The Lost Boys (1987)
Kidulthood (2006)
The Teen: Sam Peel (Noel Clarke), school bully extraordinaire.
The Badness: Flushing the nerdy-kid’s head down the toilet is all well and good, but beating someone to death with a baseball bat is taking things a bit far. Loves his old mum though, so he can’t be all bad.
Hug A Hoodie: Sign him up to the local softball team. Let’s see if we can’t get all that rage channelled into a ball rather than someone’s skull, eh?
Eden Lake (2008)
The Teen: Brett (Jack O’Connell), foul-mouthed, unhinged poster-boy for “Broken Britain”.
The Badness: The sort of ferret-faced troublemaker you’d expect to see sat at the back of the no. 374 bus, belting out N-Dubz from his Nokia. Brett might just seem like a pain in the arse at first, but one dog-related accident later and he’s turned into a knife-wielding, torture-happy maniac. One of the most believable villains on this list, and consequently the most terrifying.
Hug A Hoodie: He was fine(ish) before his dog bit the dust, so a new mutt will hopefully cheer him up. Although maybe not a Rottweiler this time…
Kill Bill (2004)
The Teen: Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) , mace-wielding, schoolgirl nutjob.
The Badness: A violent psychotic, Gogo’s particular brand of feminism includes tricking a lecherous barfly into thinking he’s on a promise, before gleefully disembowelling him with a samurai sword. Also runs a nice line in trash-talk, asking the corpse whether, “you still wish to penetrate me…or is it I who has penetrated you?” Yikes!
Hug A Hoodie: “Girl Power” needn’t involve severed arteries! A Spice Girls CD will have her belting out ‘empowerment’-based ditties in no time. On second thoughts, maybe we’ll take that disembowelment after all…
Heathers (1989)
The Teen: JD (Christian Slater), rebellious bad-boy with a heart. And a gun.
The Badness: Seems like quite a nice chap at first with his refusal to buy into the popularity contest of high-school, before revealing a disturbing penchant for offing people who’ve upset his girlfriend. Shares every teenage misfit’s fantasy of blowing up the school, with the crucial difference being that he actually plans to do it. He’s a bit of a maverick you see.
Hug A Hoodie: Sort him out a transfer to a British school. There’s something about jocks and cheerleaders that seems to rub him up the wrong way…
Brick (2005)
The Teen: “The Pin” (Lukas Haas), a shadowy teen drug-lord, operating out of his mum’s basement.
The Badness: The Pin doesn’t bother with school any more, preferring to devote all his time to his blossoming heroin dealership. He doesn’t like to get his hands dirty either, but has a psychotic jock on hand for when he needs to administer a beating. Handy!
Hug A Hoodie: He's a big fan of books, so maybe we'll take him to the library for the afternoon. We'll just have to make sure we keep him away from the Machiavelli section.
Thirteen (2003)
The Teen: Tracy Freeland (Evan Rachel Wood), honour student turned jailbait hell-raiser.
The Badness: The dictionary definition of “easily led”, goody-two-shoes Tracy falls in with the wrong crowd at school and is soon swapping straight A’s for sex, drugs and petty crime. The low-point? Inhaling a gas canister and getting her mate to repeatedly punch her in the face. Did we mention she’s only thirteen? Call the Daily Mail!
Hug A Hoodie: She’s basically still a kid, so get her a Barbie or something. Mind she doesn’t try to smoke it though…
Alpha Dog (2006)
The Teen: Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch), fun-loving frat-boy and heir to his father’s dope business.
The Badness: Where do you want to start? Drug peddling, assault, kidnap, murder…and his house parties go on until all hours. Johnny might be an all round bad-egg, but give him his due, becoming the youngest person on the FBI’s Most Wanted list at just 19 years of age is no mean feat.
Hug A Hoodie: Get him down the Deed Poll office and re-name him Peter Blandbore. “Johnny Truelove” is just asking for trouble.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The Teen: Alex (Malcolm McDowell), a hedonistic schoolboy with rather extreme tastes.
The Badness: Love of classical music? Check. Nicely turned out? Check. Always drinks his milk? Check. On the face of it, Alex sounds like a very pleasant young man.
And if he could only cut out all the rape and murder, he probably would be. Instead, he’s the ultimate teenage terror, with any sense of morality coming a very distant second to just doing what he feels like. And what he usually feels like is, “a bit of the old ultra-violence”…
Hug A Hoodie: Send him to piano lessons. Just make sure there’s no Beethoven on the agenda…
Carrie (1976)
The Teen: Mousey loner Carrie White (Sissy Spacek), a high-school outsider with ‘parent issues’.
The Badness: Shy and retiring as a rule, it only takes a bit of teasing (and the odd bucket of pig’s blood) to get Carrie in the mother of all strops. Most teenage girls pull hair or shout names when they’re angry. Carrie kills people using telekinesis. Probably best avoided at a certain time of the month…
Hug a Hoodie: Buy her a nice frock and take her to the Prom. Oh no, wait, already tried that…
