Some films whisper their intentions, films that seduce you with craft, and then there’s Scum of the Earth!, which grabs you by the collar like a chain‑smoking uncle at a family reunion and hisses, “Kid, lemme tell you how the world really works.” This is Herschell Gordon Lewis before the gore geysers, before the latex entrails, before he discovered that blood could be a business model. Here he’s working the other side of the exploitation street — the “good girl dragged into the gutter” morality play, shot with the urgency of a man who knows the cops could shut down the set at any moment. It’s a film that smells like hot film stock, stale coffee, and the inside of a used camera bag.
The plot is pure drive‑in sermonizing: Kim Sherwood (Vickie Miles), a wide‑eyed schoolgirl with the emotional fragility of a baby deer, gets lured into a sleazy modeling racket run by a trio of human grease traps. Mr. Lang (Lawrence Wood) is the puppet master, a man who looks like he’s been sweating since Eisenhower left office. Ajax (Craig Maudslay Sr.) is the muscle — a beef‑slab enforcer who seems permanently confused about whether he’s in a crime ring or a bowling league. And then there’s Larry (Bill Adams), the photographer whose moral compass spins like a ceiling fan in a swamp. Watching these men operate is like watching a morality play staged by the cast of a gas‑station calendar shoot.
The acting is a glorious parade of stiff line readings, panicked glances, and melodramatic breakdowns — the kind of outsider‑art sincerity that Gen‑X late‑night viewers grew up mainlining on UHF channels between reruns of Mannix and local car‑dealership ads. Everyone is performing at a different emotional frequency, yet somehow the chaos harmonizes into a perfect storm of sleaze‑opera intensity. Vickie Miles trembles her way through the film like she’s one bad decision away from dissolving into tears, while Maudslay’s Ajax stomps around like a man who’s never been told “no” and wouldn’t know what to do with the information if he heard it.
What makes Scum of the Earth! a cult‑classic isn’t the plot — which is basically a PSA wrapped in a trench coat — but the texture. This is a film soaked in Florida humidity, moral panic, and the kind of low‑budget desperation that gives exploitation cinema its bite. Every frame feels like it was shot five minutes before a thunderstorm. Every character looks like they need a shower and a lawyer. It’s the cinematic equivalent of finding a crumpled pulp novel behind a laundromat vending machine and realizing it’s the best thing you’ve read all year. Gen‑X insomniacs and late‑night weirdos embraced this movie because it feels like a secret — a whispered confession from the underbelly of 1963 America.
Arrow’s Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast box set treats this gutter‑born morality tale with absurd reverence, restoring every bead of sweat, every cigarette‑stained sneer, every “good girl gone bad” plot beat with high‑definition clarity. It’s a museum‑quality presentation of a film that was never meant to survive past its first drive‑in run, and that’s exactly why it rules.
Scum of the Earth! isn’t just a movie — it’s a time capsule of American anxiety, a grindhouse sermon delivered with the subtlety of a bullhorn, and a reminder that before Lewis painted the screen red, he was already knee‑deep in the muck.
Home Video Distributor: Arrow Films
Available on Blu-ray - November 10, 2020
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English
Video: 1080p
Audio: LPCM Mono
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; seven-disc-set
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
When Arrow resurrected the Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast Blu‑ray box set, it wasn’t just a re‑release — it was a full‑scale archaeological dig conducted by maniacs who love cinema too much to let its weirdest artifacts rot in the swamp. This set arrives like a grindhouse holy text, a lavish, oversized altar to the Godfather of Gore, packed with restorations so crisp you can practically count the brushstrokes on the latex intestines. Arrow treats Scum of the Earth and its deranged siblings with the reverence usually reserved for Bergman or Kurosawa, which is exactly the kind of cosmic joke H.G. Lewis would appreciate. The packaging is a riot of lurid artwork, the extras are deep‑cut academic fever dreams, and the whole thing feels like a lovingly curated museum exhibit dedicated to the moment American cinema shrugged off good taste and said, “Let’s see what happens if we show EVERYTHING.” It’s not just a box set — it’s a blood‑drenched celebration of outsider filmmaking at its most gloriously unhinged.
Video
In Arrow’s Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast box set, Blood Feast sits like a sacred relic—the Rosetta Stone of red‑dyed mayhem. Restored in high definition, the film’s colors pop like a fever dream painted on a motel wall. You can practically smell the Florida humidity and the latex organs. The restoration doesn’t “fix” the film. It immortalizes it. Every rough edge, every clumsy cut, every moment where an actor forgets their line and stares into the void—it’s all preserved like a prehistoric mosquito in amber. This is cinema archaeology at its most delirious.
Audio
Arrow’s restoration of Blood Feast doesn’t just clean up the picture — it resurrects the film’s gloriously primitive audio with a PCM 1.0 mono track that feels like it was piped directly from a 1963 Miami grindhouse through a time‑warped speaker cone. This is Herschell Gordon Lewis sound design in its purest form: dialogue that occasionally sounds like it was recorded inside a broom closet, music cues that crash in like a marching band falling down a staircase, and the wet, sloshing “gore” effects that hit your ears with the fidelity of a man stirring a bucket of chili off‑mic. Arrow doesn’t try to modernize or sterilize it — they preserve every hiss, pop, and analog imperfection like sacred relics of exploitation cinema’s birth. It’s raw, it’s unvarnished, and it’s exactly how Blood Feast should sound: like the audio track is daring you to complain while it revs a chainsaw made of static.
Supplements:
The special features play like a midnight‑movie séance where scholars, weirdos, and exploitation lifers gather to praise the Godfather of Gore. You get archival interviews with Herschell Gordon Lewis himself, where he cheerfully explains how he invented an entire subgenre with pocket change and a pathological disregard for the MPAA. There’s a commentary track featuring Lewis and producer David F. Friedman riffing like two carnival barkers reminiscing about the time they conned America into watching a man hack off limbs with a machete from a hardware store. Arrow also loads the disc with featurettes on the film’s production, the birth of splatter cinema, and the cultural shockwaves that followed. You get outtakes, trailers, radio spots, and the kind of behind‑the‑scenes ephemera that feels like it was rescued from a Florida storage unit moments before the roof caved in. It’s a treasure trove of grindhouse archaeology — a lovingly curated museum of mayhem for anyone who wants to understand how a no‑budget gore flick became a cornerstone of cult cinema.
Commentary:
- See special features
Special Features:
- DISC ONE: BLOOD FEAST (1963) & SCUM OF THE EARTH (1963)
- * Introduction to the films by director Herschell Gordon Lewis
- * Audio Commentary on Blood Feast with Lewis and producer David F. Friedman
- * Blood Feast Outtakes
- * Blood Perceptions filmmakers Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) and Rodney Ascher (Room 237) offer their insight on Blood Feast and the importance of Herschell Gordon Lewis
- * Herschell s History archival interview in which Lewis discusses his entry into the film industry including Scum of the Earth
- * How Herschell Found His Niche Lewis discusses more of his early work in nudie cuties and the making of The Adventures of Lucky Pierre
- * Archival interview with Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman from 1987
- * Carving Magic (1959) vintage short featuring Blood Feast s Bill Kerwin
- * Blood Feast Radio Spot and Trailer
| Movie |  |
|
| Video |  |
|
| Audio |  |
|
| Extras | |
|
|
Composite Blu-ray Grade
|
||
