Scum of the Earth
Scum of the Earth is a 1963 film from the USA, directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, running 73 minutes. reelscum files it under classical exploitation and roughie.
- Year
- 1963 · 1960s films
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 73 min
- Director
- Herschell Gordon Lewis
- Updated
- 30 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- obscure (59/100)
- Also known as
- Devil's Camera
Defined in the glossary: Classical exploitation, Roughie
Herschell Gordon Lewis invents the roughie the same year he invents gore. Busy man.
The same year Herschell Gordon Lewis poured the first bucket of on-screen gore into Blood Feast, he and producer David Friedman shot this, generally fingered as the first roughie. Where the nudie-cuties were sunlit and giggly, this is black and white and mean: a racket coerces and blackmails young women into posing for dirty pictures, and the film swaps nudity for a sour atmosphere of menace without a drop of blood in it. It is cheap, ugly and hard-faced, trading the leer of the pin-up film for something closer to a threat. Not much fun to sit through, and impossible to leave off the shelf, since half the nasty little films that followed trace straight back to it. Historically load-bearing, dramatically inert.
Trailer
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Legal options in USA
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The cycle in depth
- The grindhouse and where the word came from
What a grindhouse is: a continuous-performance theatre, the 1925 trade term behind the word, and how the programming got its reputation.
- The B movie and the double bill it was made for
A B movie is what an exhibitor took to get the A picture, a flat-rate second feature, and the 1948 Paramount ruling ended the arrangement.
Filed alongside
The Immoral Mr. Teas
Historically pivotal, formally inert. Watch ten minutes and read about the rest.
The Curious Dr. Humpp
Argentine, insane, and re-cut by its US distributor into something stranger.
Maniac
Dwain Esper's roadshow lunacy. A man eats a cat's eye. Not the 1980 film.
Bad Girls Go to Hell
The definitive Doris Wishman roughie: grimy, deranged, and edited by someone allergic to faces.
Alvin Purple
The sex comedy that funded the entire boom. Historically important, hard going.
Marihuana
Esper again. One reefer leads directly to nude swimming and death.
The House on the Edge of the Park
Deodato points Last House at a dinner party. Grubby, mean, effective.
Supervixens
Meyer's biggest hit of the decade, and his cartoon violence at its most cartoonish.
Mom and Dad
Kroger Babb toured it for twenty years with a fake nurse in the lobby.
Vixen!
The one that made the money and triggered the obscenity fight.
Blood Feast
The first gore film. Barely competent, historically unavoidable.
Lorna
Meyer stops joking. The one where the sun goes behind a cloud.