The Defilers/Scum of the Earth Drive-In Double Feature

The Defilers/Scum of the Earth Drive-In Double Feature
David Friedman & R. Lee Frost/ David Friedman & H.G. Lewis
1965/1963 – B+W – 69 min/ 73 min (or 142 min)
Genre – Roughie

One of the greatest advancements in the field of DVD’s in the last decade has been the invention of the Drive-In Double Feature created by our people at Something Weird. Think about it for a second, you have an afternoon to spare and sitting on your shelf is a SW double feature. Pop that baby in and sit back and relax. You, my friend, have nothing to worry about now except making the popcorn and enjoying the flicks. Now if you’re a fucked up individual like me you’ve got The Defilers/Scum of the Earth displayed proudly front and center in your collection.



The Drive-In discs recreate the now lost pastime of watching movies at the local drive in (R.I.P.). IT always starts off with calls to visit the concessions stand and then trailers. There is usually a short subject film and then it’s time for the first feature, in the case The Defilers. Let me let you in on a little secret, The Defilers is my absolute favorite Something Weird Video ever. It’s the epitome of what you’d want in a Roughie. The Defilers is sick, it’s demented and the fact that everything (they touch is stained) they do in the film is “for kicks” makes it that much more fucked up. Two Hedonistic young men in a search for “kicks” decide to abduct a young woman that “no one would miss” and hold her as their personal sex toy. One of the men is way more into the idea than the other and eventually they come to a head. It’s a film so fucked that it’s like a train wreck, once you start watching you won’t want to look away.


My Defilers tattoo

After the first feature film comes intermission with classic “lets go out to the lobby” songs and cartoons and a countdown timer telling you how much longer you have before the next film. I actually used this time to use the bathroom so I’m not sure if I missed anything else, but it’s still a delight to be given time between movies to take care of business. Perhaps get more popcorn or whatever.



Now time for the second feature film, Scum of the Earth. As a bit of an amateur photographer there’s something inherently attractive about Scum. I’ve always loved the idea of the sleazy photographer. A man who can convince girls to take off their clothes, of course the real life parallels in the film to Lewis and Friedman are blatant. The only real difference between real life and the film being the more literal use of the term “picture”, but regardless it was an obvious “fuck you” to the censor boards. Scum also features one of my greatest fantasies, call me a sicko and that’s fine, but I really love the idea of taking something pure and beautiful and making it sick and twisted. The concept of perverting something (or in this case someone) is appealing to me. Although in this case, mostly because the formula hadn’t been created yet, good prevails and the innocent gets to go back to being (for the most part) unscathed. It also manages something almost unheard of in the roughie genre, it has a HAPPY ENDING. Wow, just amazing really, but to me it’s the weaker of the two films.

Thanks to Something Weird, I now have to watch these films back to back every time I put on the disc, which is fine by me because these films were seemingly made to be a double feature. Here you go crackpots, a demented double dipping of our good friend Dave.

Enjoy it sickos

5 out of 5/ 4 out of 5