Caned Actors on Strike

Rants, Raves and Reviews — By Adele on 6 July, 2006 9:06 pm

“Kes” is an old film about how it sucks to grow up a working class kid in Northern England (unless you have a cool kestrel for a pet). It is also famous for containing a rather wonderful caning scene: the Headmaster lines up several boys and swishes each on the hand. It’s all very quick, rough, and not at all elaborate in the way that a proper spanking movie would film the same event, but spanking scenes in mainstream films are always sharply appealing to me. Even when they are shot without any attempt to be realistic in the technical details, their purpose in the film makes them credible; they are there to serve the plot rather than tantalise, and so they tantalise me more. My friend Brenna owns the tape; together we have watched this episode over and over until we could repeat the lecture word by word, and the boys’ reactions gasp by pained gasp.

There is a wonderful story connected with filming the caning scene, of the boys going on strike when they had to do too many caning takes. The now grown-up lead actor relates it in this BBC interview:

We were told that we wouldn’t get the cane and they’d shoot it from behind us. We wore thick leather gloves and when we got the cane, we were so upset that we decided that we weren’t going to do it again. But, unfortunately, they needed different angles and Ken and Tony went away and discussed the matter and came back and said we’ll raise your wages by 50p a caning. So we made £4.50 extra that day!

After watching the episode for the 105th time, Brenna noticed that one of the boys rubs his palm as he walks into the office, *before* the caning. The above story certainly explains it.

(I’m reliably informed that certain spanking producers also use the pay-per-stroke technique when their actors are beginning to flag. Not surprisingly, 50p doesn’t cut it in the adult industry, though.)