Too much, too young

In 1995, audiences, critics and politicians were horrified by 'Kids', a dramatisation of wayward Manhattan youth. Thirty years on, writes Adam White, it retains its power to shock

- Adam White

“This is disgusting material that panders to paedophile fantasies,” went one prominent Liberal Democrat MP in 1996, amid the UK release of Kids, an artful bit of pubescent scuzz that had already horrified its fans and its detractors on the other side of the Atlantic one year earlier. Britain loves an opportunity for performative outrage - even more so back then. This was the same year, it's worth noting, that the Daily Mail reacted to the release of David Cronenberg's kinky thriller Crash with trademark composure: “Ban This Car Crash Sex Film”, its front page blared. But the Kids controversy isn't one we can look back on now, heads in collective hands, mortified that we took it all quite so seriously. For Kids was, is and (hopefully, at least) always will be a pungent provocation; a grimly nihilistic portrait of wayward youth that revels in its own eagerness to disgust. On this occasion, the Lib Dems may have had a point.

The brainchild of director Larry Clark - king of lecherous photo books with titles such as Teenage Lust - and a 19-year-old screenwriter wunderkind cum professional upset merchant named Harmony Korine, Kids strived to present the “truth” of young urban life in the Nineties. It's an unvarnished, often deeply disturbing tale of feral, lascivious and perma-stoned teens (and barely-teens), whose lives are a seemingly endless parade of rape, sickness and chaos.

“Virgins, I love 'em,” goes 16-year-old Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) early into Kids