Some movies and TV shows where boys get spanked

This is a list of movies and TV shows that have scenes where boys get spanked. Most of this was recently posted on the forum - Perspectives on Boys' Spankings 2  - https://www.voy.com/249907 - this post is just to organise and collect the information. More updates on this later.

Fanny and Alexander is an Oscar-winning 1982 movie from Sweden. 10-year-old Alexander gets a pants-down spanking with a large carpet-beater from his strict stepfather (who happens to be a bishop), apparently for telling lies and making up stories.

The actor playing the stepfather is very scary.

 it's here on YouTube (skip forward to 22 minutes 54 seconds and be sure to turn on subtitles)

A promotional video for a theatrical version contains an intense re-imagining of the same scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hevs4JL8Zec&t=110s

the 1993 Swedish movie Kådisbellan - which in English means "The Catapult" and in American means "The Slingshot". Directed by Åke Sandgren.

There is more info about the movie on IMDB including a slightly controversial trailer video.

A medium quality version of the entire movie is currently available on YouTube, but without English subtitles. For a better quality version that presumably has English subtitles, it's available on Amazon Prime for a few dollars.

The spanking scene involves two authority figures, a teacher telling the kid why he's in trouble, and the cantor or choirmaster who actually gives the punishment. The apparently kindly expressions seen in the forum pic are misleading, they are teasing the kid before his punishment and apparently also criticising his parents. Maybe because it's in Swedish, the lecture or discussion sounds really similar to the mean stepdad in Fanny and Alexander.

It's made very clear that the spanking is bare bottom, but despite very good acting from the kid actor, it's not one of the most intense or detailed depictions of spankings in movies. (The camera angles avoid showing the actual swats.) The paddle used seems very impractical as it's rectangular and long but very thin and without a proper handle.

WARNING the part of the movie immediately after the spanking and the kid's return home, shows super dramatic injuries on his bare bottom (not really clear how that type of spanking could cause those type of injuries). Skip forward to 1 hour 38 min 33 sec in the YouTube video to see the spanking scene. Strangely, when shown in some cinemas in Scandinavia, the scene with the dramatic injuries is shown, but the actual spanking itself is not shown.

It seems likely that there are other spanking scenes in the movie. If you have time to watch the whole thing, please let us know whether this is correct! Similar to Fanny and Alexander and many other "coming of age" movies, the movie has scenes of the kid character being happy, but also an overwhelming theme of how tough life is for him.

The kid actor Jesper Salén went on to have roles in several other Swedish TV shows and movies, and is now a doctor.

The movie is based on the childhood of Swedish author Roland Schütt, born in 1913.

Dan Hajek, in Did Michael Knight End the Cold War? (2009), directed by Stepan Altrichter. 20 minutes, Vimeo (login required). The version on youtube lacks English subtitles. Apparently this is what Connor looked like a couple of years ago!

Blue t-shirt kid is Zander Grable, in The Spanking (2017), written and directed by Carlos Uribe. 3 minutes, YouTube. I prefer this short film without the ending. For some reason it's evilly funny that the kid gets a belting for something he didn't do, and his sister gets to watch. Maybe it's just me that sees it that way.

With a WARNING for violent, unpleasant vicious behaviour by the teacher, Line of Fire is a 2001 black and white short film written and directed by Gregg Watt. Produced in the USA but inspired by his school years in South Africa late last century. 17 minutes, Vimeo (login required). Watch carefully for the uplifting moment of the small smile at the end.

Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood (2022) is an animated movie available on Netflix and has a whole bunch of very amusing/interesting elementary or middle school age paddlings (and similar) in the first half.

P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang (1982) and Spud (2010) both have school caning scenes of 13 or 14 year olds. Both scenes are designed to be realistic based on the real childhoods of the people who wrote the scenes. But also both of them are then mixed up with humorous elements just cos they're that sort of movie.

Mutiny (2001) is the episode of the BBC Hornblower series (set in the late 1700s to early 1800s) that includes a 15 year old midshipman being caned. It's a bit random because the caning isn't hard enough to make him cry or yelp at all, but it is hard enough that he's unconscious after 6 whacks. So that's odd.

Another Country (1984) includes a severe formal caning of a 17 or 18 year old boy by other schoolboys. It's not exactly a fun film tho (warning adult themes lol) and the actor playing the kid is aged about 25.

Housemaster (1938) has a caning very closely based on how the original script writer had been caned, and gave canings, at school. With specific instructions in the script about the positioning for the caning. But cos the movie is a comedy and that old, I don't think it would ever really be worth watching the whole thing.

There are similar really old black and white comedy movies like A Yank at Eton that also have caning scenes, probably less realistic tho. And unwatchable as a whole movie unless you're really bored.

Some movie versions of Tom Brown's School Days have proper canings in them, some don't. I think some movies or TV shows based on Charles Dickens books have some spankings in them too.

Melody (1971) has a scene where a 12 year old and a slightly older boy are slippered. The younger actor, Mark Lester, was already famous for having played Oliver Twist at the age of eight. (According to Wikipedia, he was playing football in the park when Phil Collins' mother, a talent agent, recruited him for his first acting role.) Apparently this movie ends with "a final showdown between children and teachers"!

Barry Lyndon (1975) has several formal, clothed canings of a boy aged between 8 and 15. Including a "you and I are going to discuss this in the next room young man" moment. Also some other related scenes. Various clips can be seen on YouTube, but you have to search really hard to work out what's actually in the movie. Also some of the YouTube clips are worse quality than usual. Jerry has a lot of respect for the cinematography of this movie (maybe not the acting or plot), so I suggest buying or renting it at decent quality and watching it properly :)

Various movie or TV versions of various Tom Sawyer stories show Tom getting "a whipping" (they mean some kind of caning or whacks with the hickory stick). My favourite is a random German version. Apparently allegedly, Germans are obsessed with Tom Sawyer and they think that the original stories about him were actually German! (huh?) Anyway I'm not sure if it's legit or not but this might be the German version I'm thinking of YouTube, 95 minutes, weird format. From what I can remember, in this version he gets some big slaps as well as at least one big school caning in front of the class.

 Joe the King which has a bare bottom spanking scene in it.

It is a very unpleasant scene, you will hate the woman teacher forever. Or, you should!

If you really want to watch, it's on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZziZRbaCPc (scary)

Based on the director or writer's true real life experiences.

Bylo nás pet translates as something like "There was five of us", and was a Czechoslavakian, or maybe Czech, six-episode TV mini-series first broadcast in around 1994. It is set in the 1930s, and is based on an autobiographical novel by Karel Poláček.

According to imdb "Young Petr and his four friends undergo several adventures throughout this series - setting a field on fire, sneaking into a theater without paying and many more."

Sometime towards the end of episode one, Petr gets a substantial walloping with a very large wooden spoon. It's something to do with either schoolwork or a violin, but without subtitles I can't really work it out. On YouTube - skip forward to about 50 minutes 55 seconds

The actor playing Petr Bajza is Adam Novák born in 1980 so was probably about 13 when this was filmed. Seems like he had a substantial acting career afterward too.

I think some of his acting in this is really good, but the TV series is designed to be comedic, or at least it's intended for younger kids. So a lot of the scenes are over-acted, like the one right before this one where another kid gets grabbed and swatted multiple times by a schoolteacher or something.

Also intended as a comedy but this time for adults, Chickens was a six-episode British TV series first broadcast in 2013. It's set in 1917 and is "about three men who don’t go off to fight in the First World War and consequently become social outcasts in their village".

In one scene one of these three men, working as a schoolteacher, is pressured by the women of the village into giving a caning to one of the boys that he's in charge of. The joke is that the teacher doesn't want to give a caning, but once he starts, he gets carried away and gives a huge much bigger caning than even the vindictive women were expecting.

This is one of my favourite caning scenes on TV even tho many parts of it are unrealistic. I think the position the boy is put in for the caning is interesting too.

The kid actor is Rudi Goodman, a standard HD version of part of the scene can be seen in a promotional showreel for his acting on YouTube (skip forward to 2 minutes 26 seconds). (the same video showreel is also on his agent's website which is useful because some of these YouTube videos aren't available in all countries)

For me the teacher's attempt to fine him "decency points" instead of giving a caning is also really funny. And asking him "how do you feel now" in a very 21st-century way and the boy replies "awful, I've let myself down".

Some of the costumes and buildings and interiors are probably accurate for England in 1917. Other parts like the decency points and the committee of women assembled to watch a caning surely must be inaccurate. As far as I know, Chickens isn't based on any specific real person's childhood or recollections (unlike Bylo nás pet and lots of other shows and movies we mention here).

The full context around this caning incident, in slightly lower quality video, is probably somewhere in this YouTube playlist containing all six episodes.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) is a controversial 18-rated movie about a killer disguised as Santa Claus.

There is a clip on YouTube of an early part of the movie, titled "Silent Night Deadly Night: Part 3" which includes in the first 90 seconds, a mean nun giving a belt spanking to a kid aged about ten (over his jeans). Seems quite realistic. Do not watch after 1 minute 30 seconds because the plot then turns to the actual "horror" parts of the movie. Parental guidance recommended!

Shorter clip, higher quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe_8-qMqFPI

If you prefer to avoid the YouTube clip, there is an animated pic version of just the belting part of the scene available at this link (but you miss out on the sound)

Kraj Rata ("The End of the War") is a 1984 Yugoslav movie set in the 1930s or 1940s. The entire movie is on YouTube (apparently without subtitles) and shortly after 30 minutes in, there is a scene where a 10 year old boy gets several very hard bare bottom whacks with a leather belt from his Dad. WARNING violence, nudity. Recommended by Kim as being very realistic :)

Young Winston is a 1972 TV movie or TV show about the early years of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In scenes similar to those described by Roald Dahl, Winston is first told off and threatened, at age 7, for not understanding Latin. There is later a scene where slightly older boys are lectured and threatened, and then caned, for being naughty. The scene is very intense altho not everything is shown.

Soon after this scene, young Winston is shown back at home and his mother is shown the weals on his buttocks and asked if she wants to withdraw him from the school. This scene is available on YouTube (rated 18+) but the other caning scenes currently are not available.

The Yellow Balloon is a 1953 black-and-white movie, set in post-war London. A 12-year-old gets in trouble and is manipulated by a criminal. He steals money from his mother and his Dad spanks him with his belt.

The scene of his Dad confronting him is quite well acted. The movie doesn't actually show the spanking but we do hear it, although there's no yelping. The movie also shows the Dad taking his belt off (and the Mum uncertain whether to stop him) and also shows the boy still in position over the table as the spanking ends. He didn't have to take down his shorts.

The boy tells the criminal about his spanking just by saying "I got a walloping". When the criminal asks if it hurt, he answers "not much" and claims that he didn't cry.

I think there's also another separate mention of spanking earlier in the movie. Probably movie audiences in the early 1950s thought it was fairly normal that 12-year-olds got spankings.

This movie has been shown on the UK's Channel 4 TV network on "Film4", and also "Talking Pictures TV" has shown it as well. It might sometimes be available on the on-demand websites of one of those two organisations.

The BBFC rates the movie as PG for "mild threat and violence".

When the movie was originally released, the BBFC went crazy and rated it X (strictly adults only). The actor playing the kid, who had turned 13 during filming, was upset because he wasn't even allowed to see the movie he was the lead actor for. After complaints from movie theatres, the BBFC agreed to re-rate it as "A" (about equivalent of PG at the time).

Another interesting censorship aspect of the movie is the avoidance of making clear the profession of the character "Mary". She's a good-looking lady who tries to help the boy. She's always elegantly dressed and lives alone in a luxury apartment, but seems to be very well known to the local police. The female screenwriter had wanted the movie to make clear what "Mary" did for a living, but this was not allowed.

This movie is even more dry and melodramatic (yes, both at the same time) than Tales of the Unexpected. But it does have a happy ending. A kindly train driver contacts the police saying "I think there's a kid in trouble" and within seconds, literally dozens of police officers rush to the rescue with sirens blaring!

Apparently the moral of the story is that kids' problems would mostly be easily solved if they just spoke up about them, but that mostly they don't.

This is the kid and his Dad. The money was stolen from the dark-coloured teapot, top left:

Happy ending - not sure how many 12-year-olds would like being carried around like this:

There is (WARNING: shows kid actor pretending to be dead, quite realistically) a clip of the movie on YouTube (1 minute long). The balloon itself is seen in this clip!

The kid actor, Andrew Ray, had a long acting career. His first ever role was starring opposite Alec Guinness when he was only ten years old. Coincidentally, as an adult actor he was in six episodes of Tales of the Unexpected. Also in a version of Great Expectations.

The actress playing the role of the kid's mother, according to Wikipedia: 'appeared in the English-made Christopher Columbus (1949), but censors removed her from the version shown in the United States. Her role involved "a romantic interlude in Columbus's life," she said, "and that did not meet with approval in America because of prevailing traditions" about Columbus.'

Even the 8-year-old actor credited as "Boy Singing at Sunday School" later went on to have a successful acting career of more than fifty years.

The movie's director, who had been a gunner on a Royal Air Force bomber during World War Two, later directed The Guns of Navarone as well as one of the movie versions of Huckleberry Finn.

Roald Dahl was a World War Two fighter pilot ace and popular children's author, who wrote several different fiction and non-fiction descriptions of spankings, especially school canings.

Galloping Foxley is a short story by Dahl set early last century, in which a 13-year-old boy at a British boarding school is given severe canings almost daily by a 17-year-old prefect.

Later last century the short story was adapted into an episode of the TV show Tales of the Unexpected, by Norwich-based Anglia Television. Anglia Television was eventually taken over by ITV plc, who therefore own the copyright to the episode and have blocked it on YouTube in some regions.

The TV channel Sky Arts don't seem to agree, so they showed episodes of Tales of the Unexpected regularly during 2023. Sky Arts channel is free-to-view on Freeview in the UK. It also seems to be available on Now TV in some other countries. The episode is less than 25 minutes long. It might also be possible to watch this episode of Tales of the Unexpected (it's either Series 2 Episode 2, or Series 2 Episode 3) on ITV's online streaming service "ITVX", or Freeview on-demand.

ITV's own upload of one of the caning scenes (two minutes) seems not to be blocked on YouTube.

Dahl's accounts of his time at Repton School from 1929 describe often being caned by a prefect in similar situations to this, for minor things like preparing slightly overdone toast. A caning while only wearing pyjamas would be extremely painful, and would usually break the skin. Dahl describes the experience in books including Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984), and Lucky Break (1977)

Not a spanking, but an amusing video that results in a sore bottom. Interesting because of some of the reactions from both parent and kid that are similar to when a spanking happens. (Some teasing, some reluctance, some amusement, some squirming, and so on.)

WARNING: there are some rude gestures in the video.

WARNING: there might be some rude words in Spanish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgjjN4Wy-64

Translation thanks to Diego:

"they say some things that maybe the other kids here will also think are funny. 1: More or less in the 0min and 45sec the dad says kidding that he can give him a spank (but with a word that could be like a bad word) so his bottom numbs and that way it will not hurt. Lol. 2: More or less in the 1min and 1sec the kid says that he doesn’t want that anyone sees his buttock (= nalga) but then they ask him who and he says his mom. Hehe.

Yep they are nice with the kid but also they make jokes about his fear to the injection. They say some things like the kid being brave like a warrior lol but they also say funny things like that the Pope is praying for what the kid is suffering in that moment lol. Yeah that sound in the background is the Pope maybe on the tv or the radio. They don’t say what medicine is in that injection but they say something about a teacher who said yes to put the kid an injection."

The medicine seems to be an antibiotic that the kid needs for some infection. Another amusing thing is that this antibiotic is also available as a pill or capsule (for taking by mouth) so they could have just used that version and not had to inject it in his bottom! But maybe they didn't tell him that.

The 2014 anti-war movie Private Peaceful includes a short scene of a school caning, set in 1908, near the start. The boy being caned seems to be about eleven years old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TwFpIBMmtU&t=280s

Little House on the Praire, S2 Ep19, badly dubbed into French: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdxIuwS1OG4

A belt spanking in another episode of the same show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qlfWuU65YM&t=50s

German Time (2019) spanking scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKeXGniQk3I

Harsh spanking scene in Afrikaans-language movie Roepman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaeOI9fpy1g&t=184s

Belt spanking in The True Story of Spit McPhee  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meBZTyvgDxM&t=150s

Boys Swallows Universe is a Netflix series based on a book set in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1983. The series first aired 11th January 2024. The book is in turn based on the experiences of its author Trent Dalton. At around 19 minutes into episode 1, the 13-year-old main character Eli is grabbed by the ear by a teacher and then given a caning while bent over a desk (seems to be about seven hard whacks). He has to take his shorts down but it's not clear whether his underwear comes down too.

Spring Mobile produced an amusing ad entitled Dunce to remind people to turn off their mobile devices during cinema presentations. A comically large paddle is used in an exaggerated fashion, but the kid actor manages to make his reactions look realistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORhIOjtJHoI

This list will hopefully be updated when possible.