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IMDbPro

Scum of the Earth

  • 1963
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 15m
IMDb RATING
5.2/10
953
YOUR RATING
Scum of the Earth (1963)
DramaThriller

A naive and innocent teenage girl is blackmailed into modeling in the nude for a photographer who is in league with a teenage gang whose boss illegally sells photos of teenage girls being ab... Read allA naive and innocent teenage girl is blackmailed into modeling in the nude for a photographer who is in league with a teenage gang whose boss illegally sells photos of teenage girls being abused and degraded.A naive and innocent teenage girl is blackmailed into modeling in the nude for a photographer who is in league with a teenage gang whose boss illegally sells photos of teenage girls being abused and degraded.

  • Director
    • Herschell Gordon Lewis
  • Writer
    • Herschell Gordon Lewis
  • Stars
    • William Kerwin
    • Louise Downe
    • Lawrence J. Aberwood
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    5.2/10
    953
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Herschell Gordon Lewis
    • Writer
      • Herschell Gordon Lewis
    • Stars
      • William Kerwin
      • Louise Downe
      • Lawrence J. Aberwood
    • 21User reviews
    • 22Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 nomination total

    Photos44

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    Top cast13

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    William Kerwin
    • Harmon Johnson
    • (as Thomas Sweetwood)
    Louise Downe
    • Kim Sherwood
    • (as Vickie Miles)
    Lawrence J. Aberwood
    Lawrence J. Aberwood
    • Lang
    • (as Lawrence Wood)
    Sandra Sinclair
    • Sandy
    • (as Sandy Sinclair)
    Mal Arnold
    Mal Arnold
    • Larry
    Craig Maudslay Jr.
    Craig Maudslay Jr.
    • Ajax
    Christy Foushee
    Christy Foushee
    • Marie
    • (as Toni Calvert)
    Doug Brennan
    • Carl
    Christina Castel
    • Shirley
    Edward Mann
    • Mr. Sherwood
    Lou Youngman
    • Dave - Punk in Diner
    William Caulder
    • Joe - Punk in Diner
    Herschell Gordon Lewis
    Herschell Gordon Lewis
    • Narrator
    • (voice)
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Herschell Gordon Lewis
    • Writer
      • Herschell Gordon Lewis
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews21

    5.2953
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    Featured reviews

    7amosduncan_2000

    Where have you gone, Lawrence J Aberwood?

    If anything of "SOTE" is to survive, it is the monolouge and direction of Lawrence J Aberwood's speech as Lang, where he dresses down a young model and the fury of the earth's mysogony pours fourth from his repulsive gob, as Lewis cuts closer and closer into this strange piehole of hell. I think it's probably the best sequence Lewis ever directed. If it appeared in a less rediculous film it might be more recalled, but I guess "Blood Feast" stole it's thunder. I like that when Lang knows the jig is up, he is pretty philosophical about ditching his business. I mean, how much money can you make selling cheap cheesecake in the High School underground? Aberwood's excellent work is matched by William Kerwin, who is quite believeable as the morally conflicted photographer. The rest of the cast stubbles along. As this may have been the first "roughie", there is only one rough scene and it's not that rough.

    I was looking for another film called SOTE, but accidently ordered this one which I had seen years ago. The "You're dirty!" speech makes it more than worth seeing again.
    5Stevieboy666

    Not as bad as I'd expected

    Directed by, according to the opening credits, a one Lewis H.Gordon. No fooling any student of horror or exploitation cinema, this of course was actually the legendary Herschell Gordon Lewis, famous for his gore movies. His former wife, Allison Louise Downe, stars as a naïve young woman who earns some much needed cash posing for photographs but eventually finds herself posing nude, with the threat of blackmail hanging over her. And indeed there is some nudity here, breasts and bottoms. Which is probably the purose behind this film, rather than the moral message. Acting is bad, as to be expected with a HG Lewis. One character, Larry, is meant to be a minor but was actually 30 years old when this was filmed. One nice touch is that although filmed in black and white there is a split second red blood splat on screen. I only watched this film because it was an extra on a blu ray of another Lewis film but I'm glad that I did. Turned out to be reasonably entertaining.
    5Eegah Guy

    Could've been a lot scummier

    One of the earliest of "roughie" films of the 60s, this cheap Florida film about how nudie photographers lure innocent cuties to shed their clothes and morals is pretty dull with only brief flashes of H.G. Lewis' brand of low-grade brilliance. Acting that ranges from overwrought to amateurish plus static direction keeps this from being a good film but a vicious belt-whipping scene keeps it from being too timid with its seedy subject matter. Look for much of the cast of Lewis' classic film BLOOD FEAST in this.
    8Weirdling_Wolf

    'Scum of The Earth' still maintains a strange fascination outside of it merely being a crusty celluloid museum piece.

    While this was the, as yet, uncrowned Godfather of Gore's final film shot in B/W it was later said to have been one of the first 'Roughies' and proved so financially successful that many similarly deranged films would muckily follow in its wonderfully mucky footsteps! While probably a tad naive and quaint when seen today, 'Scum of The Earth' nonetheless maintains a strange fascination outside of it merely being a crusty ol' museum piece of celluloid history. Fans of fearless filmmaker, H. G Lewis will be only too aware of the inordinately likable, more than robust character actor, Bill Kerwin's place in the triumphantly bloody pantheon of proto-splatter history by his memorable performance in the iconic cannibal opus 'Blood Feast' (1967), so it is doubly thrilling to see future Ishtar idolator, Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold) in his earlier guise as, Larry, the blithely abusive lackey to odious Lang (Lawrence J. Aberwood), the porcine head of this sordid, photographically reprehensible flesh-pot factory.

    Ostensibly a cheaply made, moderately lurid morality tale, or to be pedantic, an 'immorality tale', this grubby-fingered monochrome 'expose' of crass female exploitation highlights the desperate plight of a guileless,Sherilyn Fenn lookie-likie, Kim Sherwood (Louise Downe) as she is crudely coerced into the unwilling role of 'glamour model' by arch manipulator, serial groomer of young women, Harmon Johnson (William Kerwin), erstwhile photographer, and full-time Heel! The grimily unsophisticated narrative very rapidly plunges ever deeper into the darkling mire of smut, since the fourth abject member of these insidious flesh wranglers is the vicious, over-muscled thug, Ajax (Craig Maudsley Jr.) who takes enormous pleasure in psychologically and physically assaulting these poor women into tearful submission in order to momentarily sate his openly sadistic lusts, perhaps, the estimable Mr. Lewis might have had some additionally powerful effects on future creators of extreme Japanese Pinku as well as single-handedly inventing the splatter movie genre! 'Scum of the Earth' simmers stagnantly to a marvellously melodramatic, all hellz' a poppin' climax, being tritely bookended with a pleasingly earnest voice-over from the mercurial mondo mastermind himself!

    Appearing somewhat rudimentary in style and content, 'Scum of The Earth' is most certainly not without dramatic interest, since one can't help but readily sympathize with our ingenious protagonist's increasingly desperate plight, and there's an amusingly broad, almost pantomime-esque quality to her abusers nastiness! These sleazy smut-rakers and their outrageous machinations remain consistently fun to watch, perhaps a few years earlier these dastardly sinister archetypes of cartoonish despotism would have no less callously tied shrieking damsels to the train tracks whilst repeatedly swirling oily moustaches with hubristic aplomb!

    Initially released on VHS by psychotronic curators 'Something Weird Video' many loons ago, it is certainly no small joy to view this formative example of H. G Lewis's trope-inventing filmmaking in much improved HD quality, perhaps not one of the more essential works from his inimitable cannon of kaleidoscopic, crimson-soaked lunacy, and while not the best place to begin investigating H. G Lewis's exhilaratingly orgiastic oeuvre but undoubtedly an important, hugely influential trashy B-Picture in its own right. Without belabouring the point, one can plainly see how utterly essential the charismatic, Bill Kerwin's myriad acting contributions have been to the continued relevance of H. G Lewis's extraordinary, convention-baiting, sin-suppurating, epoch-defining, heroically hyperbolic, celluloid freight train of midnight movie madness!
    Michael_Elliott

    Decent Nudie Without the Nudity

    Scum of the Earth (1963)

    ** (out of 4)

    Early sexploitation film from director Herschell Gordon Lewis about a young girl named Kim (Allison Louise Downe) who starts posing for pictures for Harmon (William Kerwin) but soon she finds out that he's actually a creep and has naughty plans for her. While the first pictures were tasteful, he eventually gets her into bikini shots and then (gasp!) nude shots. SCUM OF THE EARTH is a fairly decent sexploitation picture but people should be warned that it's an early one and there's actually not any nudity outside of a clever nipple slip. I think this film is mainly going to appeal to fans of the director who must see everything that the drive-in maverick has made. For the most part this is a fairly entertaining movie, although it feels more like those exploitation pictures from the 1930's instead of something from the swinging 60's. There are a couple nice moments scattered throughout the film but for the most part it's just another morality tale warning young girls from taking their clothes off no matter how "simple" they think the pictures are going to be. As the film says, you might start off with your clothes on but there are perverts out there who want to see you naked. The film manages to have a couple fun performances from the two leads. I thought Kerwin was actually pretty good and believable in the role of the photographer. Downe isn't "good" by any stretch of the imagination but she brings a rather sweet and naive quality to the character that makes her work. At just 73-minutes the film seems a tad bit long at times but the director never slows the picture down too much.

    Storyline

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    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Shot just two weeks after Orgie sanglante (1963) finished filming, with most of the same cast and crew.
    • Goofs
      When Kim comes out to Sandy's car after Larry abused her, she's all smiles as she runs from her house. Then, in the next shot, she's sobbing uncontrollably.
    • Quotes

      Lang: It's time for straight talk, Kim. It's not my fault you posed for Harmon. It's not my fault you posed for Larry in the nude. You did it, its your problem, its pretty late to act prissy and prim. All you kids make me sick! You act like little Miss Muffet and down inside you're dirty, do you hear me? Dirty! You're greedy and self centered and think you can get away with anything. You're no better than the girl who sells herself to a man, you're worse because you're a hypocrite. And now little Miss Muffet is in trouble and she's all outraged virtue. Well you listen and you listen well, you're damaged merchandise and this is a fire sale. You walk outta here and your reputation won't be worth fifteen cents. You'll do as I tell you! Do you hear me? You'll do as I tell you!

    • Alternate versions
      This film was released in both nude and non-nude versions
    • Connections
      Featured in Battle of the Bombs (1985)

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    FAQ

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • October 8, 1963 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Отбросы Земли
    • Filming locations
      • Miami, Florida, USA
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Budget
      • $11,000 (estimated)
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      1 hour 15 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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