Scum of the Earth

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.