As brilliant as Alien and Apocalypse Now were, the most realistic, truthful film of 79 has to be Scum. Banned by the BBC and converted into a feature film, this has to be British Cinema's most brutal look at prison life. Making absolutely no concessions to the subject matter or the audience, this absorbing, entertaining, thought provoking look at borstal, a teenage prison, is totally convincing as a document about prison life.
Using a documentary style director Alan Clarke shows us that borstals only make teenagers far worse. By no means glorifing the behaviour carried out by the youths however, Clarke deftly attacks the government and their techinques showing them to be more cruel and violent than the inmates.
Fiercely intelligent, this perfectly depicts the classes that the inmates grow into, there's the bullies, the boys who are often let by the wardens to carry on with their dirty work if they keep everyone in order, then there's the weaklings who often suffer as a result and the ones who just muck in, shut up and defend themselves when necessary. The story is simple; Carlin played by avery young Ray Winstone ) a young trouble maker but not particularly brutal minded arrives at this borstal, certainly not his first and certainly not his last has to climb up the ladder from being a neutral as so to speak to being the Daddy, the leader of the gang. Simply the film points out that you have to be brutal but fair if you're to survive in this kind of environment,although this is the basis to nearly any prison/action drama, rarely has it been made with such clarity, never has it hit home quite so much as it does here.
This is a film you won't forget in a hurry, in a way it's a real horror movie which conveys a sense of not being able to escape a horror based and rooted in reality,twenty years later the BBC drama Care with Steven Mackintosh would explore the long term effects of such exposure with incredible realism and power which shows the legacy of something as groundbreaking and real as Scum.
When Scum was first made in 1977 for the BBC, it was actually banned, the reason for this is something much further than mere censorship, in fact the Home Office actually supported the BBC and the borstals at the time so when they were confronted with this piece of brutal anti establishment filmmaking, the natural response was to dump it. One person for the BBC said something on the lines of this " yes it's true violence and abuse does go on in borstals as you see in Scum but in real life it goes on over a period of months rather than the continous stream of violence in scum which is conducted over a much shorter period."
Make of that what you will but did he know exactly what went on behind those walls and how often, one doesn't think so. What Clarke and his crew did after the contract on the film expired was to refilm it and convert into a cinema feature, it was eventually shown on channel 4 in 1983 but the BBC didn't show it until 1991 one year after Clarke's death. Only now getting the proper appreciation that it deserves, this is a true classic, this makes The Shawshank Redemption look sentimental and twee in comparison, this film personifies the word hard,right from the ballsy hold no bars script to the harsh photography by Phil Meheux ( Goldeneye ) this is not only rock solid, this little number launched the careers of quite an few people. Phil Daniels ( Quadrophenia, Clarke's Made in Britain and the Firm, Mike Leigh's Meantime and the chirpy voiceover for Blur's Parklife ) PC Quinlan from the Bill and of course Ray Winstone who after a dull patch in the 80's came back fighting with Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth.
In conclusion four scenes from this film will stay in your mind forever SPOILERS ALERT the brutal gang rape of Davis in the conservatory while the warden turns a blind eye, Carlin smacking a snooker ball in a sock into Phil Daniels face, Carlin smashing the Daddy's head into a basin and most frightening of all, Davis slashing his wrists and what follows.
A film that won't suit all tastes but a film everyone should see, you'll never watch another prison drama in quite the same way.
Using a documentary style director Alan Clarke shows us that borstals only make teenagers far worse. By no means glorifing the behaviour carried out by the youths however, Clarke deftly attacks the government and their techinques showing them to be more cruel and violent than the inmates.
Fiercely intelligent, this perfectly depicts the classes that the inmates grow into, there's the bullies, the boys who are often let by the wardens to carry on with their dirty work if they keep everyone in order, then there's the weaklings who often suffer as a result and the ones who just muck in, shut up and defend themselves when necessary. The story is simple; Carlin played by avery young Ray Winstone ) a young trouble maker but not particularly brutal minded arrives at this borstal, certainly not his first and certainly not his last has to climb up the ladder from being a neutral as so to speak to being the Daddy, the leader of the gang. Simply the film points out that you have to be brutal but fair if you're to survive in this kind of environment,although this is the basis to nearly any prison/action drama, rarely has it been made with such clarity, never has it hit home quite so much as it does here.
This is a film you won't forget in a hurry, in a way it's a real horror movie which conveys a sense of not being able to escape a horror based and rooted in reality,twenty years later the BBC drama Care with Steven Mackintosh would explore the long term effects of such exposure with incredible realism and power which shows the legacy of something as groundbreaking and real as Scum.
When Scum was first made in 1977 for the BBC, it was actually banned, the reason for this is something much further than mere censorship, in fact the Home Office actually supported the BBC and the borstals at the time so when they were confronted with this piece of brutal anti establishment filmmaking, the natural response was to dump it. One person for the BBC said something on the lines of this " yes it's true violence and abuse does go on in borstals as you see in Scum but in real life it goes on over a period of months rather than the continous stream of violence in scum which is conducted over a much shorter period."
Make of that what you will but did he know exactly what went on behind those walls and how often, one doesn't think so. What Clarke and his crew did after the contract on the film expired was to refilm it and convert into a cinema feature, it was eventually shown on channel 4 in 1983 but the BBC didn't show it until 1991 one year after Clarke's death. Only now getting the proper appreciation that it deserves, this is a true classic, this makes The Shawshank Redemption look sentimental and twee in comparison, this film personifies the word hard,right from the ballsy hold no bars script to the harsh photography by Phil Meheux ( Goldeneye ) this is not only rock solid, this little number launched the careers of quite an few people. Phil Daniels ( Quadrophenia, Clarke's Made in Britain and the Firm, Mike Leigh's Meantime and the chirpy voiceover for Blur's Parklife ) PC Quinlan from the Bill and of course Ray Winstone who after a dull patch in the 80's came back fighting with Gary Oldman's Nil by Mouth.
In conclusion four scenes from this film will stay in your mind forever SPOILERS ALERT the brutal gang rape of Davis in the conservatory while the warden turns a blind eye, Carlin smacking a snooker ball in a sock into Phil Daniels face, Carlin smashing the Daddy's head into a basin and most frightening of all, Davis slashing his wrists and what follows.
A film that won't suit all tastes but a film everyone should see, you'll never watch another prison drama in quite the same way.