I Watched It So You Don't Have To: Scum (1979)
As with all of the films in our I Watched It… series, we strongly encourage you to watch these movies if you’re interested. We’re just here to prepare you for what you’re getting yourself into.
The notion that any large group of people are ‘irredeemable’ is a romantic one. Which isn’t to say that certain individuals can’t be deemed so (I’m sure we can all name at least a dozen or so people, historic and personally known, that we personally feel represent pure evil off the tops of our heads) but to write off an entire sector of society is simply a convenience. It’s much easier to believe that ‘evil’ exists instead of approaching somebody with empathy – even if they don’t ‘deserve’ it, it’s important to understand how and why people act the way they do.
Empathy just one of the themes of Alan Clarke’s Scum (1979), about England’s notorious Borstal youth detention center. Adapted from a previous BBC television play, Clarke offers an unflinching look at institutionalized cruelty; from the power games between the young inmates to the culture of fear, punishment and dehumanization by the adults in charge. I was hipped to this film through Dan’s great list of dramas worth watching, and figured it sounded up my alley. I’m a lover of movies about disgruntled youths that wrestle with disquieting themes, difficult scenes and uncomfortable truths; films like If…, Clockwork Orange, Over The Edge, and The Doom Generation are some of my favorites. Going in I expected much of the same – cathartic but indulgent delves into anger and angst – but boy howdy did I get way more than I expected.
Scum opens with three young men being transported to Borstal, lined up against the wall and then, one by one, shoved into the warden’s office. There’s Davis (Julian Firth), a small white boy with a cherubic face, who has been transferred because he escaped a previous institution. There’s Angel (Alrick Riley), a slim black boy with a reserved and pensive personality, who was brought in for having stolen a car. And then there’s Carlin (Ray Winstone), a bruiser with a ruddy face and a clear defiance behind the eyes, who’s reputation precedes him after he assaulted a warden at his last insitution. The warden hazes them one by one with threats and physical assault, mockingly warning them all to watch their backs around the other boys, who they promise will do worse.
The boys are then shuffled into their respective dormitory rooms, Davis and Angel are both put in single rooms because they already look like easy prey, while Carlin is brought into a larger dormitory. One of Carlin’s new roommates just happen to be Banks (John Blundell), the alpha dog “Daddy” of the wing – a particularly vicious boy who rules the other inmates through violent bullying. Carlin is warned by Archer (Mick Ford), a charismatic boy with long hair doing time for fraud, to watch his back, and not long after Banks sicks his henchmen buddies on Carlin when he least expects it. After a brutal on-screen beat down, plainly shot with an aloof gaze, a blood-soaked Carlin is immediately interrogated by the wardens, who care more about punishing Carlin for ‘fighting’ instead of the state of his health.
The bulk of the film follows Carlin’s story as he takes a lay of the land before violently establishing his dominance over Banks. Where a movie like Clockwork Orange revels in calculated planning and orgiastic depiction of violence – to a very specific end, of course – Scum is decidedly less interested in showing you the exhilaration of violence as it is in confronting the stark realities of it. When Carlin finally decides to seize the alpha position, we watch the attack play out step by step, as he sneaks up behind Banks’ second in command and batters him in the head with two snooker balls in a sock to the silent shock of the common room. Then he launches a surprise attack against Banks, smashing his face into a bathroom sink. Carlin’s acts are portrayed as shocking and bloody but they’re also clearly a choice made out of self perseveration. He doesn’t arrive looking to stir up trouble as much as he comes to realize that the only way to survive in this place is to attack first.
With Banks in the hospital, Carlin’s new reign is marked by a period of relative stability. But even without the threat of random beatdowns, there’s still turmoil in the lives of other inmates; such as Toyne (Herbert Norville), who attempts suicide after being callously mocked by wardens when he receives a letter informing him his wife died. He’s transferred out of Borstal where rumors fly that he managed to fully off himself in the next insutition. There’s also Archer, who is all about undermining the system through passive aggressive means. Any chance he sees to create some sort of inconvenience or frustration for the wardens he takes; such as claiming to be vegetarian so he has to be put on a special diet, refusing to wear the government issued shoes because they’re made from leather, and implying he’s interested in becoming Muslim to avoid compulsory Church and piss off the institution’s religious governor. While Archer often suffers for these minor protests – such as being made to run the snow without shoes or being burned with hot cocoa for pointing out the wardens’ hypocrisy – it’s worth it to him in order to gain any semblance of power in such a rigid and punishing system.
As the film winds down we come back to Davis, who in the second half of the film has been mostly left in peace due to his perceived protection by Carlin. But when three bigger boys from a different wing happen to find him alone, working by himself in a greenhouse during garden duty, they take advantage of the situation. What follows is a genuinely shocking gang rape scene that plays out in real time, shot with a static camera that focuses on the faces of all of the boys – holding uncomfortably long on Davis’ anguished screams or the bully’s twisted, rapacious smiles. We also see the smirking face of Mr Sands, one of the wardens, as he peers through the greenhouse glass from a distance, doing nothing to stop the act. Once the gang have finished, we see Davis left alone on the ground sobbing and bleeding, trying to pull up his pants. Mr Sands waits a few minutes before pretending to ‘wander’ into the scene, and demanding what Davis is doing on the ground. Through sobs and without standing up, Davis gives the standard reply that he ‘fell’ in an attempt to get the warden to leave him alone. Sands sneers at him and tells him to stand back up without so much as making any move to help him or acknowledge the truth.
Scum is still genuinely shocking, especially in the final 15 minutes where it plays out Davis’ rape and subsequent suicide minute by minute. I’ll leave some degree of mystery as to how it all plays out, but the entire sequence can leave the viewer feeling genuinely ill – not just because of the explicit violence that’s shown, but in the unflinching way the viewer is forced to watch it play out. It’s hardly shocking to see an on screen death anymore, unfortunately rape and suicide scenes are a dime a dozen, but rarely do films stop to linger on the aftermath of violence. In Scum, there’s no cutting away from the raw emotions or sheer terror to save the viewer’s nerves. You follow Davis through his worst nightmare and then you watch him sob violently, alone and bleeding, until he decides the only way to make it stop is through death.
That all of this could have been prevented if the system actually worked in favor of rehabilitation is just the final kicker. Where other films use such incidents as flashpoints to progress the plot, Scum uses its cruelty to hold your face to the flame and force you to reckon with the broken human behind the troubled youth. It forces you to witness not only the pain of these broken boys, but the wanton cruelty they’re faced with when they actually do try and seek help – a concept they barely understand themselves because they dont have the vocabulary to ask. The film ends with an almost dutiful attempt at catharsis, as at the other boys are scandalized when they realize what happened to Davis and decide to rise up against the system. But the viewer knows it’s doomed from the start, a naive attempt at justice in a rigged system – Clarke plays with the viewers expectations about how a film like this should end, before undercutting it all with a heavy dose of reality.
If you’re looking for a youth revolt movie that will take you through a rollercoaster of discomfort but sets you down flat on your feet to ponder the bigger picture, there are plenty of other films to choose from. Scum is a truly harrowing film – one that is here to remind you that not only to these prison systems exist, still to this day, but they benefit from society’s lack of understanding and ability to look the other way when the truth becomes too uncomfortable to witness. If you choose to bear witness, you’ll be a better person for it.
