IMDb > Scrubbers (1983) > IMDb user comments

IMDb user comments for
Scrubbers (1983) More at IMDbPro »

Filter: Hide Spoilers:
Index 6 comments in total 

4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
A Must-see, 10 September 2002
Author: Lars Jacobsson (front_by_front@hotmail.com) from Stockholm, Sweden

Outstanding English-language effort by the great Swedish actor/director Mai Zetterling (anyone who have seen her brilliant Night Games will agree she kicks Bergman's sorry ass!).

Although the video box art tried to sell it off as a cheap Women-In-Prison-exploitation flick, it is really serious stuff. As other commentators have pointed out the film share a lot of similarity with Alan Clarke's grim masterpiece Scum, even sharing the same screenwriter. The main difference is that Scrubbers takes place in an all-women juvenile prison, making it both a great complement to Clarke's film and an interesting study of the differences of the sexes in the patriarchal society. Didn't sound that interesting, did it? Well, it really is when you think about it! For instance, how do the girls behavior to one another differ from the boys? How do girls backgrounds, views of themselves and reason for inprisonment differ? What issues do the girls from Scrubbers lack, that the boys from Scum has to deal with, and vice versa. It's really interesting.

The film is well-acted, well-scripted, thought-provoking and unpleasant. A must-see if you like your movies hard and unembellished. 8/10

NOTE FOR NON-ENGLISH VIEWERS: I saw a non-subtitled copy Scrubbers, and although this usually is no problem for me, in this case I had some trouble understanding parts of the dialouge. My American-born girlfriend had the same problem. Unless you've majored in ugly working-class English, local swearwords or prison-jive I would advise to see a subtitled version.

Was the above comment useful to you?

5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Disturbing, heavy going and extremely watchable, 9 September 2002
Author: TC Raymond from England

As the previous user noted, SCRUBBERS is indeed a knock-off of the earlier borstal drama SCUM, only set in a reform school for girls. What did he expect though? The two films even share the same screenwriter in the excellent Roy Minton!

There are differences, however. If anything, I'd say SCRUBBERS is far more extreme and distressing than its all-male counterpart, if only for the harrowing scenes in which a heavily tranquilized inmate suffers vivid (and VERY upsetting) hallucinations concerning her young daughter. You can see where Trainspotting got the idea from, but this film does it so much better. The attack scene with the wooden cosh is a little unrealistic, but you'll never forget the riot in the workshop, the chaotic conclusion of the inmates' concert (be warned - this is not a film for the squeamish) or the intentionally understated suicide. I won't give any more away, as this is a film everyone should see at least once. Don't expect feelgood entertainment or something that invites repeated viewing, though.

The whole cast perform exceptionally well, and the eagle-eyed will be able to spot many semi-familiar faces, including former blues singer Dana Gillespie (yes, the one with the 44-inch bust!), Pauline Melville (who played Vyv's ratbag mother in the eighties sitcom The Young Ones), Kathy Burke (playing a younger variation on her future star-making turn as 'Waynetta Slob'), Pam StClements of EastEnders fame and even Robbie Coltrane as a character appropriately nicknamed 'Puff Guts'.

There is also a little in-joke from the film's production house, HandMade Films - one scene has the inmates watching a notably violent excerpt from the earlier HandMade triumph THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY on television. Which is proof positive that the British Film Industry was once in very good health indeed.

Provocative, gut-churning and upsetting. See it.

Was the above comment useful to you?

Familiar story is heavy handed, 28 February 2003
4/10
Author: rosscinema (rosscinema@cox.net) from Oceanside, Ca.

This is a film from the much respected Mai Zetterling and to be honest its clearly not one of her better efforts. We have all seen girls in prison/reform school type of films before and while the gritty atmosphere of the film is effective its still very familiar and bleak. I would have appreciated more of an effort to understand these girls instead of just having the characters put in situations and then watching them react. We know very little or nothing at all about most of these girls. I was interested in the two characters Carol and Eddie and I wish they had a script with a little more sharper vision to it. There is one scene that shows two girls fighting and it was in slow motion. Why is that one and only scene in slow motion? No reason for it. It looked very badly staged. English viewers will recognize a lot of the actress's in the film while Americans will probably only recognize Robbie Coltrane in an early effort. Film just didn't have an original angle in the way it was presented. To bad, some really talented people were involved in this production.

Was the above comment useful to you?

7 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Where's ya tool...er, I mean tampon!, 2 March 2001
1/10
Author: KillMe666 from Dorset, England

I saw this film on cable recently and remembered how bad it was the first time I saw it.

The story is about female delinquents locked up in an English borstal in the early eighties.

This film blatantly 'borrows' from the film Scum with Ray Winstone and I mean blatant - there's the cut-wrist suicide from one of the more unstable inmates, the hard-nut - Eddie (who replaces Scum's Ray Winstone), and the scene where an attack is made in a deserted part of the compound with a steel bar - Scrubbers version features a slow-motion sequence which is obviously faked!

The only reasons for watching this garbage is to see early roles from Kathy 'I'm smoking a fag!' Burke from the 'Harry Enfield Show', Robbie Coltrane and 'Pat' from 'Eastenders'. As well as many a naked pair of breasts - which make the movie watchable - just.

Verdict - One for the lads.

Oi Oi savaloy!

Was the above comment useful to you?

1 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
A Common Story With Good Performance, Horrible Pronunciation and Characters not Well Developed, 19 June 2004
Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The lesbian Carol Howden (Amanda York) and the troublemaker Annetta Brady (Chrissie Cotterill) escape from a reformatory for different reasons: Carol wants be arrested again and to go to Borstal, where her girlfriend is imprisoned, and Anneta wants to see her daughter in a foster house. They both are sent to Borstal, a prison for young women, where the whole story takes place. Annetta blames Carol for their new arresting. This English movie has a good performance of the cast. However, the characters are so badly developed that we, viewers, do not know the reasons and the motives why the women are confined in such a place. Their accents are horrible and the story has nothing different or special comparing with other movies of this theme. Watchable and forgettable. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): 'Aonde Nasce o Crime' ('Where The Crime is Born')

Was the above comment useful to you?

1 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
An Inferior Role Reversal Of SCUM, 27 August 2004
4/10
Author: Theo Robertson from Isle Of Bute, Scotland

As everyone seems to have noted SCRUBBERS seems to be nothing more than SCUM made for a female audience . The structures are very similar ( Hardly surprising since SCUM author Roy Minton co-wrote this ) with a relatively thread bare plot getting in the road of episodic incidents . Even the fact that we see British TV stars like Robbie Coltrane ( More or less unrecognisable in a small role ) , Kathy Burke ( As Waynetta Slob ! )and Pat Wicks from EASTENDERS ( Before she met Frank Butcher ) make comparisions with SCUM inevitable

But when all is said and done this a very poor follow up to SCUM mainly because of three reasons

1 ) The poor acting . Despite being a low budget movie the cast of SCUM at least played their parts with intensity especially Ray Winstone . There`s no such acting tour de force here and if memory serves me right much of the acting is plain awful

2 ) There`s no real stand out scene as in SCUM that people discuss like the scene in the greenhouse . There are slightly sickening scenes like the puppet show but they`re unconvincing and seem written in to shock a blase audience . Mind you could say the same with the greenhouse scene in scum so I don`t know if it`s a valid criticism

3 ) What is a valid criticism is that there`s no great lines to qoute in SCRUBBERS . Try discussing SCUM without saying " Where`s yer tool ? " or " I`m the daddy now " or " You want f***in` stripping ? "

A needless and inferior follow up to SCUM probably made to cash in on the success of the 1979 film which became a massive hit on video round about the same time

Was the above comment useful to you?

Add another comment

Related Links

Plot summary Ratings Plot keywords
Main details Your user comments Your vote history