking.
Plus ça change...
richardchatten2 January 2018
Warning: Spoilers
To get a sense of the sheer speed of the social and cultural transformation that took place during the mid-sixties just compare this film (made when you still had to produce your marriage license to be referred for contraception by your GP) with Antonioni's 'Blowup' three years later in which David Hemmings engages in an energetic threesome with two gormless but available teenagers played by Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills, from which he departs without so much as a backward glance.
Three years earlier there wasn't much indication that Annette Whiteley as Linda even derived much pleasure from her relationship with Kinky (yes, that's his name!), rather than as an excuse to lord it over the other girls in her biology class. It seems to come as a complete surprise to her when she gets pregnant, although it enables the film's makers to thereafter largely ignore the revolutionary possibility that sex is something a teenaged girl might actually do for pleasure (as their teacher does, we learn) rather than purely status, but instead drags us into the grimmer terrain of unwanted pregnancy and abortion. Times sadly haven't changed much, since Linda's irate father refuses to countenance an abortion not because of a professed concern for her unborn child but rather a desire to see her brought to heel by the humiliation of pregnancy followed by the burden of raising a 'bastard' - his word, much of the sex talk in the film being similarly crudely technical.
We are not told the eventual fate of Linda, but ironically the recent death of her near contemporary Christine Keeler - whose notorious activities came to light at almost exactly the same time as the release of this film - has led to some commentators observing that when Keeler arrived in London not long before Linda (with an abortion already behind her) she was still just a child; and this film alludes to a worldlier clique of sensualists among the more affluent better able that Linda to take care of themselves, whose activities were soon to become public knowledge when splashed across the front pages.
Ironically, in some quarters the fact that the original girls wore gollywogs off jam jars and that Lady Gregg smokes continuously throughout the governors' meeting might today be deemed less acceptable than its sexual content. Would it now be possible to issue 'The Yellow Teddybears' on DVD if the title included the word "gollywogs"?
Three years earlier there wasn't much indication that Annette Whiteley as Linda even derived much pleasure from her relationship with Kinky (yes, that's his name!), rather than as an excuse to lord it over the other girls in her biology class. It seems to come as a complete surprise to her when she gets pregnant, although it enables the film's makers to thereafter largely ignore the revolutionary possibility that sex is something a teenaged girl might actually do for pleasure (as their teacher does, we learn) rather than purely status, but instead drags us into the grimmer terrain of unwanted pregnancy and abortion. Times sadly haven't changed much, since Linda's irate father refuses to countenance an abortion not because of a professed concern for her unborn child but rather a desire to see her brought to heel by the humiliation of pregnancy followed by the burden of raising a 'bastard' - his word, much of the sex talk in the film being similarly crudely technical.
We are not told the eventual fate of Linda, but ironically the recent death of her near contemporary Christine Keeler - whose notorious activities came to light at almost exactly the same time as the release of this film - has led to some commentators observing that when Keeler arrived in London not long before Linda (with an abortion already behind her) she was still just a child; and this film alludes to a worldlier clique of sensualists among the more affluent better able that Linda to take care of themselves, whose activities were soon to become public knowledge when splashed across the front pages.
Ironically, in some quarters the fact that the original girls wore gollywogs off jam jars and that Lady Gregg smokes continuously throughout the governors' meeting might today be deemed less acceptable than its sexual content. Would it now be possible to issue 'The Yellow Teddybears' on DVD if the title included the word "gollywogs"?
a good portrait of it's time
oliverbellringer18 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Due to the fact that I live in the same town where the swimming pool scenes where shot I decided to watch this having read about it in several local histories, due to it's controversial subject matter the film was given an X rating which resulted in many of the local extras (some no older then the main characters ) being unable to see it until the local council helpfully acquired a video copy in the mid 1990s. Although the film itself is somewhat dated in terms of it's moral ethics it is never the less a great period piece and shows just how much things have changed in only 60 years!, it is also very good at creating hateable villains and this is especially true of victor brook's straight-laced "George Donohue" ( I actually spent the whole film wondering what his comeuppance would be for disowning his daughter and being downright horrible!).the writing is typical of the period but unlike many other "kitchen sink" dramas it still seems to have held up well despite the fact that the girls sound too posh to be from a new town grammar school!.
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