yuletide | Praise! Your! Fandoms! Get others interested!

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Praise! Your! Fandoms! Get others interested!

Hey, everyone! It's Praise Your Fandom time!

Get people into your canon! Tell them what's awesome about it!

Tell them where to find it!

Tell them ALL ABOUT IT!

Please use this format:

Fandom/Canon Name:
What's awesome about it:
Where to find:

Thank you and have a great yuletide!

(ALSO: Please feel free to ask for specific recs too! Like post a thread going 'hey I'm looking for canons with bisexual leads' or something!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fandom/Canon Name: Violent Playground (1958)

What's awesome about it:
Liverpool D.S. Jack Truman (Rank stalwart Stanley Baker) is pulled off an ongoing arson investigation to pitch in at the Juvenile Liaison section. He reluctantly apprehends the 7 year old Murphy twins, Mary and Patrick, and takes them home where he finds their mother has left them, and their father is “away at sea”. Unemployed teenage brother Johnnie (David McCallum), and the eldest sister, nurse Cathie are their only family.

Johnnie leads a motley gang who intimidate young laundry van driver, Alexander into driving them around Liverpool. This makes a perfect cover for Johnnie's firebug kink. Meanwhile, Alexander's sister Primrose desperately wants to help her brother, but she knows the working class community would turn on them if she talked to the cops.

Johnnie finds himself torn between the hero worship from the kids, egged on by his friend Slick, and to find more innocent pursuits, encouraged by Cathie's priest Fr. Laidlow (Peter Cushing), his former teacher 'Heaven' Evans, and Sgt. Truman.

The film almost dives into typical American style juvenile delinquent exploitation flick, including an unintentionally hilarious scene where Johnny and his mates dance ~~menacingly~~ at Truman as a pretty awful rock 'n roll song blares out, but it's saved by some fine performances, unexpected humour, a proto- kitchen sink drama style and a chilling school-room hostage situation.

Where to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7JRZlHBZpg
Run-time: 1hr 41min

Fun fact: Both Tsai Chin and David McCallum are still working at age 84.

Things to note: There's some schoolyard racist epithets directed towards Alexander, character death, and some gun violence at the end.

In the tagset are Alexander, Johnnie Murphy, Primrose, Slick.
Johnny obviously gets the most canon development, but I'd absolutely love to see something that also explores Alexander, Primrose, or Slick's lives.

Pix:
David McCallum as Johnnie Murphy and his wonderful hair.