Scum is a 1979 British crime drama film directed by Alan Clarke, portraying the brutality of life inside a British borstal.
In the late '70s, director Alan Clarke was hired by the BBC to make a television drama about life inside a juvenile detention center. The program was so relentlessly brutal that the horrified network banned its broadcast forever. In defiance, Clarke and producer Clive Parsons remade the film as an even more uncompromising theatrical feature. Ray Winstone (SEXY BEAST) stars as Carlin, a young thug rising to the top of an inhuman prison hierarchy amidst violence, vengeance and sexual assault. This is the grim and graphic indictment of the British borstal system that outraged a nation and shocked audiences worldwide. This is SCUM.