Poor Cow (1967) on Netflix
Eighteen-year-old Joy leaves her family to marry Tom, who abuses her and is jailed again. Alone with their son Johnny, she shares a room with Aunt Emm, then takes up with Dave.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.8/102,315 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
Joy is eighteen and comes from a big London family with an alcoholic mother and a father who chases other women. She leaves home to marry Tom and gives birth to a son, Johnny. Tom treats her badly, physically and mentally, and shows her little warmth; he has already spent four years in prison, and when he is caught attempting a large robbery he is sent back. Joy and Johnny are left to fend for themselves. For a short while she and the boy share a room with Aunt Emm, who is an aging prostitute, before Joy moves in with Dave, a man she knows through Tom's criminal circle, who treats her with tenderness.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Poor Cow (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Terence Stamp said Poor Cow was wholly improvised with no script, so scenes had to be Take One because each actor had a camera on him; before takes, Ken Loach gave Carol White and Stamp completely different directions, which they only discovered once the cameras rolled.
- Ken Loach wanted Bill Murray to play Dave in Poor Cow, but producer Joseph Janni insisted on a star and cast Terence Stamp, who had just made Far from the Madding Crowd for Janni; Stamp took a smaller fee than usual for a share of the profits.
- Ken Loach did not enjoy filming Poor Cow: Joseph Janni brought film-industry people and Loach brought television people, and the two crews worked side by side without mixing, putting the film weeks overschedule; for the last two weeks Carol White was also filming I'll Never Forget What's'isname.
- Donovan's title song for Poor Cow was released in 1968 as the B-side of "Jennifer Juniper" in a different arrangement and with altered lyrics: the single opens "I dwell in the north in the green country", the film version "I dwell in the town in the gray country".
- Clips of Terence Stamp in Poor Cow were reused in Steven Soderbergh's film The Limey (1999) to show the early life of Wilson, the character Stamp plays.
