Youth films were predictable-either a rebellious teenager getting his just deserts or realising his parents’ point of view. Teen films often played for kicks or chose to resolve intergenerational conflict through either reconciliation or through tragic catharsis. The dubious quality of Elvis movies after Jailhouse Rock (1957) directed by Richard Thorpe helps to explain why youth films tended towards the anodyne. Films continued to explore young adulthood in varied interested ways through addressing sexual magnetism in Young and Dangerous (1957) and nihilism and criminality of Beat culture in the Canadian film The Bloody Brood (1959). Both films ended with re-establishing moral order.
