Anarchy in the UK

This chapter will contextualise the film within the time of its production and release and consider how its themes and focuses are as much as product of their time as there are of the early 18th Century. This chapter will explore how the film mediates British seventies cultural anxieties around the counterculture and youth movements. It will consider how this cultural zeitgeist has affected the film’s nihilistic tone and ambiguous ending, as well as the depiction of the children and the authority characters in the film. This chapter will include a close analysis of the influence of two specific cases on the film’s development and that had been identified as especially influential by writer Robert Wynne-Simmons: the Tate-LaBianca murders and Mary Bell. The chapter will conclude with a consideration of the film as part of a revival of interests in British folk and vernacular heritage in the sixties and seventies.