Scum

Scum is a 1979 British drama film directed by Alan Clarke and starring Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Julian Firth and John Blundell. The film portrays the brutality of life inside a British borstal. The script was originally filmed as a television play for the BBC's Play for Today series in 1977. However, due to the violence depicted, it was withdrawn from broadcast. Two years later, director Alan Clarke and scriptwriter Roy Minton remade it as a film, first shown on Channel 4 in 1983. By this time the borstal system had been reformed. The original TV version was eventually allowed to be aired eight years later in 1991. The film tells the story of a young offender named Carlin as he arrives at the institution and his rise through violence and self-protection to the top of the inmates' pecking order, purely as a tool to survive. Beyond Carlin's individual storyline, the film also serves as an indictment of the borstal system's flaws, with no attempt at rehabilitation. The warders and convicts alike are brutalised by the system. The film's controversy arose over its graphic depiction of racism, extreme violence, rape, suicide, many fights and very strong language. Plot Three young men arrive at a Borstal by prison van: Carlin, who has taken the blame for his brother's theft of scrap metal; Angel for stealing a car and Davis for escaping from an open institution. Each is allocated a room; Angel and Davis get private rooms while Carlin is sent to a dormitory. Carlin, having been transferred for assaulting a warden, wants to keep a low profile. He meets and befriends Archer, an eccentric and intellectual inmate serving two years for workplace fraud who is intent upon peacefully inconveniencing the staff as much as possible. Archer tells Carlin how his reputation is already known: Banks, the current "Daddy" (the inmate who controls the wing) is seeking Carlin for a fight to maintain his dominance over the wing. Banks' status appears to have been achieved by petty bullying and intimidation with the aid of his henchmen Richards and Eckersley and the passive assent of the staff.