Scum of the Earth (1974)

Masterful Movie

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

In 1956, Peter Graves starred in a swampland drama called BAYOU, which ended up tanking in theaters... that is until 1961 when M.A. Ripps got his hands on it and then re-released it under the new title POOR WHITE TRASH in 1961. What's in a title? A lot it seems, as the new moniker turned what was a bomb into a moneymaking workhorse that played Southern drive-ins for years as a second feature. Nearly two decades later the same marketing technique was applied to S.F. Brownrigg's SCUM OF THE EARTH. While "Scum" is a great title on its own, it was already used for a 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis flick about a nudie photography racket and didn't quite pack 'em in on that name alone. To boost ticket sales for the reissue (and perhaps trick people into either watching it a second time or assuming it was a follow-up to the first), it was given the new title "Poor White Trash Part II." The film also retained that same title when it finally appeared on VHS and is pretty much solely known under the "Trash" title these days.Soon after arriving at her vacation cabin, newlywed Helen Fraser (Norma Moore) finds her husband Paul (Joel Colodner) dead with an axe buried in his chest. Someone has also stolen their car keys so she's forced to flee into the woods. The first person she comes across is slovenly drunk Odis Pickett (Gene Ross), who claims he doesn't know anything about the murder and puts her mind at ease by informing her "I ain't killed nobody... lately." Having no other choice, Helen follows Odis back to his shack to call the police. When she gets there, she meets the rest of the Pickett clan: Odis' very pregnant wife Emmy (Ann Stafford), his hateful / slutty daughter Sarah (Camilla Carr) and his incredibly dumb son Bo (Charlie Dell), who talks kind of like Forrest Gump. Tensions are already high in the family for a variety of reasons and things get even worse when they discover the same psycho who killed Paul is lurking around outside.This has all of the necessary ingredients for a good hillbilly horror flick: grubby rednecks in overalls spouting terrible grammar ("Looky here what I done brung home for supper!"), filthy living conditions, incest, moonshine drunk directly from mason jars, rape, possum for din din and a series of bloody murders including a neck pierced on an iron fence, a strangulation with barbed wire and a gunshot to the eyeball. If the director has one notable strength compared to his contemporaries, it's the ability to get good performances from his actors. He did it with his previous film DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (1973) and he's done it again here with a solid group of performers all well-cast in their roles. But what really puts this a notch above similar efforts is the low key and somewhat eerie backwoods atmosphere (achieved in part to the no budget minimalism and lack of location change) and the attention paid to characters. Quite a tasteless and tactless group we have here!The Odis character is an immensely unlikable brute who guzzles 'shine the entire time and constantly berates his kids and poor knocked-up wife; justifying his eventual rape of Helen by telling his old lady that he "don't want to poke an old blowed-up balloon like you." I would call the daughter character a 5 dollar whore, but instead she's more of a 1 dollar whore who spreads her legs for all the local guys for pocket change so she can buy things like lipstick and glamour magazines. However, she's tight enough with her pa to give it to him for free! The son is a slow-speaking half-wit who talks like Forrest Gump and mostly elicits feelings of annoyance from the entire family. The big surprise is the unknown Stafford as Emmy the wife; a dumb but good-hearted door mat who was traded off to Odis by her own father to relieve a debt and who eventually becomes a bit motherly toward Norma. Stafford provides a perfect counter-balance to the over-the-top antics of the rest of the family and creates a surprisingly warm character.On the down side, there's next to no plot, the music score is a little inappropriate and annoying at times and the surprise twist at the end is pretty ludicrous, but it's all entertaining enough and has a great cheap regional feel to it that Hollywood films frequently try and normally fail to capture.

A couple years ago, I caught this late one night on the Halmark Channel, and boy oh boy, this one just made me feel grimy all over, and by the end, I wasn't quite sure how to feel. Scum Of The Earth AKA Poor White Trash part 2 was directed by a fellow named S. F. Brownrigg. A year of two before this one, S. F. directed what I consider to be one of the all-time Horror greats, Don't look in the basement. I would also like to add that I absolutely do not consider Scum Of The Earth to be in the "great" category, although, if you fancy depressing Hixploitation, then yeah, I guess it's pretty fantastic. I'll give good ol' S.F. one thing, he went for filthy, sleazy, and sickening, and that's exactly what he, and we got. Scum Of The Earth begins with a couple, Paul and Helen honeymooning in the woods (yeah, you're right, that's pretty weird). Out of nowhere, Paul is murdered by an unseen killer. The horrified new widow runs off into the woods, right into the backwards drama of a backwoods family, in the deepest, darkest depths of the Texas sticks. After spending just a few minutes with the Pickett Family, and with the stench of incest in the air, Helen wonders whether of not she's safer out there...Meet Odis Pickett: Abusive, borderline-sadistic old drunk, and family patriarch. Just lookin' for somethin' to rape. Odis considers his "house" a suitable place for Helen to hide from the killer.Meet Sarah Pickett: Sassy, vindictive little VD farm, and Odis's daughter. Sarah hates her family, especially her brother, she hates Helen, too. Sarah will do anything for a dollar.Meet Bo Pickett: Inbred man-child, and Sarah's brother, would believe anything he's told, not much going' on with Bo. Everyone hates him, except Emmy.Meet Emmy Pickett: Odis's pregnant, abused, second wife. The only decent human in the Pickett house hold. Sold to Odis by her father, to cover a debt Emmy's a pretty good sport, if you ask me. Possibly, Helen's only hope for survival.Scum of the earth fails in some areas, like with suspense, and a well thought-out plot-line. On the other hand, this film has a distinct atmosphere, probably found nowhere else, not even in Poor White Trash part 1, whatever the hell that is. If you want to really go for raw, crude, politically incorrect Horror, with no sugar-coating, you might not hate this as much as some. Just a big pile of negative. I can only imagine how humid, and flat-out uncomfortable the shooting location was for this. Brownrigg really must have wanted to make movies. Not the best thing the man ever did, but come to think of it, it probably is second best. Hixploitation for those of us with a dark sense of humor. just think of it as Moonshine Mountain's evil twin. 7/10

The best thing you can say about S.F. Brownrigg and his films is that he had his own unique style and vision. Few directors can actually claim that. But are his movies really good? They work on a Brownrigg level but when you start thinking about them outside his universe, they really don't hold up. I enjoy Brownrigg's quaint "aw shucks with a bloody axe" quality more than the movies themselves. The same can be said about SCUM OF THE EARTH or POOR WHITE TRASH 2. There's actual attempt at direction and acting here, compared to exploitation films made then or even today but the problem is Brownrigg's treatment is better than the material he's working on. The story in SCUM OF THE EARTH is totally implausible: a big city woman is forced to stay with a family of hillbillies after her husband was murdered, with an axe to his chest, by an unknown assailant. The dramatics are not really believable, certainly after Pick rapes the main character. With characters dying like they're in a Friday the 13th film, woman being raped, etc, you expect people to react in a more worried way but they don't. They stay in the house until the killer reveals himself at the end, who just walks in the house just like that. BTW, the killer's identity is lame.What's missing is atmosphere. It acts like a complete exploitation film (gruesome murders, rape, nudity) but in the end feels more like a grubby afterschool special, with its focus on characters than the horror. Some of the murders were effective but because of the cutesy music, the horror elements were totally nullified. I thought the score sucked the life out of this film.I'm glad I watched POOR WHITE TRASH 2 (the version I saw on video). Like I said before, I admire Brownrigg's style more than his films. He has certainly created his own special niche in the world of cinema. The problem with this film is that there's hardly anything memorable about it.

If anyone knows me, they know that I am a huge fan of the low-budget chiller "Don't Look in the Basement!", a highly underrated early 70s classic. My review for that film is one of the few positive reviews for it, read it and you'll see why. I researched extensively the works of director S.F. Brownrigg and especially the work of his amazingly talented cast. I discovered that Brownrigg used many of the same cast members in his other movies, so I jumped at the chance to find this film and several others.While "Scum of the Earth" does not in any way challenge "Basement!" scare-wise, it does feature excellent acting, sleazy atmosphere, and a grat storyline with many surprises. It was originally released in 1974, then re-titled in 1976 as "Poor White Trash II" and made more money than when it was originally released! Such a shame it has been neglected for such a long time because of its title.Camilla Carr, Gene Ross, and Hugh Feagin return from "Basement!" and all are excellent; Feagin is a lot better than his Sgt. Jaffee in the previous film. Carr easily steals the show; she was great as Harryette, the baby-obsessed murderess in "Basement!" and is better here as the white trash daughter of Gene Ross' drunk farmer. Ross was superb as Judge Cameron in "Basement!" and is just as good here. Brownrigg certainly knows how to build atmosphere with his low-budget potboilers. "Basement!" has a claustrophobic atmosphere with an overlying aura of madness; "Scum" has an isolated atmosphere with an overlying aura of filth. The setting is inside Texas backwoods and is just filthy; every scene in the house hints at humidity, sloth, and bad smells.Added to Brownrigg's familiar cast are Norma Moore as the heroine in peril, Ann Stafford as Emmy, Ross' abused wife, and Charlie Dell as Bo, the idiot son of the family. Well, Moore isn't any Rosie Holotik, but does well in her earlier scenes, only to slide into overacting heaven by the end of the film. Stafford is superb, the ultimate burdened Southern wife! Dell does well, too, bringing much sympathy from the audience for his sorry state, hated by his father and sister and pitied by his mother. Another note: Brownrigg uses some music from "Basement!" and the theme song, "Death is a Final Affair", is excellent! Ultimately, "Scum of the Earth" is a movie that must be seen to be appreciated. No review can do it justice, just as no review can do "Don't Look in the Basement!" justice. You can only find it under the false title of "Poor White Trash Part II", but I hope that someone re-releases this on video in a clean print with the original title.