The Leather Boys

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                                             THE LEATHER BOYS

Dot (Rita Tushingham) is a girl who marries motorcycle rider Reggie (Colin Campbell) to escape her parents' influence. The marriage gets off to a rocky start and completely slides downhill after the honeymoon is plagued by bad weather. Dot refuses to have anything to do with household responsibilities and cooks only canned beans. Reggie loses interest in sex with Dot because of her actions, and after moving in with his grandmother, he begins to hang around Pete. The two friends ride their motorcycles and begin to spend even more time together, and eventually Reggie realizes that Pete is a homosexual. Dot tells Reggie she is pregnant in an attempt to get him back -- with no result, but when Reggie comes home to find his wife in bed with another man, he decides to go off to sea with Pete. Pete leaves Reggie shaken and alone when he goes off with a group of sailors out to satisfy their same-sex lust. The film was controversial at the time of it's initial release.
Sidney J. Furie, the Canadian-born director who subsequently did himself ample justice with the "The Ipcress File," has kept "The Leather Boys" moving at a brisk pace. But, more importantly, he and his cast, who are not constantly effective with a relatively thin theme, have managed to elicit honesty and genuine tenderness and humor from their simple drama.
"The Leather Boys" are not Hollywood's "Wild Ones" but London's Cockneys who find fun and surcease in their cycles, Colin Campbell, a handsome, youthful newcomer, also finds romance, sex and love with Miss Tushingham, as a 16-year-old schoolgirl and one of the cyclists' darlings. For him, the gay laughter suddenly stops on their honeymoon when he discovers that his bride is more concerned with her hairdo, the movies and dancing than with the dishes and other drab responsibilties of wedded life. With the inevitable spat and separation, our forlorn hero finds companionship with a wise-cracking, gay blade cyclist.
Their relationship seems to be the carefree epitome of bachelorhood, with trips to the seaside, the sharing of a room, hopeful plans of a visit to America. But, on a cross-country race to Edinburgh, the now chastened wife rekindles the spark of affection despite the presence of her boy friend and her husband's constant, sneering pal. That rapprochement, sadly enough, is never effected. And, her husband, in seeking to leave for America with his comrade, discovers that the friend is a homosexual.
Despite the naturalistic abandon of "The Leather Boys," its basic sadness is apparent in Colin Campbell's loss of wife and friend and in Miss Tushingham's similar ultimate loneliness. Their awesome lack of communication is glaringly obvious. But Mr. Furie and his writer have come up with a more than a fair share of laughs. An incongruous family argument in front of an old folks home is real and raucously funny. Lovemaking that is interrupted by the discovery of potato chips and chocolate in bed, a circumstance that sends the callow husband and wife into gales of laughter, should tickle a viewer's funny bone, too.
Miss Tushingham, who struck an everlasting blow for the plain Jane in her debut in "A Taste of Honey," again is highly unspectacular (even in a blond wig) but as distinctive as she was as "The Girl With Green Eyes." Her mobile features and expressive eyes give depth, intensity and charm to her portrayal of a tough, city-bred type suddenly defeated by events she cannot really comprehend or evaluate.
As her equally lost husband, Mr. Campbell is properly confused, bitter and wounded by feelings he cannot control. Dudley Sutton, as his blond, pug-nosed, joking sidekick, carefully indicates the deviate and his concommitant loneliness. And Betty Marsden, as Miss Tushingham's brassy mother, and Gladys Henson, as Mr. Campbell's granny, add sharply etched cameos to the proceedings.
They are not tackling new problems in "The Leather Boys," but they and the director have given them the sincerity, reality and pathos of truth.

THE LEATHER BOYS, screenplay by Gillian Freeman; based on the novel by Eliot George; directed by Sidney J. Furie; produced by Raymond Stress;                                                                                       

Running time: 108 minutes.
Dot . . . . . Rita Tushingham
Reggie . . . . . Colin Campbell
Pete . . . . . Dudley Sutton
Granny . . . . . Gladys Henson
Reggie's Mother . . . . . Avice Landon
Reggie's Father . . . . . Lockwood West
Dot's Mother . . . . . Berry Marsden
Uncle Arthur . . . . . Martin Mathews
Boy Friend . . . . . Johnny Briggs