Indiewood (also known as "specialty", "alternative", "indie", or "quality") films are made outside of the Hollywood studio system or traditional arthouse / independent filmmaking system yet managed to be produced, financed and distributed by the two with varying degrees of success and/or failure.
146-509: The American independent film, prior to the 1980s and first half of the 1990s, was previously associated with b movies , exploitation films , avant-garde underground cinema (when it was known as the New American Cinema ), social and political documentaries, experimental animated shorts (since the mid-1930s featuring works by pioneer animators Mary Ellen Bute and Oskar Fischinger ) and social realist dramas . Throughout
292-410: A cult following . Exploitation films often include themes such as suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, gore, destruction, rebellion, mayhem, and the bizarre. Such films were first seen in their modern form in the early 1920s, but they were popularized in the 60s and 70s with the general relaxing of censorship and cinematic taboos in the U.S. and Europe. An early example,
438-463: A newsreel , a short and/or serial , and a cartoon , followed by a double feature. The second feature, which actually screened before the main event, cost the exhibitor less per minute than the equivalent running time in shorts. The majors' "clearance" rules favoring their affiliated theaters prevented timely access to top-quality films for independent theaters; the second feature allowed them to promote quantity instead. The additional movie also gave
584-433: A "balanced" or entirely youth-oriented double feature as a matinee and then a single film for a more mature audience at night. In the words of one industry report, afternoon moviegoers, "composed largely of housewives and children, want quantity for their money while the evening crowds want 'something good and not too much of it. ' " Series films are often unquestioningly consigned to the B movie category, but even here there
730-406: A "programmer capable of occupying either half of a neighbourhood theatre's double-bill, [it was] budgeted at approximately $ 400,000. [Its] distributor, United Artists, released around twenty-five programmers with production budgets between $ 100,000 and $ 400,000 in 1955." The film's length, 106 minutes, is A level, but its star, Ralph Meeker , had previously appeared in only one major film. Its source
876-418: A $ 125,000 purchase price, Levine then spent $ 1.5 million on advertising and publicity, a virtually unprecedented amount. The New York Times was not impressed, claiming that the movie would have drawn "little more than yawns in the film market ... had it not been [launched] throughout the country with a deafening barrage of publicity". Levine counted on first-weekend box office for his profits, booking
1022-399: A 'warning bell' so the sensitive can 'close their eyes. ' " That year, Roger Corman took AIP down a new road: "When they asked me to make two ten-day black-and-white horror films to play as a double feature, I convinced them instead to finance one horror film in color." The resulting House of Usher typifies the continuing ambiguities of B picture classification. It was clearly an A film by
1168-407: A 1953 RKO release, is the only film noir from the genre's classic period directed by a woman. That year, RKO released Split Second , which concludes in a nuclear test range, and is perhaps the first "atomic noir". The most famous such movie, the independently produced Kiss Me Deadly (1955), typifies the persistently murky middle ground between the A and B picture, as Richard Maltby describes:
1314-513: A Few Dollars More ; The Big Gundown ; Day of Anger ; Face to Face ; Duck, You Sucker! ; A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West . Quentin Tarantino directed two tributes to the genre, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight . A splatter film, or gore film, is a horror film that focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and violence. It began as a distinct genre in
1460-443: A Ride . Ten B noirs that year came from Poverty Row's big three: Republic, Monogram, and PRC/Eagle-Lion, and one came from tiny Screen Guild. Three majors beside RKO contributed a total of five more. Along with these eighteen unambiguous B noirs, an additional dozen or so noir programmers came out of Hollywood. Still, most of the majors' low-budget production remained the sort now largely ignored. RKO's representative output included
1606-511: A Zombie (1943), and The Body Snatcher (1945), directed by Jacques Tourneur , Robert Wise , and others who became renowned only later in their careers or entirely in retrospect. The movie now widely described as the first classic film noir, Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), a 64-minute B, was produced at RKO, which released many additional melodramatic thrillers in a similarly stylish vein. The other major studios also turned out
SECTION 10
#17327903177561752-465: A component of more complex plots set in elaborately constructed civilizations (such as the Frank Herbert ’s Dune series and the works of Isaac Asimov ), for much of the 20th century space travel has been mostly featured in cheap "B films" that often had in their core a simplistic plot typical of another exploitation subgenre, such as slasher or zombie films . Spacesploration films feature
1898-576: A considerable number of movies now identified as noir during the 1940s. Though many of the best-known film noirs were A-level productions, most 1940s pictures in the mode were either of the ambiguous programmer type or destined straight for the bottom of the bill. In the decades since, these cheap entertainments, generally dismissed at the time, have become some of the most treasured products of Hollywood's Golden Age. In one sample year, 1947, RKO produced along with several noir programmers and A pictures, two straight B noirs: Desperate and The Devil Thumbs
2044-402: A few filmmakers began making nudies with greater attention to plot. Best known was Russ Meyer , who released his first successful narrative nudie, the comic Immoral Mr. Teas , in 1959. Five years later, Meyer came out with his breakthrough film, Lorna , which combined sex, violence, and a dramatic storyline. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), made for about $ 45,000, ultimately became
2190-460: A few more years, but Republic Pictures, long associated with cheap sagebrush sagas, was out of the filmmaking business by decade's end. In other genres, Universal kept its Ma and Pa Kettle series going through 1957, while Allied Artists stuck with the Bowery Boys until 1958. RKO, weakened by years of mismanagement, exited the movie industry in 1957. Hollywood's A product was getting longer,
2336-399: A flat rate, they were rented out on a percentage basis, like A films. The success of I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) thus brought AIP a large return, made for about $ 100,000, it grossed more than $ 2 million . As the film's title suggests, the studio relied on both fantastic genre subjects and new, teen-oriented angles. When Hot Rod Gang (1958) turned a profit, hot rod horror was given
2482-437: A fully bared, unpainted breast, but flirts with nudity throughout. The Meyer and Corman lines were drawing closer. Exploitation films An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content . Exploitation films are generally low-quality " B movies ", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain
2628-424: A lead role. Laconic characters and desert scenes feature in many Ozploitation films, but the term has been used for a variety of Australian films of the era that relied on shocking or titillating their audiences. A documentary about the genre was Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! . Such films deal with themes concerning Australian society, particularly in respect of masculinity (especially
2774-520: A lifestyle unbound by the restrictions of clothing, yet this depiction was restricted by the requirement that genitals should not be shown. Still, there was a subversive element to them, as the nudist camps inherently rejected modern society and its values regarding the human body. These films frequently involve a criticism of the class system, equating body shame with the upper class, and nudism with social equality. One scene in The Unashamed makes
2920-426: A long decline during the mid-1980s with the advent of home video. As the drive-in movie theater began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, theater owners began to look for ways to bring in patrons. One solution was to book lower cost exploitation films. Some producers from the 1950s to the 1980s made films directly for the drive-in market, and the commodity product needed for a weekly change led to another theory about
3066-400: A matter of course: for an A picture, along with the trailers , or screen previews, that presaged its arrival, "[t]he new film's title on the marquee and the listings for it in the local newspaper constituted all the advertising most movies got", writes Epstein. Aside from at the theater itself, B films might not be advertised at all. The introduction of sound had driven costs higher: by 1930,
SECTION 20
#17327903177563212-485: A new Monogram production house. Into the 1950s, most Republic and Monogram product was roughly on par with the low end of the majors' output. Less sturdy Poverty Row concerns, with a penchant for grand sobriquets like Conquest, Empire, Imperial, and Peerless, continued to churn out dirt-cheap quickies. Joel Finler has analyzed the average length of feature releases in 1938, indicating the studios' relative emphasis on B production ( United Artists produced little, focusing on
3358-509: A person is raped, left for dead, recovers and then exacts a graphic, gory revenge against the rapists. The most famous example is I Spit on Your Grave (also called Day of the Woman ). It is not unusual for the main character in these films to be a successful, independent city woman, who is attacked by a man from the country. The genre has drawn praise from feminists such as Carol J. Clover , whose 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in
3504-550: A point about the artificiality of clothing and its related values through a mocking portrayal of a group of nude artists who paint fully clothed subjects. The term "Ozploitation" refers broadly to Australian horror, erotic or crime films of the 1970s and 1980s. Changes to Australia's film classification system in 1971 led to the production of a number of such low-budget, privately funded films, assisted by tax exemptions and targeting export markets. Often an internationally recognised actor (but of waning notability) would be hired to play
3650-489: A producer, the first question he asks is not "what is your film like?" but "what film is your film like?" That's the way it is, we can only make Zombie 2 , never Zombie 1 . Luigi Cozzi Mockbusters, sometimes called "remakesploitation films", are copycat movies that try to cash in on the advertising of heavily promoted films from major studios. Production company the Asylum , which prefers to call them "tie-ins",
3796-467: A profit through whatever bookings they could pick up in the gaps left by the larger concerns. With the widespread arrival of sound film in American theaters in 1929, many independent exhibitors began dropping the then-dominant presentation model, which involved live acts and a broad variety of shorts before a single featured film. A new programming scheme developed that soon became standard practice:
3942-793: A scientifically inaccurate and inconsistent depiction of space travel and are usually set in traversing spaceships and deserted planets, partially due to the films’ limited resources. Such films include From the Earth to the Moon , Robinson Crusoe on Mars , Planet of the Vampires , The Black Hole and Saturn 3 . During one of the peaks of space travel films, the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker featured outlandishly unrealistic scenes of space warfare , despite otherwise focusing on real contemporary (i.e. Cold War) intelligence agencies . Spaghetti Westerns are Italian-made westerns that emerged in
4088-423: A serial killer stalking and violently killing a sequence of victims. Victims are often teenagers or young adults. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) is often credited with creating the basic premise of the genre, though Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974) is usually considered to have started the genre while John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) was responsible for cementing the genre in the public eye. Halloween
4234-662: A stereotypically black American urban milieu. A prominent theme was black Americans overcoming hostile authority (" The Man ") through cunning and violence. The first examples of this subgenre were Shaft and Melvin Van Peebles ' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song . Others are Black Caesar , Black Devil Doll , Blacula , Black Shampoo , Boss Nigger , Coffy , Coonskin , Cotton Comes to Harlem , Dolemite , Foxy Brown , Hell Up in Harlem , The Mack , Disco Godfather , Mandingo , The Spook Who Sat by
4380-563: A studio's more important productions, while also breaking in new personnel. Studios in the minor leagues of the industry, such as Columbia Pictures and Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), focused on exactly those sorts of cheap productions. Their movies, with relatively short running times, targeted theaters that had to economize on rental and operating costs, particularly small-town and urban neighborhood venues, or "nabes". Even smaller production houses, known as Poverty Row studios, made films whose costs might run as low as $ 3,000, seeking
4526-463: A subsequent-run A film had largely disappeared from American theaters. The AIP-style dual genre package was the new model. In July 1960, the latest Joseph E. Levine sword-and-sandals import, Hercules Unchained , opened at neighborhood theaters in New York. A suspense film, Terror Is a Man , ran as a "co-feature" with a now familiar sort of exploitation gimmick: "The dénouement helpfully includes
Indiewood - Misplaced Pages Continue
4672-408: A topic of discourse for feminist film critics . Some critics have said that lesbian sex on screen is an expression of chauvinism and male power as the images are portrayed for male pleasure. The casting of pornstars and hardcore actresses in sexploitation films is not uncommon. The films sometimes contain sex shows intended to shock or arouse their audiences. Slasher films focus on
4818-526: A try: Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959). David Cook credits AIP with leading the way "in demographic exploitation , target marketing , and saturation booking, all of which became standard procedure for the majors in planning and releasing their mass-market 'event' films" by the late 1970s. In terms of content, the majors were already there, with films about juvenile delinquency such as Warner Bros.' Untamed Youth (1957) and MGM's High School Confidential (1958), both starring Mamie Van Doren . In 1954,
4964-476: A young filmmaker named Roger Corman received his first screen credits as writer and associate producer of Allied Artists' Highway Dragnet . Corman soon independently produced his first movie, Monster from the Ocean Floor , on a $ 12,000 budget and a six-day shooting schedule. Among the six films he worked on in 1955, Corman produced and directed the first official ARC release, Apache Woman , and Day
5110-652: Is a modern homage to the genre. "Canuxploitation" is a neologism that was coined in 1999 by the magazine Broken Pencil , in the article "Canuxploitation! Goin' Down the Road with the Cannibal Girls that Ate Black Christmas. Your Complete Guide to the Canadian B-Movie", to refer to Canadian-made B-movies . Most mainstream critical analysis of this period in Canadian film history, however, refers to it as
5256-510: Is a prominent producer of these films. Such films have often come from Italy, which has been quick to latch on to trends like Westerns, James Bond movies, and zombie films. They have long been a staple of directors such as Jim Wynorski ( The Bare Wench Project , and the Cliffhanger imitation Sub Zero ), who make movies for the direct-to-video market. Such films are beginning to attract attention from major Hollywood studios, who served
5402-927: Is also now used loosely to refer to some higher-budget, mainstream films with exploitation-style content, usually in genres traditionally associated with the B movie. From their beginnings to the present day, B movies have provided opportunities both for those coming up in the profession and others whose careers are waning. Celebrated filmmakers such as Anthony Mann and Jonathan Demme learned their craft in B movies. They are where actors such as John Wayne and Jack Nicholson first became established, and they have provided work for former A movie actors and actresses, such as Vincent Price and Karen Black . Some actors and actresses, such as Bela Lugosi , Eddie Constantine , Bruce Campbell , and Pam Grier , worked in B movies for most of their careers. The terms "B actor and actress" are sometimes used to refer to performers who find work primarily or exclusively in B pictures. In 1927–28, at
5548-505: Is also responsible for establishing additional tropes which would go on to define the genre in years to come. The masked villain, a central group of weak teenagers with one strong hero or heroine, the protagonists being isolated or stranded in precarious locations or situations, and either the protagonists or antagonists (or possibly both) experiencing warped family lives or values were all tropes largely founded in Halloween . John Carpenter
5694-596: Is ambiguity: at MGM, for example, popular series like the Andy Hardy and the Dr. Kildare – Dr. Gillespie chronicles had leading stars and budgets that would have been A-level at most of the lesser studios. For many series, even a lesser major's standard B budget was far out of reach: Poverty Row's Consolidated Pictures featured Tarzan, the Police Dog in a series with the proud name of Melodramatic Dog Features. By 1940,
5840-778: Is now believed lost. In 1953, The Wild One , starring Marlon Brando, was the first film about a motorcycle gang. A string of low-budget juvenile delinquent films featuring hot-rods and motorcycles followed in the 1950s. The success of American International Pictures' The Wild Angels in 1966 ignited a more robust trend that continued into the early 1970s. Other biker films include Motorpsycho (1965), Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), The Born Losers (1967), Wild Rebels (1967), Angels from Hell (1968), Easy Rider (1969), Satan's Sadists (1969), Naked Angels (1969), Nam's Angels (1970), and C.C. and Company (1970). Stone (1974) , Mad Max (1979) and 1% (2017) combine elements of this subgenre with Ozploitation. In
5986-534: Is pure pulp , one of Mickey Spillane 's Mike Hammer novels, but Robert Aldrich 's direction is self-consciously aestheticized. The result is a brutal genre picture that also evokes contemporary anxieties about what was often spoken of simply as the Bomb. The fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, along with less expressible qualms about radioactive fallout from America's own atomic tests, energized many of
Indiewood - Misplaced Pages Continue
6132-461: Is sometimes called paracinema . "Exploitation" is loosely defined and arguably has as much to do with the viewer's perception of the film as with the film's actual content. Titillating material and artistic content often co-exist, as demonstrated by the fact that art films that failed to pass the Hays Code were often shown in the same grindhouses as exploitation films. Exploitation films share
6278-591: Is the controversial 1980 Cannibal Holocaust , in which six real animals were killed on screen. Others include Cannibal Ferox , Eaten Alive! , Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death , The Mountain of the Cannibal God , Last Cannibal World and the first film of the genre, The Man From Deep River . Famous directors in this genre include Umberto Lenzi , Ruggero Deodato , Jesús Franco and Joe D'Amato . The Green Inferno (2013)
6424-494: Is to shock the audience by dealing with taboo subject matter. The first mondo film is Mondo Cane ( A Dog's World ). Others include Shocking Asia , Africa Addio (aka Africa Blood and Guts and Farewell Africa ), Goodbye Uncle Tom and Faces of Death . These "nature-run-amok" films focus on an animal or group of animals, far larger and more aggressive than usual for their species, terrorizing humans while another group of humans tries to fight back. This genre began in
6570-567: The Thunder Warrior trilogy, Johnny Firecloud , Angry Joe Bass , The Manitou , Prophecy , Avenged (aka Savaged ), Scalps , Clearcut and The Ghost Dance . Sexploitation films resemble softcore pornography and often include scenes involving nude or semi-nude women. They typically have sex scenes that are more graphic sex than mainstream films. The plots of sexploitation films include pulp fiction elements such as killers, slavery, female domination , martial arts,
6716-633: The Disney fold after the exit of the Weinsteins, and James Schamus , former joint head of Good Machine , at Focus Features . The films are often made for far less money than Hollywood films (some films like Robert Townsend 's 1987's satire Hollywood Shuffle and Kevin Smith 's 1994 Gen X comedy Clerks were funded by using credit cards ) and each aspect of the filmmaking process has to undergo less scrutiny by committees. Additionally, within
6862-683: The Golden Age of Hollywood , this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second half of a double feature , somewhat similar to B-sides in recorded music. However, the production of such films as "second features" in the United States largely declined by the end of the 1950s. This shift was due to the rise of commercial television, which prompted film studio B movie production departments to transition into television film production divisions. These divisions continued to create content similar to B movies, albeit in
7008-643: The Mexican Spitfire and Lum and Abner comedy series, thrillers featuring the Saint and the Falcon , Westerns starring Tim Holt , and Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller . Jean Hersholt played Dr. Christian in six films between 1939 and 1941. The Courageous Dr. Christian (1940) was a standard entry: "In the course of an hour or so of screen time, the saintly physician managed to cure an epidemic of spinal meningitis, demonstrate benevolence towards
7154-1252: The Winter War in Finland, the Korean War and the Vietnam War before the major studios showed interest. When Orson Welles ' radio production of The War of the Worlds from The Mercury Theatre on the Air for Halloween in 1938 shocked many Americans and made news, Universal Pictures edited their serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars into a short feature called Mars Attacks the World for release in November of that year. Some Poverty Row low-budget B movies often exploit major studio projects. Their rapid production schedule allows them to take advantage of publicity attached to major studio films. For example, Edward L. Alperson produced William Cameron Menzies ' film Invaders from Mars to beat Paramount Pictures ' production of director George Pal 's The War of
7300-679: The ocker male), male attitudes towards women, attitudes towards and treatment of Indigenous Australians , violence, alcohol and environmental exploitation and destruction. The films typically have rural or outback settings, depicting the Australian landscape and environment as an almost spiritually malign force that alienates white Australians, frustrating their personal ambitions and activities, and their attempts to subdue it. Notable examples include Mad Max , Alvin Purple , Patrick and Turkey Shoot . This genre contains films in which
7446-564: The "Premiere" rubric. In 1947 as well, PRC was subsumed by Eagle-Lion , a British company seeking entry to the American market. Warners' former "Keeper of the Bs", Brian Foy, was installed as production chief. In the 1940s, RKO stood out among the industry's Big Five for its focus on B pictures. From a latter-day perspective, the most famous of the major studios' Golden Age B units is Val Lewton 's horror unit at RKO. Lewton produced such moody, mysterious films as Cat People (1942), I Walked with
SECTION 50
#17327903177567592-415: The "nudie-cutie", which featured nudity but no touching, and the "roughie", which included nudity and violent, antisocial behavior. Nudist films were marked by self-contradictory qualities. They presented themselves as educational films, but exploited their subject matter by focusing mainly on the nudist camps ' most beautiful female residents, while denying the existence of such exploitation. They depicted
7738-497: The "proto-indies" of the 1960s such as Robert Downey Sr 's still image film Chafed Elbows (1966), John Cassavetes 's Academy Award -nominated Faces and Brian de Palma 's Greetings (each from 1968) which in turn were influenced by the culture of the Beat Generation , the polar opposite to the conformist, gray-flannel conformity of 1950s America . Most Indiewood films are first shown at film festivals with
7884-488: The "tax shelter" era emerged as among Canada's most important and influential filmmakers of the era, including David Cronenberg , William Fruet , Ivan Reitman and Bob Clark , the new regulations also had an entirely unforeseen side effect: a sudden rush of low-budget horror and genre films, intended as pure tax shelters since they were designed not to turn a conventional profit. Many of the films, in fact, were made by American filmmakers, whose projects had been rejected by
8030-540: The "tax-shelter era". The phenomenon emerged in 1974, when the government of Canada introduced new regulations to jumpstart the then-underdeveloped Canadian film industry, increasing the Capital Cost Allowance tax credit from 60 per cent to 100 per cent. While some important and noteworthy films were made under the program, including The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Lies My Father Told Me , and some film directors who cut their teeth in
8176-542: The 1930s, the average U.S. feature production cost had essentially doubled over the 1940s, reaching $ 1 million by the turn of the decade—a 93% rise after adjusting for inflation. The first prominent victim of the changing market was Eagle-Lion, which released its last films in 1951. By 1953, the old Monogram brand had disappeared, the company having adopted the identity of its higher-end subsidiary, Allied Artists. The following year, Allied released Hollywood's last B series Westerns. Non-series B Westerns continued to appear for
8322-735: The 1933 film Ecstasy , included nude scenes featuring the Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr . The film proved popular at the box office but caused concern for the American cinema trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The organisation, which applied the Hays Code for film censorship, also disapproved of the work of Dwain Esper , the director responsible for exploitation movies such as Marihuana (1936) and Maniac (1934). The Motion Picture Association of America (and its predecessor,
8468-434: The 1950s, when concern over nuclear weapons testing made movies about giant monsters popular. These were typically either giant prehistoric creatures awakened by atomic explosions or ordinary animals mutated by radiation. Among them were Godzilla , Them! and Tarantula . The trend was revived in the 1970s as awareness of pollution increased and corporate greed and military irresponsibility were blamed for destruction of
8614-467: The 1950s. Early B movies were often part of series in which the star repeatedly played the same character. Almost always shorter than the top-billed feature films, many had running times of 70 minutes or less. The term connoted a general perception that B movies were inferior to the more lavishly budgeted headliners; individual B films were often ignored by critics. Latter-day B movies still sometimes inspire multiple sequels , but series are less common. As
8760-418: The 1960s saw a major expansion in the commercial viability of a variety of B movie subgenres that became known collectively as exploitation films . The combination of intensive and gimmick-laden publicity with movies featuring vulgar subject matter and often outrageous imagery dated back decades. The term had originally defined truly fringe productions, made at the lowest depths of Poverty Row or entirely outside
8906-409: The 1960s, Roger Corman directed Edgar Allan Poe B horror movies with well-known horror veteran movie actors with Boris Karloff , Peter Lorre , Vincent Price and a young, unknown Jack Nicholson . He turned down directing Easy Rider , which was directed by Dennis Hopper . Black exploitation films, or "blaxploitation" films, are made with black actors, ostensibly for black audiences, often in
SECTION 60
#17327903177569052-491: The 1970s, with Starcrash and the Turkish Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam and Süpermen dönüyor . The latter two used scenes from Star Wars and unauthorized excerpts from John Williams ' score. Mondo films, often called shockumentaries, are quasi-documentary films about sensationalized topics like exotic customs from around the world or gruesome death footage. The goal of mondo films, as of shock exploitation,
9198-532: The Asylum with a cease and desist order to try to prevent them from releasing The Day the Earth Stopped to video stores in advance of the release of The Day the Earth Stood Still to theaters. The term mockbuster was used as early as the 1950s (when The Monster of Piedras Blancas was a clear derivative of Creature From The Black Lagoon ). The term did not become popular until
9344-586: The Big Five over to A-film production, making the smaller studios even more important as B movie suppliers. Genre pictures made at very low cost remained the backbone of Poverty Row, with even Republic's and Monogram's budgets rarely climbing over $ 200,000. Many smaller Poverty Row firms folded as the eight majors, with their proprietary distribution exchanges, now commanded about 95% of U.S. and Canadian box office receipts. In 1946, independent producer David O. Selznick brought his bloated-budget spectacle Duel in
9490-535: The Body Snatchers (1956), released by Allied Artists, treats conformist pressures and the evil of banality in haunting, allegorical fashion. The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), directed by Bert I. Gordon , is both a monster movie that happens to depict the horrific effects of radiation exposure and "a ferocious cold-war fable [that] spins Korea , the army's obsessive secrecy, and America's post-war growth into one fantastic whole". The Amazing Colossal Man
9636-497: The Capital Cost Allowance was reduced to 50 per cent, although films that had entered production under the program continued to be released for another few years afterward. However, at least one Canadian film blog extends the "Canuxploitation" term to refer to any Canadian horror, thriller or science fiction film made up to the present day. Carsploitation films feature scenes of cars racing and crashing, featuring
9782-636: The Devil (1975), Cannonball (1976), Mad Max (1979), Safari 3000 (1982), Dead End Drive-In (1986) and Black Moon Rising (1986). Quentin Tarantino directed a tribute to the genre, Death Proof (2007). In the 1970s, a revisionist, non-traditional style of samurai film achieved some popularity in Japan. It became known as chambara , an onomatopoeia describing the clash of swords. Its origins can be traced as far back as Akira Kurosawa , whose films feature moral grayness and exaggerated violence, but
9928-458: The Door , Sugar Hill , Super Fly , T.N.T. Jackson , The Thing with Two Heads , Truck Turner , Willie Dynamite and Cleopatra Jones . In blaxploitation horror movies back in the 1970s, despite the leading stars in those movies being black, some of these movies were either produced, edited, or directed by white filmmakers. Blacula , a well-known blaxploitation horror movie,
10074-1003: The Hollywood studio system as not commercially viable, giving rise to the Hollywood North phenomenon. Variety dubbed the genre "maple syrup porno". Notable examples of the genre include Cannibal Girls , Deathdream , Deranged , The Corpse Eaters , Black Christmas , Shivers , Death Weekend , The Clown Murders , Rituals , Cathy's Curse , Deadly Harvest , Starship Invasions , Rabid , I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses , The Brood , Funeral Home , Terror Train , The Changeling , Death Ship , My Bloody Valentine , Prom Night , Happy Birthday to Me , Scanners , Ghostkeeper , Visiting Hours , Highpoint , Humongous , Deadly Eyes , Class of 1984 , Videodrome , Curtains , American Nightmare , Self Defense , Spasms and Def-Con 4 . The period officially ended in 1982, when
10220-554: The Hollywood system. Many graphically depicted the wages of sin in the context of promoting prudent lifestyle choices, particularly " sexual hygiene ". Audiences might see explicit footage of anything from a live birth to a ritual circumcision. Such films were not generally booked as part of movie theaters' regular schedules but rather presented as special events by traveling roadshow promoters (they might also appear as fodder for " grindhouses ", which typically had no regular schedule at all). The most famous of those promoters, Kroger Babb ,
10366-507: The Indiewood approach the filmmaker can take as long as they need in the post-production phase of their film - whereas in Hollywood they are contracted to finish the film in a specific period of time (usually 10 weeks). In Hollywood, the film then goes on to show in focus group screenings on the studio lot. In Indiewood, the filmmakers can determine the next steps of the film. They also bear striking similarities to as well as were influenced by
10512-489: The MPPDA) cooperated with censorship boards and grassroots organizations in the hope of preserving the image of a "clean" Hollywood, but the distributors of exploitation film operated outside of this system and often welcomed controversy as a form of free promotion. Their producers used sensational elements to attract audiences lost to television. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention in academic circles, where it
10658-636: The Modern Horror Film examines the implications of its reversals of cinema's traditional gender roles. This type of film can be seen as an offshoot of the vigilante film, with the victim's transformation into avenger as the key scene. Author Jacinda Read and others believe that rape–revenge should be categorized as a narrative structure rather than a true subgenre, because its plot can be found in films of many different genres, such as thrillers ( Ms. 45 ), dramas ( Lipstick ), westerns ( Hannie Caulder ) and art films ( Memento ). One instance of
10804-785: The Republic Westerns with John Wayne and the Three Mesquiteers achieved a uniquely American perfection of the well-made story." At the far end of the industry, Poverty Row's Ajax put out oaters starring Harry Carey , then in his fifties. The Weiss outfit had the Range Rider series, the American Rough Rider series, and the Morton of the Mounted "northwest action thrillers". One low-budget oater of
10950-458: The S.S. Last Days ), Gestapo's Last Orgy , or Last Orgy of The Third Reich , or Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler , Salon Kitty and SS Experiment Camp . Many Nazisploitation films were influenced by art films such as Pier Paolo Pasolini 's infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and Liliana Cavani's Il portiere di notte ( The Night Porter ). Inglourious Basterds (2009) and The Devil's Rock (2011) are modern homages to
11096-518: The Scorpion's Tail , A Lizard in a Woman's Skin , Black Belly of the Tarantula , The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh , Blood and Black Lace , Phenomena , Opera and Tenebrae . Dario Argento , Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava are the best-known directors of this genre. The 2013 Argentinian film Sonno Profondo is a modern tribute to the genre. In Italy, when you bring a script to
11242-457: The Sun to market with heavy nationwide promotion and wide release. The distribution strategy was a major success, despite what was widely perceived as the movie's poor quality. The Duel release anticipated practices that fueled the B movie industry in the late 1950s; when the top Hollywood studios made them standard two decades after that, the B movie was hard hit. Considerations beside cost made
11388-630: The World Ended , half of Arkoff and Nicholson's first twin-bill package. Corman directed over fifty feature films through 1990. As of 2007, he remained active as a producer, with more than 350 movies to his credit. Often referred to as the "King of the Bs", Corman has said that "to my way of thinking, I never made a 'B' movie in my life", as the traditional B movie was dying out when he began making pictures. He prefers to describe his metier as "low-budget exploitation films". In later years Corman, both with AIP and as head of his own companies, helped launch
11534-645: The Worlds to the cinemas, and Pal's The Time Machine was beaten to the cinemas by Edgar G. Ulmer 's film Beyond the Time Barrier . As a result, many major studios, producers, and stars keep their projects secret. Grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly showed exploitation films. These theatres were most popular throughout the 1970s and early 1980s in New York City and other urban centers, mainly in North America, but began
11680-406: The average U.S. feature film cost $ 375,000 to produce. A broad range of motion pictures occupied the B category. The leading studios made not only clear-cut A and B films, but also movies classifiable as "programmers" (also known as "in-betweeners" or "intermediates"). As Taves describes, "Depending on the prestige of the theater and the other material on the double bill, a programmer could show up at
11826-465: The average production cost of an American feature was $ 400,000, a negligible increase over ten years. A number of small Hollywood companies had folded around the turn of the decade, including the ambitious Grand National , but a new firm, Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), emerged as third in the Poverty Row hierarchy behind Republic and Monogram. The double feature, never universal, was still
11972-442: The average running time of top-of-the-line films increased, so did that of B pictures. In its current usage, the term has somewhat contradictory connotations: it may signal an opinion that a certain movie is (a) a "genre film" with minimal artistic ambitions or (b) a lively, energetic film uninhibited by the constraints imposed on more expensive projects and unburdened by the conventions of putatively serious independent film . The term
12118-511: The bottom line. Poverty Row studios, from modest outfits like Mascot Pictures , Tiffany Pictures , and Sono Art-World Wide Pictures , down to shoestring operations, made exclusively B movies, serials, and other shorts, and also distributed totally independent productions and imported films. In no position to directly block book, they mostly sold regional distribution exclusivity to " states rights " firms, which in turn peddled blocks of movies to exhibitors, typically six or more pictures featuring
12264-482: The careers of Francis Ford Coppola , Jonathan Demme , Robert Towne , and Robert De Niro , among many others. In the late 1950s, William Castle became known as the great innovator of the B movie publicity gimmick. Audiences of Macabre (1958), an $ 86,000 production distributed by Allied Artists, were invited to take out insurance policies to cover potential death from fright. The 1959 creature feature The Tingler featured Castle's most famous gimmick, Percepto: at
12410-420: The classic double feature vanished from many American theaters during the 1950s. The major studios promoted the benefits of recycling, offering former headlining movies as second features in the place of traditional B films. With television airing many classic Westerns as well as producing its own original Western series, the cinematic market for B oaters in particular was drying up. After barely inching forward in
12556-516: The dangers of venereal disease from premarital sex. Mom and Dad , a 1945 film about pregnancy and childbirth, was promoted in lurid terms. She Shoulda Said No! (1949) combined the themes of drug use and promiscuous sex. In the early days of film, when exploitation films relied on such sensational subjects as these, they had to present a very conservative moral viewpoint to avoid censorship, as movies then were not considered to enjoy First Amendment protection. Several war films were made about
12702-591: The decade, more than four thousand pictures, are classifiable as Bs. The Western was by far the predominant B genre in both the 1930s and, to a lesser degree, the 1940s. Film historian Jon Tuska has argued that "the 'B' product of the Thirties—the Universal films with [Tom] Mix , [Ken] Maynard , and [Buck] Jones , the Columbia features with Buck Jones and Tim McCoy , the RKO George O'Brien series,
12848-446: The disenfranchised, set an example for wayward youth, and calm the passions of an amorous old maid." Down in Poverty Row, low budgets led to less palliative fare. Republic aspired to major-league respectability while making many cheap and modestly budgeted Westerns, but there was not much from the bigger studios that compared with Monogram " exploitation pictures " like juvenile delinquency exposé Where Are Your Children? (1943) and
12994-402: The distinctions between genres by containing elements of two or more genres at a time. Their subgenres are identifiable by the characteristics they use. For example, Doris Wishman's Let Me Die A Woman contains elements of both shock documentary and sexploitation. Although they featured lurid subject matter, exploitation films of the 1930s and 1940s evaded the strict censorship and scrutiny of
13140-416: The distribution of prestigious films from independent outfits; Grand National , active 1936–40, occupied an analogous niche on Poverty Row, releasing mostly independent productions ): Taves estimates that half of the films produced by the eight majors in the 1930s were B movies. Calculating in the three hundred or so films made annually by the many Poverty Row firms, approximately 75% of Hollywood movies from
13286-512: The double feature prevailed. At the larger local venues controlled by the majors, movies might turn over on a weekly basis. At the thousands of smaller, independent theaters, programs often changed two or three times a week. To meet the constant demand for new B product, the low end of Poverty Row turned out a stream of micro-budget movies rarely much more than sixty minutes long; these were known as "quickies" for their tight production schedules—as short as four days. As Azam Patel describes, "Many of
13432-414: The double feature remained a popular exhibition mode. It was standard policy at 25% of theaters and used part-time at an additional 36%. The leading Poverty Row firms began to broaden their scope; in 1947, Monogram established a subsidiary, Allied Artists , to develop and distribute relatively expensive films, mostly from independent producers. Around the same time, Republic launched a similar effort under
13578-435: The drive-in movie became one of the defining symbols of American popular culture in the 1950s. At the same time, many local television stations began showing B genre films in late-night slots, popularizing the notion of the midnight movie . Increasingly, American-made genre films were joined by foreign movies acquired at low cost and, where necessary, dubbed for the U.S. market. In 1956, distributor Joseph E. Levine financed
13724-492: The early 1970s to the late 1980s, primarily made by Italian and Spanish moviemakers. They focus on cannibalism by tribes deep in the South American or Asian rainforests. This cannibalism is usually perpetrated against Westerners that the tribes held prisoner. As with mondo films , the main draw of cannibal films was the promise of exotic locales and graphic gore involving living creatures. The best-known film of this genre
13870-432: The end of the silent era , the production cost of an average feature from a major Hollywood studio ranged from $ 190,000 at Fox to $ 275,000 at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . That average reflected both "specials" that might cost as much as $ 1 million and films made quickly for around $ 50,000. These cheaper films (not yet called B movies ) allowed the studios to derive maximum value from facilities and contracted staff in between
14016-417: The end of the year, Ulmer had also made the teen-themed musical Jive Junction as well as Isle of Forgotten Sins , a South Seas adventure set around a brothel. In 1948, a Supreme Court ruling in a federal antitrust suit against the majors outlawed block booking and led to the Big Five divesting their theater chains. With audiences draining away to television and studios scaling back production schedules,
14162-698: The environment. Night of the Lepus , Frogs , and Godzilla vs. Hedorah are examples. After Steven Spielberg 's 1975 film Jaws , a number of very similar films (sometimes regarded as outright rip-offs) were produced in the hope of cashing in on its success. Examples are Alligator , Cujo , Day of the Animals , Great White , Grizzly , Humanoids from the Deep , Monster Shark , Orca , The Pack , Piranha , Prophecy , Razorback , Blood Feast , Tentacles and Tintorera . Roger Corman
14308-420: The era by claiming to be educational. They were generally cautionary tales about the alleged dangers of premarital sexual intercourse and the use of recreational drugs. Examples include Marihuana (1936), Reefer Madness (1936), Sex Madness (1938), Child Bride (1938), Mom and Dad (1945) and She Shoulda Said No! (1949). An exploitation film about homosexuality, Children of Loneliness (1937),
14454-776: The era's genre films. Science fiction, horror, and various hybrids of the two were now of central economic importance to the low-budget end of the business. Most down-market films of the type—like many of those produced by William Alland at Universal (such as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)) and Sam Katzman at Columbia (including It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955))—provided little more than thrills, though their special effects could be impressive. But these were genres whose fantastic nature could also be used as cover for mordant cultural observations often difficult to make in mainstream movies. Director Don Siegel 's Invasion of
14600-411: The era, made totally outside the studio system, profited from an outrageous concept: a Western with a cast consisting of only little people , The Terror of Tiny Town (1938) was such a success in its independent bookings that Columbia picked it up for distribution. Series of various genres, featuring recurrent, title-worthy characters or name actors in familiar roles, were particularly popular during
14746-435: The expanding second-feature market. Block booking became standard practice: to get access to a studio's attractive A pictures, many theaters were obliged to rent the company's entire output for a season. With the B films rented at a flat fee (rather than the box office percentage basis of A films), rates could be set virtually guaranteeing the profitability of every B movie. The parallel practice of blind bidding largely freed
14892-456: The fearlessness of acclaimed transgressive European directors such as Derek Jarman , Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard in handling "disreputable" content. Many films recognized as classics contain levels of sex, violence and shock typically associated with exploitation films. Examples include Stanley Kubrick 's A Clockwork Orange , Tod Browning's Freaks and Roman Polanski 's Repulsion . Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou contains elements of
15038-502: The film "into as many cinemas as he could for a week's run, then withdrawing it before poor word-of-mouth withdrew it for him". Hercules opened at a remarkable 600 theaters, and the strategy was a smashing success: the film earned $ 4.7 million in domestic rentals. Just as valuable to the bottom line, it was even more successful overseas. Within a few decades, Hollywood was dominated by both movies and an exploitation philosophy very much like Levine's. Also playing rounds during this time
15184-423: The film's climax, buzzers attached to select theater seats unexpectedly rattled a few audience members, prompting either appropriate screams or even more appropriate laughter. With such films, Castle "combine[d] the saturation advertising campaign perfected by Columbia and Universal in their Sam Katzman and William Alland packages with centralized and standardized publicity stunts and gimmicks that had previously been
15330-432: The first decade of sound film. Fox's many B series, for instance, included Charlie Chan mysteries, Ritz Brothers comedies, and musicals with child star Jane Withers . These series films are not to be confused with the short, cliffhanger -structured serials that sometimes appeared on the same program. As with serials, however, many series were intended to attract young people—a theater that twin-billed part-time might run
15476-422: The first film to place its exploitation elements unapologetically at the forefront instead of pretending to carry a moral or educational message. This development paved the way for the more explicit exploitation films of the 1960s and 1970s and made the nudist genre obsolete—ironically, since the nudist film Garden of Eden was the subject of the court case. After this, the nudist genre split into subgenres such as
15622-502: The form of low-budget films and series. Today, the term "B movie" is used in a broader sense. In post-Golden Age usage, B movies can encompass a wide spectrum of films, ranging from sensationalistic exploitation films to independent arthouse productions. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre : the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in
15768-399: The genre is mostly associated with 1970s samurai manga by Kazuo Koike , on whose work many later films would be based. Chambara features few of the stoic, formal sensibilities of earlier jidaigeki films – the new chambara featured revenge-driven antihero protagonists, nudity, sex scenes, swordplay and blood. Giallo films are Italian-made slasher films that focus on cruel murders and
15914-561: The genre, the original version of The Last House on the Left , was an uncredited remake of Ingmar Bergman 's The Virgin Spring , recast as a horror film featuring extreme violence. Deliverance , in which the rape is perpetrated on a man, has been credited as the originator of the genre. Clover, who restricts her definition of the genre to movies in which a woman is raped and gains her own revenge, praises rape–revenge exploitation films for
16060-446: The hopes of further distribution by being picked up (or purchased) by a larger film company or distributor in order to find broader audiences alongside awards consideration (e.g. 2009's A Single Man ). ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ B movies A B movie , or B film , is a type of cheap, poorly made commercial motion picture . Originally, during
16206-419: The industry's top product, the A films, premiered at a small number of select first-run houses in major cities. Double features were not the rule at these prestigious venues. As described by Edward Jay Epstein , "During these first runs, films got their reviews, garnered publicity, and generated the word of mouth that served as the principal form of advertising." Then it was off to the subsequent-run market where
16352-593: The line between A and B movies ambiguous. Films shot on B-level budgets were occasionally marketed as A pictures or emerged as sleeper hits : one of 1943's biggest films was Hitler's Children , an RKO thriller made for a fraction over $ 200,000. It earned more than $ 3 million in rentals, industry language for a distributor's share of gross box office receipts. Particularly in the realm of film noir , A pictures sometimes echoed visual styles generally associated with cheaper films. Programmers, with their flexible exhibition role, were ambiguous by definition. As late as 1948,
16498-484: The lower end of the industry, "exploitation" became a way to refer to the entire field of low-budget genre films. The 1960s saw exploitation-style themes and imagery become increasingly central to the realm of the B. Exploitation movies in the original sense continued to appear: 1961's Damaged Goods , a cautionary tale about a young lady whose boyfriend's promiscuity leads to venereal disease , comes complete with enormous, grotesque closeups of VD's physical effects. At
16644-409: The majors from worrying about their Bs' quality; even when booking in less than seasonal blocks, exhibitors had to buy most pictures sight unseen. The five largest studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , Paramount Pictures , Fox Film Corporation ( 20th Century Fox as of 1935), Warner Bros. , and RKO Radio Pictures (descendant of FBO), also belonged to companies with sizable theater chains, further securing
16790-514: The mid-1960s. They were more violent and amoral than typical Hollywood westerns. These films also often eschewed the conventions of Hollywood studio Westerns, which were primarily for consumption by conservative, mainstream American audiences. Examples of the genre include Death Rides a Horse ; Django ; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ; Navajo Joe ; The Grand Duel ; The Great Silence ; For
16936-413: The middle of the 1990s, the word "Indiewood" (a.k.a. "indie boom" or "indie film movement") was invented to describe a component of the spectrum of American films in which distinctions exist, it seemed as if Hollywood and the independent sector had become blurred. Indiewood divisions gain from expert experience of the niche industry by hiring leading independent personalities such as Harvey Weinstein from
17082-496: The modern splatter film. It has been suggested that if Carnival of Souls had been made in Europe, it would be considered an art film, while if Eyes Without a Face had been made in the U.S., it would have been categorized as a low-budget horror film. The audiences of art and exploitation film are both considered to have tastes that reject the mainstream Hollywood offerings. Exploitation films have often exploited news events in
17228-479: The most famous of Meyer's sexploitation pictures. Crafted for constant titillation but containing no nudity, it was aimed at the same "passion pit" drive-in circuit that screened AIP teen movies with wink-wink titles like Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1966), starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon . Roger Corman's The Trip (1967) for American International, written by veteran AIP/Corman actor Jack Nicholson , never shows
17374-399: The origin of the word: that the producers would "grind"-out films. Many of them were violent action films that some called "drive-in" films. Exploitation films may adopt the subject matter and styling of regular film genres, particularly horror films and documentary films, and their themes are sometimes influenced by other so-called exploitative media, such as pulp magazines . They often blur
17520-445: The poorest theaters, such as the 'grind houses' in the larger cities, screened a continuous program emphasizing action with no specific schedule, sometimes offering six quickies for a nickel in an all-night show that changed daily." Many small theaters never saw a big-studio A film, getting their movies from the states rights concerns that handled almost exclusively Poverty Row product. Millions of Americans went to their local theaters as
17666-426: The prevailing exhibition model: in 1941, fifty percent of theaters were double-billing exclusively, and others employed the policy part-time. In the early 1940s, legal pressure forced the studios to replace seasonal block booking with packages generally limited to five pictures. Restrictions were also placed on the majors' ability to enforce blind bidding. These were crucial factors in the progressive shift by most of
17812-627: The prison film Women in Bondage (1943). In 1947, PRC's The Devil on Wheels brought together teenagers, hot rods , and death. The little studio had its own house auteur : with his own crew and relatively free rein, director Edgar G. Ulmer was known as "the Capra of PRC". Ulmer made films of every generic stripe: his Girls in Chains was released in May 1943, six months before Women in Bondage ; by
17958-692: The prisoners, who are often female, are nude. The progenitor of this subgenre was Love Camp 7 (1969). The archetype of the genre, which established its popularity and its typical themes, was Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974), about the buxom, nymphomaniacal dominatrix Ilsa torturing prisoners in a Stalag . Others include Fräulein Devil ( Captive Women 4 , or Elsa: Fraulein SS , or Fraulein Kitty ), La Bestia in calore ( SS Hell Camp , or SS Experiment Part 2 , or The Beast in Heat , or Horrifying Experiments of
18104-438: The program "balance", the practice of pairing different sorts of features suggested to potential customers that they could count on something of interest no matter what specifically was on the bill. The low-budget picture of the 1920s thus evolved into the second feature, the B movie, of Hollywood's Golden Age. The major studios , at first resistant to the double feature, soon adapted; all established B units to provide films for
18250-422: The purview of the local exhibitor". The postwar drive-in theater boom was vital to the expanding independent B movie industry. In January 1945, there were 96 drive-ins in the United States; a decade later, there were more than 3,700. Unpretentious pictures with simple, familiar plots and reliable shock effects were ideally suited for auto-based film viewing, with all its attendant distractions. The phenomenon of
18396-409: The same star (a relative status on Poverty Row). Two "major-minors", Universal Studios and rising Columbia Pictures had production lines roughly similar to, though somewhat better endowed than, the top Poverty Row studios. In contrast to the Big Five majors, Universal and Columbia had few or no theaters, though they did have top-rank film distribution exchanges. In the standard Golden Age model,
18542-561: The same time, the concept of fringe exploitation was merging with a related, similarly venerable tradition: " nudie " films featuring nudist-camp footage or striptease artists like Bettie Page had simply been the softcore pornography of previous decades. As far back as 1933, This Nude World was "Guaranteed the Most Educational Film Ever Produced!" In the late 1950s, as more of the old grindhouse theaters devoted themselves specifically to "adult" product,
18688-484: The same time, the realm of the B movie was becoming increasingly fertile territory for experimentation, both serious and outlandish. Ida Lupino , a leading actress, established herself as Hollywood's sole female director of the era. In short, low-budget pictures made for her production company, The Filmakers, Lupino explored taboo subjects such as rape in 1950's Outrage and 1953's self-explanatory The Bigamist . Her best known directorial effort, The Hitch-Hiker ,
18834-523: The shooting of new footage with American actor Raymond Burr that was edited into the Japanese sci-fi horror film Godzilla . The British Hammer Film Productions made the successful The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), major influences on future horror film style. In 1959, Levine's Embassy Pictures bought the worldwide rights to Hercules , a cheaply made Italian movie starring American-born bodybuilder Steve Reeves . On top of
18980-677: The short-term public consciousness that a major film studio may avoid because of the time required to produce a major film. Child Bride (1938), for example, tackled the issue of older men marrying young girls in the Ozarks . Other issues, such as drug use in films like Reefer Madness (1936), attracted audiences that major film studios would usually avoid to keep their respectable, mainstream reputations. With enough incentive, however, major studios might become involved, as Warner Bros. did in their 1969 anti- LSD , anti- counterculture film The Big Cube . The film Sex Madness (1938) portrayed
19126-407: The sports cars, muscle cars , and car wrecks that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s. They were produced mainly in the United States and Australia. The quintessential film of this genre is Vanishing Point (1971). Others include Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), Gone in 60 Seconds (1974), Death Race 2000 (1975), Race with
19272-493: The standards of both director and studio, with the longest shooting schedule and biggest budget Corman had ever enjoyed. But it is generally seen as a B movie: the schedule was still a mere fifteen days, the budget just $ 200,000 (one tenth the industry average), and its 85-minute running time close to an old thumbnail definition of the B: "Any movie that runs less than 80 minutes." With the loosening of industry censorship constraints ,
19418-617: The subgenre. Nudist films originated in the 1930s as films that skirted the Hays Code restrictions on nudity by purportedly depicting the naturist lifestyle. They existed through the late 1950s, when the New York State Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Excelsior Pictures vs. New York Board of Regents that onscreen nudity is not obscene. This opened the door to more open depictions of nudity, starting with Russ Meyer's 1959 The Immoral Mr. Teas , which has been credited as
19564-547: The subsequent search for the killers. They are named for the Italian word for yellow, giallo , the background color featured on the covers of the pulp novels by which these movies were inspired. The progenitor of this genre was The Girl Who Knew Too Much . Other examples of Giallo films include Four Flies on Grey Velvet , Deep Red , The Cat o' Nine Tails , The Bird with the Crystal Plumage , The Case of
19710-413: The top or bottom of the marquee." On Poverty Row, many Bs were made on budgets that would have barely covered petty cash on a major's A film, with costs at the bottom of the industry running as low as $ 5,000. By the mid-1930s, the double feature was the dominant U.S. exhibition model, and the majors responded. In 1935, B movie production at Warner Bros. was raised from 12 to 50% of studio output. The unit
19856-681: The top ten box-office releases of 1940 had averaged 112.5 minutes; the average length of 1955's top ten was 123.4. In their modest way, the Bs were following suit. The age of the hour-long feature film was past; 70 minutes was now roughly the minimum. While the Golden Age-style second feature was dying, B movie was still used to refer to any low-budget genre film featuring relatively unheralded performers (sometimes referred to as B actors ). The term retained its earlier suggestion that such movies relied on formulaic plots, "stock" character types, and simplistic action or unsophisticated comedy. At
20002-482: The use of stylistic devices and dialogue associated with screwball comedies, love interests and flirtation akin to romance films , over-the-top direction, cheeky homages, fan-pleasing content and caricatures, and performances that contain sleazy teasing alluding to foreplay or kink. The use of extended scenes and the showing of full frontal nudity are typical genre techniques. Sexploitation films include Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Supervixens by Russ Meyer ,
20148-492: The way in which their protagonists fight their abuse directly, rather than preserve the status quo by depending on an unresponsive legal system, as in rape–revenge movies from major studios such as The Accused . The redsploitation genre concerns Native American characters almost always played by white actors, usually exacting their revenge on their white tormentors. Examples are the Billy Jack tetralogy, The Ransom ,
20294-514: The work of Armando Bó with Isabel Sarli , the Emmanuelle series, Showgirls and Caligula . Caligula is unusual among exploitation films in that it was made with a large budget and well-known actors ( Malcolm McDowell , John Gielgud , Peter O'Toole and Helen Mirren ). Lesbian sex scenes of the 1970s have been studied in the context of the political and social implications of lesbianism and women's sexuality, something that remains
20440-410: Was K. Gordon Murray , known for distributing international matinee fare like the 1959 Mexican kids' movie Santa Claus . Despite all the transformations in the industry, by 1961 the average production cost of an American feature film was still only $ 2 million —after adjusting for inflation, less than 10% more than it had been in 1950. The traditional twin bill of B film preceding and balancing
20586-676: Was a major producer of these films in both decades. The genre has experienced a revival in recent years, as films like Mulberry Street and Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter reflected concerns about global warming and overpopulation. The Sci-Fi Channel (now known as SyFy ) has produced several films about giant or hybrid mutations whose titles are sensationalized portmanteaus of the two species; examples include Sharktopus and Dinoshark . Nazi exploitation films, also called "Nazisploitation" films, or "il sadiconazista", focus on Nazis torturing prisoners in death camps and brothels during World War II . The tortures are often sexual, and
20732-754: Was directed by an African American filmmaker named William Crain . Blacula was one of the first early successful blaxploitation horror movies. Ganja & Hess stars Duane Jones , who played Ben in Night of the Living Dead . This movie has political and social commentary in which the vampires are a metaphor for capitalism , according to Harry M. Benshoff . Modern homages of this genre include Jackie Brown , Pootie Tang , Undercover Brother , Black Dynamite , Proud Mary and BlacKkKlansman . The 1973 Bond film Live and Let Die uses blaxploitation themes. Cannibal films are graphic movies from
20878-541: Was headed by Bryan Foy , known as the "Keeper of the Bs". At Fox, which also shifted half of its production line into B territory, Sol M. Wurtzel was similarly in charge of more than twenty movies a year during the late 1930s. A number of the top Poverty Row firms consolidated: Sono Art joined another company to create Monogram Pictures early in the decade. In 1935, Monogram, Mascot, and several smaller studios merged to establish Republic Pictures . The former heads of Monogram soon sold off their Republic shares and set up
21024-420: Was in the vanguard of marketing low-budget, sensationalistic films with a "100% saturation campaign", inundating the target audience with ads in almost any imaginable medium. In the era of the traditional double feature, no one would have characterized these graphic exploitation films as "B movies". With the majors having exited traditional B production and exploitation-style promotion becoming standard practice at
21170-615: Was inspired by Bob Clark 's Black Christmas . The genre continued into and peaked in the 1980s with well-known films like Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Many 1980s slasher films used the basic format of Halloween , for example My Bloody Valentine (1981), Prom Night (1980), The Funhouse (1981), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) and Sleepaway Camp (1983), many of which also used elements from Black Christmas . A subtype featuring space , science fiction and horror in film . Despite ambitious literary works that depicted space travel as
21316-479: Was released by a new company whose name was much bigger than its budgets. American International Pictures (AIP), founded in 1956 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff in a reorganization of their American Releasing Corporation (ARC), soon became the leading U.S. studio devoted entirely to B-cost productions. American International helped keep the original-release double bill alive through paired packages of its films: these movies were low-budget, but instead of
#755244