Kids at 30: the most controversial movie of the Nineties still has the power to disgust
'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.
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