Teen film history
Tuesday 4 November 2008
Young Film Critic Awards
Every year as part of the celebrations for National Schools Week, the film industry hosts the Young Film Critic Awards. This year over 405,000 school children took part in 2,000 free school screenings and events taking place in more all around the UK throughout the week.
We were at this year's Young Film Critic Awards. Take a look at some of the teens who won.
Teen film history
High School Musical might be a huge hit today, but did you know teen films have rocked the entertainment world since the 50s?
Teen rebels
One of the first teen films ever was the 1955 classic ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ which tells the story of a rebellious teenager played by James Dean. He comes to a new town, hangs out with girls, doesn’t do what his parents tell him and stands up to bullies at school – what a hero!
It was the first time that films had ever portrayed young people in this way, and also the first time that society even admitted that young adults - i.e. ‘teenagers’, existed! For this reason it has been seen as a really culturally important film.
Beach party
The teen genre became more popular in the 1960s with ‘beach party’ flicks. Most films starred the same actors and actresses and the story lines were kept simple – usually revolving around couples trying to make the other jealous – sound familiar?
The story normally followed teens into their everyday lives, sometimes with characters breaking in to song.
Films get musical
The 1970s saw one of the most famous musical films ever made –‘Grease’. Grease is all about two teenagers, a good student and a wild child, who had a summer romance. It's only after the summer is over that they find out they are at the same high school. Music, dancing, clothes, slumber parties and of course a happy ending - this film has it all!
In the 1980s ‘Dirty Dancing’, about a young naive rich girl, called Baby who meets dancer Johnny, instantly became another classic of the genre!
The teen dance movies still continue to make waves. Apart from dance, the other thing which these films have in common is the ‘success against all odds ’ story like recent teen dance film, 'Save the Last Dance' starring Julia Stiles.
Hanging out
More teen films were made in the 1980s than any other decade mainly due to the fact that teenagers were becoming more streetwise. Hangouts were no longer in the school canteens, but shopping centres and arcades and this resulted in lots of films showing teenagers spending cash and causing havoc.
Check out ‘Sixteen Candles’, ‘Back to the Future’ and perhaps the best 80s teen film of all time – ‘The Breakfast Club’.
Scary movies
The slasher films are a sub genre of horror. The craze started in the late 1970s with ‘Halloween’ – about an escaped psychiatric patient called Michael Myers hell bent on murdering the local teenagers at an Illinois secondary school.
The most well known slasher films however, are probably the Scream films – a series which started in the 1990s. Scream played with the normal conventions of what a slasher flick has to have – teens, romance, betrayal and of course, a crazed man in a mask.
More recent slasher films include ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and ‘FeardotCom’.
