They Eat Scum (1979)

Of the handful of short films by Nick Zedd I've seen, I can safely say I'm not a full fledged fan by any means, but there have been a few I actually thought were decent enough for what they were. "They Eat Scum" is the New York-based, 'transgressive' auteur's first cinematic endeavor and is feature-length, so I figured I'd roll the dice and check it out. And, like I am after many of Zedd's films, I really don't know what to make of it...

Donna Death plays Suzi Putrid (was the name change even necessary?), a popular underground 'death rock' front woman with a fiercely religious father and a tranny, dog-blowing brother who dad keeps locked in the bathroom for days for being a gay "under achiever". Suzi's performances usually end with her prompting her insatiably loyal fans to go out and commit murder and cannibalism. When her father finds out and kills her on stage and is, in turn, attacked by her fanatical audience, her identical twin sister is summoned from a mental hospital by their rapist uncle to replace Suzi and this is pretty much where the flimsy 'story' became completely unintelligible for me.

"They Eat Scum" is a contentious punk-rock/horror-film mash-up that is really just poorly filmed, unamusing dullness that's struggling to be offensive and weird. I didn't find any of it as particularly 'outrageous', but I guess that's just based on my own personal standards, however, not very much actually happens in the movie, aside from live punk sets and a painfully long climax involving a fight among punkers and a guy dressed as a cockroach. Still, I can't say I totally hated it, overall. It's watchable enough in being just so purposely obnoxious and dumb, but there's no way in hell I can go about recommending this unless you're into literally anything punk-rock related.