VICIOUS BREED, THE (1954)

Juvenile delinquent classic filled with brawls, booze and sex. The tough young gangster Myggan ("The Mosquito") escapes from juvenile prison, heading straight for trouble. What follows is a breathless catalogue of bad decisions: a stolen gun from a military depot, a string of burgled summer houses, a crashed car, a shot police officer, and a girlfriend driven to prostitution to keep them both alive. The newspapers call him the "Valla Desperado". The censors called the whole thing "a speculation in cynicism" and tried to ban it outright. They lost—though they did carve out four minutes before letting it through.

First-time director Arne Ragneborn was twenty-nine years old and apparently had no interest in making anything polite. His debut is lean, mean, and genuinely uncomfortable—a juvenile delinquent film that earns its genre credentials without winking at the audience. Ragneborn would go on to make four more features in rapid succession, consistently drawn to desperate youth, alcohol, violence and the jagged edges of the Swedish dream, and consistently locking horns with the censors along the way.

Special Features and Technical Specs:

• NEW RESTORATION OF THE FILM BY THE SWEDISH FILM INSTITUTE
• Swedish Film's Bad Apple No 1 – Interviews with Gun Zacharias (Ragneborn's wife and screenwriter), Bengt Lindström (cinematographer), Inge Ivarson (producer) and Bengt Bengtsson (film professor, author of the book Ungdom i fara/Youth in Peril)
• Youth Culture and Cultural Backlash in the East and West During the 1950s - Video essay by Andrew Nette, editor of Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950s to 1980s
• Halvan, Slampen and Tofsan (1954) Short film by Egil Holmsen
• Image and Poster Gallery
• Trailer
• 20ppage illustrated booklet featuring "A Study in Arne Ragneborn's Censorship Cases", as well as technical credits.
• In Swedish, with English subtitles