The eponymous Bronco Bullfrog, a colourful character fresh out of borstal, provides temporary refuge to lovestruck runaways Del and Irene.
The young couple steal out of the city into a bucolic countryside under the disapproving noses of their prejudiced parents, and the police, only to discover there is simply nowhere to go.
Their romantic escape, reminiscent of the French Nouvelle Vague – all high contrast monochrome, motorbikes and handheld camerawork – soon becomes something altogether crueller and more incisive than the tales coming from their Gallic cousins across the water.
Set against the poverty and hardship of an economically crippled post-war Britain, Bronco Bullfrog shows a very different world to the self-consciously over-styled films of the swinging sixties.
Shot around run-down West Ham, it depicts a different universe to the wealthy Carnaby Street of popular sixties myth-making. Platts-Mills recruited and workshopped local youths in this energetic tale of yearning and entrapment as he sought to document a side of British life which rarely got a chance to surface on film.
Closer to Quadrophenia, or perhaps early Mike Leigh, than A Hard Day’s Night this is a proto youth film with real guts. More punk than kitchen sink, it’s a virtually unseen landmark British film.