Terry on the Fence (1986) User Reviews

Almost the end of the road

[malcolmgsw · 7/10 · 7 January 2023]

The children's film and television Foundation drew £60000 a year from the Eady Levy on box office receipts.

In 1985 the Thatcher government abolished the Eady Levy and this resulted in the end of filmmaking for the Foundation. In any event by this time there were very few Saturday morning children's matinees at which they could be shown.

So this film was one of the last to be made.

Instead of children rounding up a gang of thieves,the children are the gang of thieves,and they end up in a Juvenile Magistrates court presided over by an avuncular Clifford Rose. So it is very different from its predecessors. It is certainly among the best of the films they made and well worth seeing.

CFF came a long way...

[Leofwine_draca · 8/10 · 29 May 2021]

Incredible to see how dark these Children's Film Foundation movies had got by the 1980s. TERRY ON THE FENCE is one of the last in the series and sees our typical runaway lad fall in with a gang led by skinhead Les who are intent on nicking audiovisual equipment from Terry's local school. Child abuse, poverty and slum-like London locations are the order of the day in this grittily realistic production which benefits from good performances from the child cast and a real darkness and oppression hanging over the proceedings. Compare this with 1950s fare such as JOHNNY ON THE RUN and the two films are worlds apart, a logical progression from naive idealism to depressing reality.

"See ya, pigface!"

[richardchatten · 8/10 · 12 November 2023]

As befits a product of the Thatcherite eighties, 'Terry on the Fence' offers a worldlier perspective of life on the streets (which finds expression in the underground argot implied by its title), the language employed by the roughnecks who force our hero to break into his school and steal a couple of radios more raw; while the nearest thing the film provides to a conventional CFF villain is the receiver briefly seen wearing a bright red shirt and two-tone shoes.

The characterisation throughout is far more nuanced than we've previously been accustomed to; the gang's ringleader actually enlisting our sympathy when we see how afraid he is of his brassy abusive mother.