Film
Poor Cow
- Director
- Ken Loach
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 102 mins
Ken Loach‘s social realist 1967 debut, adapted from Nell Dunn‘s novel and still described by Time Out, rather snootily, as “relentlessly sordid”. To the strains of the groovy pop sounds of Donovan, it charts the tangled love life of working class teenager Carol White, who cops off with Terence Stamp after her lover John Bindon is sent to the slammer. Unusually for Loach, he worked with ‘name’ actors for this one, except for Bindon who was a gangster associate of the Krays (he also claimed to have shagged Princess Margaret and wound up providing ‘security’ for Led Zeppelin). Although the credits include Malcolm McDowell in what would have been his very first screen role, you’ll look for him in vain as his scenes were cut.
It’s back on screen in the Watershed’s epic Of Grudge and Gumption: British Working Class on Film Sunday brunch season.
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