The Defilers/The Scum of the Earth (1965) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I just picked this up recently and it's quickly become one of my favorite SW DVDs. The two films are quite different: Scum of the Earth, David Friedman/H. G. Lewis's final nudie as partners (with virtually no nudity!) comes across like a high school play about pornographers, while The Defilers has the look and feel of an early-1960s B&W TV drama punctuated with ... unsettling violence. Both movies feature several cast members from Blood Feast and the other Blood Trilogy movies.
Scum of the Earth's world-weary, boozing photographer Harmon (William Kerwin [Blood Feast]) snaps photos of pert blonde cheescake model Sandy, who's anxiously awaiting "retirement." (All her shots are taken with a scarf covering her chest.) She's also forced to pose in (implied) B&D shots ("Remember, I'm not double-jointed!") with hulking, violent misogynist brute Ajax. The chief smut peddler, Lang, smokes a big cigar, quotes Mozart, and plays with head-nodder dolls and a wind-up mechanical monkey. Harmon and Sandy recruit Kim (Adults Only regular Vicki Miles [Allison Louise Downe], one of the worst actresses of all time) to be groomed as her replacement. Mal Arnold (Blood Feast's mad caterer Fuad) plays surly, menacing, violent Larry, one of Lang's salesmen and apparently world's oldest teenager ("Don't forget, I'm a minor"). Harmon convinces Kim to show "the upper half" for $500 badly-needed tuition money, and she freaks out at another shoot when they photograph her face! Kim pleads with Lang to let her out of the deal in the hilarious "straight talk" scene: he excoriates her at length ("Deep down inside you're dirty. Do you hear me, dirty! You're damaged goods, and this is a fire sale."), working up a literal lather as the camera cuts in closer and closer on his sweaty, contorted mouth. Blackmail, (implied) violence, and more G-rated porn shoots ensue before the finale, which includes a baseball bat murder, shooting, police chase, suicide, and surprise wedding engagement between Harmon and Sandy! It all sounds quite lurid on paper, but it's actually rather quaint; you really expect Wally and the Beave to stroll around the corner any second. Scum of the Earth does share a rather, um, deliberate pace and minimalist production values with Friedman/Lewis's gore movies, but delivers plenty of entertainment value for aficionados of this sort of thing. Similar to Ed Wood's Sinister Urge, but with even funnier, highly quotable dialogue.
In The Defilers (directed, photographed, and edited by Lee Frost [Love Camp 7, Chrome and Hot Leather, Incredible Two Headed Transplant, etc.]), Carl Walker Jr. and Jameison "Jim" Marsh, two bored, jaded hipster hedonists, cruise their convertible to cool jazz and neck with their big-haired, ponytailed girlfriends (four of them) on the way to the beach, where they drink, skinny-dip, make out, and frolic in the sand (lyrical EZ-listening interlude here). Sadistic misogynist Carl (Byron Mabe, director of She Freak, The Acid Eaters, etc.) demonstrates his theories about women ...by variously pinching, spanking, and cigarette-burning his girlfriend Joanie. He further elucidates, "There is only one thing in this whole crummy, square, infested life that counts. Kicks! Kicks! Kicks! You dig me?", but his rich daddy (also obviously played by Mabe in glasses and mustache) is threatening to cut him off financially if he doesn't start showing up at the office. Meanwhile, virginal blonde aspiring actress Jane Collins ("introducing Mai Jansson") arrives in Hollywood from Minnesota on a Greyhound Scenicruiser and rents a room from degenerate Mrs. Olson. In a dingy "dungeon" love nest at his father's factory, Carl spanks frosty Kathy into submission ("Don't! Stop! . . . Don't stop!"), while Jim seduces Ellen in the car ("You wanna feel my muscle? Start the countdown.") While copping from creepy Mrs. Olson, Carl and Jim meet Jane, and later, after Jim reels off a list of possible kick-producing activities ...She's kidnapped, terrorized, and assaulted, mostly by Carl, mostly off screen. Eventually the more sensitive Jim rebels, and Carl meets a gruesome end straight out of one of Friedman's gore films. Defilers plays kind of like a really kinky episode of Surfside Six or Perry Mason, Mabe is really over the top (better as an actor than director), and Jerome Eden (Blood Trilogy) as Jim occasionally bears an uncanny resemblance to Ben Stiller (!!). The violence is sporadic and not very graphic by today's standards, but still packs a bit of a jolt; gorehounds will find it very mild, while sensitive fuzzy-sweater types will probably be appropriately shocked and sickened. I found The Defilers mildly disturbing at times, but for the most part campy and entertaining, with rich early-'60s atmosphere, some screamingly funny dialogue, and Frost's crisp, moody B&W cinematography major assets.
Extras include an entertaining and informative commentary by David Friedman and Mike Vraney (apparently distributors were disappointed in Miss Jansson's "charms"); a wild trailer collection, some fun and campy (All Women Are Bad, Confessions of a Psycho Cat, Banned, Curse of Her Flesh), some REALLY sick-looking (The Pick-Up, Ultimate Degenerate), some just stupid (Sex Killer, Sock It To Me); two OK shorts, "Intimate Diary of Artist's Models" (4:00, color) featuring "Ajax" and "Sandy" from 'Scum' in standard nudie-cutie photo hijinks (see what's under Sandy's scarf!), and Naked Fury (10:00, color) wherein a photographer shoots photos of twin girls wrestling in their undies; and another 8-minute Trash-O-Rama exploitation art gallery. Prints of both features exhibit the usual light speckling and blemishing, but are otherwise plenty sharp with excellent tonal values and detail. A must-have for exploitation and Adults Only fans!

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Defilers/The Scum of the Earth (1965)

Click here for more information about The Defilers/The Scum of the Earth (1965)