Ken Loach made the BBC television play Up the Junction as an experimental slice of life drama based in South London.

The controversial play was later turned into a feature film, this time directed by Peter Collinson who struggles with the material.

Polly (Suzy Kendall) is a rich girl from Chelsea who has come to Battersea to slum it.

She gets a poky flat and a job in the factory. Polly befriends sisters Rube and Sylvie. She later gets a boyfriend Pete Dennis Waterman.) All suspect that she is a heiress.

Over time Polly sees violence, young people looking for sex at the weekend, dangerous racing and an illegal abortion. The reality of working class London.

The film has a grimness about it but it lacks a compelling story. Collinson has pervaded the film with songs from Manfred Mann.

Some of the events are predictable such as the abortion scenes. Pete turning up with a fast car that we later learn was stolen.

The character of Polly is too passive. She rails against her privileged upbringing but I wanted to know more about why she was happy to work in a factory for a pittance.

With having enjoyed watching Dennis Watermen in the TV shows Minder and New Tricks,i was very much looking forward to this film that my dad had picked up on DVD.I feel that this is a very enjoyable British Kitchen-Sink drama. The plot:

A very wealthy girl called Polly,feels the she has had enough of living a very well off life in Chelsea,so she decides to move to a working class section of London called Battersea.When she arrives there,she does everything she can to move on from her old life by trying to fit in with all of the working class people around her.One of the things Polly does is go to work in a very run-down chocolate boxing factory.where she ends up making lots of new friends at the factory,and she even gets herself a boyfriend!,sadly Pollys life starts to get disturbing when her best friend tells her the she needs help with having an abortion,and with Polly supporting her friend,Pollys boyfriend gets angered by this,and also due to her pretending to be very poor to "fit in" with everyone around her,even though she and her family are very rich. View on the film:

One of the main things the makes the film different is that the screenplay by Roger Smith,starts off by having the first half of the film be very pleasant for the characters,and by also having the male characters in the film not all be dumb,violent thugs.Sadly the second half of the film falls into some of the kitchen drama clichés,that makes the lightness of the first half change very suddenly and (even thought the cast give very strong performances for the whole film)it just seems that the abortion plot line got shoe-horned into the film,to ruin the fun character piece and the light overtone look at upper and working class people living with each other. Final view on the film:

A very over looked kitchen sink British drama with good performances,that is let down by a very sudden dark change in plot.

UP THE JUNCTION is a somewhat slow and stodgy addition to the 'kitchen sink' genre of working class dramas popular throughout the 1960s. I found it one of the lesser productions compared to movies like POOR COW or KES or indeed the influex that came in the early '60s. Suzy Kendall plays a rich girl playing at being working class, finding work on the production line and getting involved in the lives and loves of those around her. There's no faulting Peter Collinson's direction or the cast, which includes the familiar likes of Dennis Waterman and Liz Fraser, but the long-winded script feels pedestrian at times and this doesn't really have much new to say about anything.