If there’s one thing the Fifties had anything to do with it was Being Teenage, which was a nifty way of telling all those kids abhorring the fact they were stuck in the 12-20 wasteland that it wasn’t so bad after all. There were all sorts of exclusively boss things about the in-between years, which businessmen soon picked up, because theirs were the pockets being lined by all that postwar teenage affluence. Being executively far-sighted, it stood to their reason that other teenage image makers would sell; hence teen films.

Always following the latest fads and trends, they started off being about rock groups and how they were maligned by parents, about juvenile delinquents, teenage girls and their teenage problems, and all those other neat teen things. Some of them were even good; High School Confidential was brilliant. In the early 60s they became beach movies, changed to hippie films in the mid 60s, somehow sidetracking into bike movies by the end of the decade.