TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK: One-Sheet of the Week: SCUM (1980)

Sunday, July 05, 2009

One-Sheet of the Week: SCUM (1980)

SCUM (1979)

U.S. release in 1980

14 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hey Chris!!! Barry "The Evil Twin" Wooldridge here! My wife pointed me to your site. It's flattering to see all my old creaky cartoons reprinted on the site, but it's even better to read all those great old reviews as well - I almost forgot how much I really enjoyed Dave Szurek's take on things! Happy to see that you're still squeezing a little life out of that logo (it always was one of my fave designs from that time) - I'll have to work you up a color rendition of it if I can unearth the original B&W stats I have archived somewhere. I also see that Paul DeCirce has a site, which I'll have to check out. I'm still a film nut, but my tastes have broadened a good bit in the last 20 years since I was in touch with you guys. I've been cruising around a lot of other great horror/exploitation sites in the last few months or so, and have run into a few of the old veteran fanzine luminaries, which is always nice, but too many of the sites appear to be populated with clique-ish know-nothings who consider any newcomers to be trolls, so I rarely comment (I was branded a troll at one site recently for daring to call Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp pussies! People sure have delicate feelings these days...)
I understand that Ant Timpson of Crimson Celluloid/Violent Leisure is still around. Does he have a website? I found Tim (Fear of Darkness) Meyer's site, so I'll have to drop him a line, as I've lost touch with him. I frequent Dan Taylor's Exploitation Retrospect site, but I really need to drop him a line to let him know I'm reading, since he's sort of an old friend. I understand that Raymond Young has a site - Flickhead? - gotta do my homework...
Anyway, my original response was to the SCUM post. I just got a copy of this flick this past weekend! I've never seen it, but I love Winstone's style - just in the last few weeks I've watched him in "The Proposition" and Tim Roth's exceptional "The War Zone." I also have a copy of "Made in Britain" coming in the mail soon, so I intend to catch up on Clarke's output a little. Anyway, glad to see you're still writing - I've always enjoyed your perspective on film. Count me as a faithful reader!

- The Evil Twin; 7/06/2009 09:24:00 PM
E.S. Coakley said...: I LOVE the name and I was just about to put it in my Netflix account, til I read the synopsis...then I got a little freaked out...; 7/07/2009 02:26:00 AM
Kris Gilpin said...: Ray Winstone is a great character actor & he was so young & thin back in his Scum days that he's barely recognizable in it today. the ending to the film was cool too.

p.s. does ANYONE know how I can get in touch with my old lost buddy Jeff "Wet Paint" Smith?!!......; 7/07/2009 12:34:00 PM
Tim Mayer said...: Good seeing so many old friends. Wish I knew what ever happened to Jeff "Wet Paint" Smith. We went out and saw PLATOON one evening when I lived in St. Louis.; 7/07/2009 02:12:00 PM
The Evil Twin said...: Tim & Kris - great to see you guys!Since two of my favorite oldskool zine writers both inquire, Jeff is still around and chuggin' along - he's just about the only fandom writer I've stayed in touch with at all in the last decade or so. He produced two really great comic series for Better Comics - Bulletproof (classic superhero stylee) and the ever-lovin' "Complex City," (get the trade paperback compilation - it rocks!) and his lovely wife Barbara still hasn't thrown him out, so he's got that goin' for him. He is now a 5th Guild Doctor Who Queer, and you can tell 'im I said that. His blog is at je-smith.livejournal.com. He writes a lot about general media these days, but the ol' Wet Paint patina is there.

Okay - so where's Cecil Doyle?

- The Evil Twin; 7/07/2009 08:24:00 PM
Temple of Schlock said...: Hi Barry! Thanks for dropping by! Great to hear from you, and thanks for the Jeff Smith hookup. Ant Timpson's one of my Facebook friends, and he's left comments here a couple of times so maybe he'll see your post and drop in to say hi -- or I'll just send him a message tonight and direct him here if he doesn't! Cecil and Greg Goodsell are friends on MySpace and I believe Kris keeps in touch with them. I talked to Dave Szurek on the phone about a year and a half ago and we traded a few e-mails after that...and then I fell out of touch with him again.

Have you seen SEXY BEAST? That's my favorite Ray Winstone flick.

I know what you mean about some of the message boards; I've stopped going to a couple of the boards I used to regularly visit, just because of the non-stop attitude and clique-ish behavior. Funny that the ones you mentioned considered you a "newcomer" and a "troll" when you've been on the scene for, what, 23 years at least! Hilarious. Well, the Temple doors are always open to you, Kris, Tim, Szurek, Ledbetter, John Donaldson, Jeff Smith, Ant, Rod Sims... HOLY SHIT! WE FORGOT ABOUT ROD SIMS! Remember that guy?!; 7/07/2009 10:13:00 PM
Kris Gilpin said...: Barry, thanks for the Jeff S. info!!

email me here & I'll give you Cecil's email, or yes, he's on My Space or Facebook, at least one of 'em.

I LOVED Sexy Beast, too. I heard that, in his first scene on the plane, they shoot the awesome Ben Kingsley from the top down & with his bald head they wanted to make him look "like a big prick"! ;-)

& hello to Craig Ledbetter, Ant everyone else, too!!...; 7/08/2009 09:54:00 AM
The Evil Twin said...: >>Funny that the ones you mentioned considered you a "newcomer" and a "troll" when you've been on the scene for, what, 23 years at least! Hilarious.<<

Well, to be fair, I guess they didn't know me. I strongly suspect that they perceived me to be a political adversary, hence the high level of "tolerance." That's a shame, really, because I'd been reading that blog for a few months and enjoyed it. They had posted a piece on Paul Naschy a while back, so I knew that the site's owner was a fan, so I put together a small stack of Naschy-related stuff (I've been liquidating the remainders of my collection for the past few years)including two items that were signed by Mr. Molina himself. I'm sitting here looking at the packed Priority Mail box right now - I was going to get an address, figuring it might be a nice suprise for him/her, from one fan to another, but it turns out that the site's owner was the very first one to call me a troll! Whoa! Haha! Oh well - there's always ebay for the stills and poster, and the book will go to a friend that has already asked for it. I guess that's what a narrow mind will get ya. Sigh...

Yes, I also loved Sexy Beast. I thought Ben Kingsley really pulled it off. I've never regarded him as menacing, but he was realistically psycho. Hell, if there was one thing to love about the film alone, it was their good taste to use The Stranglers'track "Peaches" in the opening scene.

God bless Rod Sims - that poor guy took so much crap, not only in the pages of The Gorefest, but from so many others. I think I was even guilty of piling on once or twice. He gave as good as he got, in his own non-threatening way. Hope life's treated him well in the last 20.

Isn't Craig Ledbetter still writing? What about Tim Paxton? Anyone hear from him anymore? Those last few issues of Monster! International were killer. That Ze Do Caixion issue is one of the only fanzines I kept after I started selling off the collection.

I'd love to catch up with Cecil Doyle again, and I alway was a big fan of Goodsell's writing. The Goodsell/Gilpin 1-2 punch was always a highlight in any issue of Subhuman!

- The Evil Twin; 7/08/2009 08:59:00 PM
Kris Gilpin said...: I LOVED Subhuman & I loved writing for it, too!

nothing I ever sent, as gross as I could make it, was ever censored!

the Confessions of a Porn Cinematographer article (after I discovered a fellow asst. editor who worked next door to me) offered some great, disgusting descriptions of John Holmes/transsexual porn loops--lovely scum! ;-); 7/09/2009 08:46:00 AM
JE Smith said...: Hey, my ears are burning... was somebody talking about me?

Hey, lookee -- it's a bunch of the old '80s fandom gang! Hi guys! So this is where it's at...

Hey Tim! Boy, I recall us going to the flicks together, but I sure didn't remember it was Platoon. Time flies.; 7/13/2009 12:51:00 PM
JE Smith said...: Does anybody know if Szurek is still alive? I seem to recall his health was fragile even back in the old days. I've often wondered what he'd make of the internet age.; 7/13/2009 02:01:00 PM
Temple of Schlock said...: Hi Jeff! Good to hear from you. I talked to Dave Szurek on the phone about a year and a half ago, and then we traded a few e-mails last summer, but I haven't heard from him since. He's been on a couple of the message boards in the past four or five years. I know he didn't care for the vibe on the AV Maniacs board, and he didn't last long on Mobius back in the "glory days" of the Harbour/Wickum one-two punch. Not sure where he's been hanging his hat lately, but I just sent him an e-mail request to get the hell over here and join the party.; 7/13/2009 03:54:00 PM
JE Smith said...: Thanks Paul -- nice to see some of the old gang hanging out here, and I'll be doing the same. And nice to see the Evil Effing Twin posting under "Anonymous" just like he does on my blog -- dude, just get an account!

Does anybody know the current whereabouts of a guy named David Walker? He was one of the best writers from the old days, and I'd love to know what he's up to now.; 7/14/2009 10:25:00 AM
Temple of Schlock said...: Hi Jeff -- This is Chris P. Paul comes around every so often but is busy with his band Peace Jones so I'm pretty much in charge of the Temple nowadays.

I thought for a long time that the David Walker who wrote for "Wet Paint" was the same David Walker who published "BadAzz MoFo," but no, they're two different guys and I have no idea where the 'zine writer Walker is these days. Maybe Tim Lucas knows, since they wrote that GANJA AND HESS article together for "Video Watchdog" years ago.; 7/14/2009 10:28:00 PM