Review of Scum of the Earth (1963) by Brian S — 09 Mar 2012

Review only of Scum of the Earth:

This would be a completely forgettable bit of misguided early-60s moralizing ephemera if not for one thing; it was directed by the wonderfully infamous Herschell Gordon Lewis. It was written by him, too, shortly before he moved into making his much better known gore-horror flicks, practically inventing that genre (for which all horror fans owe him eternal gratitude). Here, we get just a twinkling of what's to come when Uncle Herschell would hit hi stride with films like Bucket of Blood, The Wizard of Gore, and The Gore-Gore Girls.

"Scum" tells the tale of a sleazy purveyor of mildly pornographic pictures and his lackeys. When they lure in an innocent young girl looking for tuition money, things fall apart quickly (it's only an hour long flick, after all). There's misogyny, baseball-bat wielding violence, and a moralizing speech about the shortcomings of American youth in 1962 ("You young people make me sick!.. Deep down, you're dirty! Hear me? Dirty!") that's become the call sign of Something Weird Video, the outfit that resurrected this strange novelty (we owe them our gratitude, too!).

There's actually a decent story buried in here somewhere, but it's hard to find beneath the terrible acting, clunky direction and incompetent photography (be prepared for a few boom shadows and a near total lack of shot blocking). There are intimations of a moral lecture in here, too, but it's hard to say what it is beyond "don't take money from strangers because we live in a sick world." Still, it's our beloved Uncle Herschell at work here, so we can forgive all of that. Thanks to Something Weird, we have the privilege of seeing Lewis' last exploitation flick, made just months before he became a schlock-horror auteur with Two Thousand Maniacs! That alone makes "Scum," if not a good film, at least a very interesting one from the POV of horror history.