The Scavengers — The Scavengers( Blu Ray)
The Scavengers was the second roughie Western helmed by notorious US exploitation duo Lee Frost(The Defilers, Mondo Bizarre, The Black Gestapo) and Bob Cresse( The Harem Bunch, The Erotic Adventures of Zorro, & Love Slaves). It appeared in 1969 a year after their first shot at the genre the mean-spirited and nastily misogynistic Hot Spur. This film follows a group of filthy and hungry-for-the-flesh( be it any animal or female human) renegade confederate soldiers. And while it’s not quite as nasty/ unpleasant as the pair's first film, we get a fair bit of derangement, rape, and racial abuse. Here from Severin is a Blu-Ray release of the film- taking in an unrated & R version of the film, a commentary track, and a few other things.
The Scavengers (aka Ambush!, Rebel Vixens, Renegade Raiders, The Grabbers, Tombstone Territory ) was directed by Lee Frost and written by Bob Cresse. The unrated version ran one hour and forty-four minutes and the R-rated version ran ten minutes shorter. I( of course) watched the unrated version, which also featured the commentary track.
The film opens on the side of a ragged and sun-beat hill- where we see a group of seven or eight Confederate soldiers. They look absolutely filthy/ bedraggled- their bearded and sun-cooked faces dripping/ smeared with sweat & dirt. On the ground is a half-dead horse, and the group keep debating about eating the animal- but they are told to wait until the Capt. Harris (John Bliss) returns.
Night roles in fairly soon with the piercing blue-eyed, dirty-blond fringed capt returns- he won’t let the men eat the horse, but instead makes them bury it & carry on eating the mix of greens & slop they’ve been eating for weeks. Harris tells the men about a nearby near abandoned frontier town- where a carriage is due to travel through carrying thousands of $ for Union soldiers.
The next sun-beating morning the soldiers get on the road, first passing a black American shanty town, before heading into town- where they find the only occupants are a short roughly bearded with a comb-over bar owner, and a group of three large-breasted prostitutes.
As the film unfolds the carriage turns up, and it’s not quite what the captain was expecting. On board is a Union capt, his blond-haired & fancy-dressed wife, and their African American maid.
The film starts off dusty, dirty and grim- as the soldiers move to the town, we get consenting sex between the men & woman- with lots of ample, though softcore flesh on display. We get a few off-the-cuff gunning downs- before we move into the rape of maid, which is full of racial slurs & the men charting- this is unpleasant, though not as extreme as we saw in Frost & Cresse's first roughie western Hot Spurs. Towards the end of the film a bloody gun and fist showdown
The cast is fine for exploitation fare, and you can certainly see that they had a sweaty/not-very-pleasant time. I’d say the highlight here is Bliss, as the at first moral/ strict capt, who we find out in time is much worse than the most depraved of his men.
The Scavengers was a fine western roughie- I just wish it had been a little more troubling/ extreme, but I guess I’m comparing it to Hot Spur- which was a far more mean-spirited and nastily misogynistic affair- which had me flitching/ looking away at points.
This region-free Blu-ray takes in both the R-rated and Unrated- I watched the second of these, and it looks good bold/ clean in its 4k scan. With the flesh tones, dirt ‘n’ grime, and blood been particularly well defined.
The only extra on the disc is a commentary track- which features Vinegar Syndrome's Joe Rubin, Severin Films' Andrew Furtado And Temple Of Schlock's Chris Poggial. The first nine or so minutes is with Rubin & Furtado, then Poggial comes in who knew Lee Frost. They begin by talking about how this is the final and most ambitious of the pairs roughie pictures- we find out the print we’re watching is from a thought-lost camera negative. They mention one or two notable names in the credit- talking about how many exploitation directors' films turned up in others’ films. Poggial discusses how Frost often yelled at him down the phone/ getting exasperated- but this apparently was typical of him. They discuss the success of Hot Spurs, and how The Scavengers came about because of this. Later on they discuss why Frost didn’t get up to the level of notability of other exploitation directors, and the films he made after The Scavengers. This is an ok chatty track- though I’m not sure I got much out of it. Otherwise, on the disc, we get cut and uncut trailers for the film
The release comes with a thirty-two-page inlay booklet- this is made up to look like an old-time photo album, with stills from throughout the film- some of these rather fleshy/violent. So neat enough extra.
The Scavengers will appeal to those who enjoy the more sleazed/ nasty side of the Western genre. As mentioned earlier it doesn’t quite live up to the shock/ intensity of Hot Spur- but it’s still impactful enough, and it’s great to see Severin reissuing it.