Poor White Trash II (Scum of the Earth)

  I don't know whether or not to call the fella responsible for this little piece of filth a thief or a salvager, but I do know I wont call him anything close to a visionary. So, the reason this movie poster says "Scum of the Earth" and not "Poor white Trash II" is because it was actually called that before some dude bought the rights to it and changed the name. What about Poor White Trash 1 you ask? Well, story is, this same guy bought the rights to another film from the fifties called Bayou in the early seventies, changed some scenes (with a whole new cast) to make it more shocking and called it P.W.T. I guess when he saw Scum of the Earth he couldn't pass up an opportunity to BUY a sequel. While I'm not quite sure where I stand on the ethics of this kind of behavior, I am sure about where I stand this film, so I'll just get to it.

  This film starts out with a bang, not three minutes into it and the victims already been established through the axe murder of her husband.....and then the opening credits start rolling.... to something distantly resembling the Dukes of Hazzard theme song, as she runs desperately through the woods. Pretty bizarre opening credit sequence with that alone. But they aren't even done with you at that point.....she then (in the middle of the credits) meets some bayou dwelling lowlife named "Odis", who creepily offers his assistance and they're off, cue rest of opening credits. For fear of revealing the full story I'll just say the house he takes her to is full of incest, rape, abuse and the like. But are they the ones who killed her husband? Nope, somehow they're "victims" in this too, but deserving ones at least. The killer isn't revealed until nearly the end of the film in a ridicuous but unforseeable twist ending.

  The acting in this is anything but "good", but it is entertaining and the dialogue is great, featuring your usual overblown bayou hillbilly accent done the best by the character "Bo" who is the hilarious borderline mentally disabled son of "Odis", I'm pretty sure he had a broken nose for this film as far as I could tell from the way he breathed, whatever it was...he was funny.

   The violence in this one is really weak as far as the visuals go, save for the axe scene from the films opening. They just sprinkled a minimal amount of blood on areas that are supposed to be wounded and called it good. The shock factor obviously wasn't ever supposed to come from that is what I came to realize as the film progressed. The earlier mentioned rape and rumors of incest.... that's where they getcha.

   While the back story of this movie was trivia worthy and enlightening, I learned barely anything from the actual watching of this film, but then again movies that are called anything resembling Poor White Trash II  or Scum of the Earth usually aren't educational. But the one thing I did learn? Three and a half jars of moonshine makes "Odis" an abusive sunuvabitch.


tastelessness 8/10
gore 1/10
must-see-ness 5/10