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I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A young couple go to a remote cabin and the husband is immediately killed by a mysterious figure with an axe. The wife runs into the woods and encounters Odis Pickett, the patriarch of a white trash clan living deep in the woods. He takes her in, but it becomes clear that he has no intention of letting her leave. Meanwhile, the axe wielding stranger starts picking off members of his family. This regional curiosity is from Texas exploitation exploitation maven S.F. Brownrigg, best known for "Don't Look in the Basement". Like that film, this is a grungy, downbeat little film that, while not as good, is a great example of low budget regional horror of the period. Pickett is played by Gene Ross, who's also in "Basement". He is a decent, creepy actor, who I quite like.

In 1956, Peter Graves starred in a swampland drama called BAYOU, which ended up tanking in theaters... that is until 1961 when M.A. Ripps got his hands on it and then re-released it under the new title POOR WHITE TRASH in 1961. What's in a title? A lot it seems, as the new moniker turned what was a bomb into a moneymaking workhorse that played Southern drive-ins for years as a second feature. Nearly two decades later the same marketing technique was applied to S.F. Brownrigg's SCUM OF THE EARTH. While "Scum" is a great title on its own, it was already used for a 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis flick about a nudie photography racket and didn't quite pack 'em in on that name alone. To boost ticket sales for the reissue (and perhaps trick people into either watching it a second time or assuming it was a follow-up to the first), it was given the new title "Poor White Trash Part II." The film also retained that same title when it finally appeared on VHS and is pretty much solely known under the "Trash" title these days.Soon after arriving at her vacation cabin, newlywed Helen Fraser (Norma Moore) finds her husband Paul (Joel Colodner) dead with an axe buried in his chest. Someone has also stolen their car keys so she's forced to flee into the woods. The first person she comes across is slovenly drunk Odis Pickett (Gene Ross), who claims he doesn't know anything about the murder and puts her mind at ease by informing her "I ain't killed nobody... lately." Having no other choice, Helen follows Odis back to his shack to call the police. When she gets there, she meets the rest of the Pickett clan: Odis' very pregnant wife Emmy (Ann Stafford), his hateful / slutty daughter Sarah (Camilla Carr) and his incredibly dumb son Bo (Charlie Dell), who talks kind of like Forrest Gump. Tensions are already high in the family for a variety of reasons and things get even worse when they discover the same psycho who killed Paul is lurking around outside.This has all of the necessary ingredients for a good hillbilly horror flick: grubby rednecks in overalls spouting terrible grammar ("Looky here what I done brung home for supper!"), filthy living conditions, incest, moonshine drunk directly from mason jars, rape, possum for din din and a series of bloody murders including a neck pierced on an iron fence, a strangulation with barbed wire and a gunshot to the eyeball. If the director has one notable strength compared to his contemporaries, it's the ability to get good performances from his actors. He did it with his previous film DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (1973) and he's done it again here with a solid group of performers all well-cast in their roles. But what really puts this a notch above similar efforts is the low key and somewhat eerie backwoods atmosphere (achieved in part to the no budget minimalism and lack of location change) and the attention paid to characters. Quite a tasteless and tactless group we have here!The Odis character is an immensely unlikable brute who guzzles 'shine the entire time and constantly berates his kids and poor knocked-up wife; justifying his eventual rape of Helen by telling his old lady that he "don't want to poke an old blowed-up balloon like you." I would call the daughter character a 5 dollar whore, but instead she's more of a 1 dollar whore who spreads her legs for all the local guys for pocket change so she can buy things like lipstick and glamour magazines. However, she's tight enough with her pa to give it to him for free! The son is a slow-speaking half-wit who talks like Forrest Gump and mostly elicits feelings of annoyance from the entire family. The big surprise is the unknown Stafford as Emmy the wife; a dumb but good-hearted door mat who was traded off to Odis by her own father to relieve a debt and who eventually becomes a bit motherly toward Norma. Stafford provides a perfect counter-balance to the over-the-top antics of the rest of the family and creates a surprisingly warm character.On the down side, there's next to no plot, the music score is a little inappropriate and annoying at times and the surprise twist at the end is pretty ludicrous, but it's all entertaining enough and has a great cheap regional feel to it that Hollywood films frequently try and normally fail to capture.

A couple years ago, I caught this late one night on the Halmark Channel, and boy oh boy, this one just made me feel grimy all over, and by the end, I wasn't quite sure how to feel. Scum Of The Earth AKA Poor White Trash part 2 was directed by a fellow named S. F. Brownrigg. A year of two before this one, S. F. directed what I consider to be one of the all-time Horror greats, Don't look in the basement. I would also like to add that I absolutely do not consider Scum Of The Earth to be in the "great" category, although, if you fancy depressing Hixploitation, then yeah, I guess it's pretty fantastic. I'll give good ol' S.F. one thing, he went for filthy, sleazy, and sickening, and that's exactly what he, and we got. Scum Of The Earth begins with a couple, Paul and Helen honeymooning in the woods (yeah, you're right, that's pretty weird). Out of nowhere, Paul is murdered by an unseen killer. The horrified new widow runs off into the woods, right into the backwards drama of a backwoods family, in the deepest, darkest depths of the Texas sticks. After spending just a few minutes with the Pickett Family, and with the stench of incest in the air, Helen wonders whether of not she's safer out there...Meet Odis Pickett: Abusive, borderline-sadistic old drunk, and family patriarch. Just lookin' for somethin' to rape. Odis considers his "house" a suitable place for Helen to hide from the killer.Meet Sarah Pickett: Sassy, vindictive little VD farm, and Odis's daughter. Sarah hates her family, especially her brother, she hates Helen, too. Sarah will do anything for a dollar.Meet Bo Pickett: Inbred man-child, and Sarah's brother, would believe anything he's told, not much going' on with Bo. Everyone hates him, except Emmy.Meet Emmy Pickett: Odis's pregnant, abused, second wife. The only decent human in the Pickett house hold. Sold to Odis by her father, to cover a debt Emmy's a pretty good sport, if you ask me. Possibly, Helen's only hope for survival.Scum of the earth fails in some areas, like with suspense, and a well thought-out plot-line. On the other hand, this film has a distinct atmosphere, probably found nowhere else, not even in Poor White Trash part 1, whatever the hell that is. If you want to really go for raw, crude, politically incorrect Horror, with no sugar-coating, you might not hate this as much as some. Just a big pile of negative. I can only imagine how humid, and flat-out uncomfortable the shooting location was for this. Brownrigg really must have wanted to make movies. Not the best thing the man ever did, but come to think of it, it probably is second best. Hixploitation for those of us with a dark sense of humor. just think of it as Moonshine Mountain's evil twin. 7/10

this is a great back woods story starring gene ross aka the judge in dont look in the basement who also helped writing this film .gene brought along co stars from dont look in basement as camilla carr sara picket aka harriet also hugh feagin jim aka the sarge. this film is a must for any fan of the back woods