AGFA (American Genre Film Archive) will be joining forces with Shout! Factory on June 29 for the Blu-ray release of director Sidney J. Furie’s 1964 (1965 domestic) mixed-genre, and yet decidedly “Kitchen Sink,” film release of The Leather Boys.
This new film restoration is from the original 35mm camera negative.
At its core, The Leather Boys is a British post-war “Kitchen Sink” melodrama about disaffected lower-class English youth … gritty, realistic, depressing. But it also is a motorcycle flick, popular during the period, especially in the United States beginning with Marlon Brando in The Wild One and during the years that followed with such gems as The Wild Angels, The Born Losers, She-Devils on Wheels, Easy Rider … easily a whole genre onto its on.
The Leather Boys is also one of the early gay-themed films.
Regardless of where you peg it, The Leather Boys, is a well-acted film, with Rita Tushingham — fresh from her debut performance in Tony Richardson’s A Taste of Honey — shinning as the miserable, self-centered, manipulative “Dot,” who makes Reggie’s (Colin Campbell — Saturday Night Out) life absolutely miserable.
As to bonus features, there is commentary with director Sidney J. Furie and biographer Daniel Kremer (“Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films”), video sessions with both Rita Tushingham and Dudley Sutton (as Pete) and the 1967 short film titled Consenting Adults: A Study of Homosexuality.
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