Following Marlon Brando's hit movie The Wild One in 1953, film-makers around the world were having a crack at the troublesome teenager genre. Germany gave us Die Halbstarken (Teenage Wolfpack, 1956) with a young Horst Buccholz, and France gave us Les Tricheurs (Youthful Sinners, 1958) featuring an equally young Jean-Paul Belmondo. Sweden's contribution was Blackjackets aka Raggare! (1959), a term denoting the greaser or hot rod movement in Sweden. Japan came up with an intriguing story called The Cola Game which followed the wild antics of a group of high school students.
In July 1961 I caught up with two of the above films on the same bill at the Scala cinema in Nottingham. The management decided to screen Wolfpack and The Cola Game together, so it was quite interesting to compare the German and Japanese entries. One has to say straight away that the German effort was far superior with Horst Buccholz clearly destined for international stardom, (The Magnificent Seven, Nine Hours to Rama, etc). The Japanese teenagers, on the other hand, performed adequately rather than impressively and did not become too well known outside Japan. None of them were invited to fight Godzilla. The main thing that sticks in the memory is the ingenious Cola Game itself in which the youngsters form a circle and spin a cola bottle. Wherever the bottle points decides which couple must make love in front of the rest of the gang, or alternatively the girl must strip.
Curiously, this is neither a comedy nor a social document, falling more into the category of lurid melodrama. Amid all the rompings the story too often gets bogged down in its treachery and squalor. While the heroine Junko is having an abortion her boyfriend Makoto goes off with another girl, only to become enraged when his ex finds a new love. Just like in the Swedish Blackjackets, this story too finishes with a spectacular death. The bad boy in both films comes to a grisly end, in Makoto's case crashing his boat into the rocks as he tries to ram the other couple.
It's a pity this film is essentially lost and the only people who may comment have not actually seen it for sixty years. After so long there are basically only two reasons to remember it at all: the crazy, amoral Cola game; and the explosive finale.
In July 1961 I caught up with two of the above films on the same bill at the Scala cinema in Nottingham. The management decided to screen Wolfpack and The Cola Game together, so it was quite interesting to compare the German and Japanese entries. One has to say straight away that the German effort was far superior with Horst Buccholz clearly destined for international stardom, (The Magnificent Seven, Nine Hours to Rama, etc). The Japanese teenagers, on the other hand, performed adequately rather than impressively and did not become too well known outside Japan. None of them were invited to fight Godzilla. The main thing that sticks in the memory is the ingenious Cola Game itself in which the youngsters form a circle and spin a cola bottle. Wherever the bottle points decides which couple must make love in front of the rest of the gang, or alternatively the girl must strip.
Curiously, this is neither a comedy nor a social document, falling more into the category of lurid melodrama. Amid all the rompings the story too often gets bogged down in its treachery and squalor. While the heroine Junko is having an abortion her boyfriend Makoto goes off with another girl, only to become enraged when his ex finds a new love. Just like in the Swedish Blackjackets, this story too finishes with a spectacular death. The bad boy in both films comes to a grisly end, in Makoto's case crashing his boat into the rocks as he tries to ram the other couple.
It's a pity this film is essentially lost and the only people who may comment have not actually seen it for sixty years. After so long there are basically only two reasons to remember it at all: the crazy, amoral Cola game; and the explosive finale.