Boxoffice Pro is a film industry magazine dedicated to the movie theatre business published by BoxOffice Media LP.
92-402: Spaceways is a 1953 British second feature ('B') science fiction drama film directed by Terence Fisher and starring Howard Duff , Eva Bartok and Alan Wheatley . It was produced by Michael Carreras for Hammer Film Productions Ltd. and Lippert Productions Inc., with Robert L. Lippert as uncredited co-producer. The screenplay was written by Paul Tabori and Richard Landau, based on
184-463: 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
276-433: 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
368-406: 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
460-418: 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
552-399: 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
644-407: 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:
736-443: 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
828-511: 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
920-576: 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
1012-469: A degree from a German university. Mitchell decides to go into space on the second rocket being launched, in order to try to prove his innocence. Smith discovers that there was a new team member added just prior to the disappearance, and that a security guard had died in an accident a week earlier. Soon after, Smith and the police discover that Crenshaw and Vanessa are actually at a seaside cottage and rush to intercept them. Crenshaw has been planning to head to
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#17327661764251104-402: 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
1196-460: 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,
1288-399: 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
1380-415: A fully bared, unpainted breast, but flirts with nudity throughout. The Meyer and Corman lines were drawing closer. Boxoffice Pro It started in 1920 as The Reel Journal , taking the name Boxoffice in 1931 and still publishes today, with an intended audience of theatre owners and film professionals. In 2019, its name was changed to Boxoffice Pro . Boxoffice Pro is the official publication of
1472-485: A logical romantic thread has been woven into the story." Picturegoer wrote: "This is the first British entry in the current cycle of science-fiction. And a pretty effective job it is, too. ... It is, of course, a melodrama-and-hokum sandwich, but I found it worth a bite." In British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 David Quinlan rated the film as “mediocre” and wrote: "Pretty lame British entry into science-fiction." The Radio Times Guide to Films gave
1564-400: 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,
1656-485: 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
1748-467: 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:
1840-563: 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
1932-463: 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
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#17327661764252024-526: 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,
2116-476: 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
2208-399: Is a dull and shoddy affair. Too much footage is wasted on a kind of poor man's version of The Net , and the gadgetry and adventures when they do come are ludicrous and unexciting. Eva Bartok's mathematician may please the connoisseurs." Kine Weekly said: "Interplanetary melodrama, artfully coloured by pseudo-scientific jargon and detail. ... There is not a great deal of action during
2300-927: 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
2392-596: 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,
2484-404: Is discovered that Crenshaw and Vanessa have disappeared. Dr Smith secretly investigates their disappearance and comes to the conclusion that not only were the two murdered, but that they were murdered by Dr Mitchell, after which he hid their bodies in the spacecraft's fuel tanks. Smith approaches Mitchell with the accusation, while also telling him about Crenshaw being a spy, who had concealed having
2576-437: Is killed. After the rocket ship launches into space, Mitchell is surprised to see that Lisa is on board; she had previously convinced Toby to let her go on the flight instead of him. Despite the revelation that the bodies of Crenshaw and Vanessa are not on board, Mitchell and Frank attempt to jettison the spaceship's second stage, resulting in an explosion, causing their spacecraft to go out of control. Mitchell, however, releases
2668-521: Is not enthusiastic about the new project, nor with having to live at its high security base. She sneaks away with Dr Philip Crenshaw, with whom she is having an affair. Dr Mitchell leaves the party with Lisa Frank, a mathematician on the project, who is in love with him. When Mitchell returns home, he has an argument with Vanessa; he has been made aware of her having passionately kissed Crenshaw after she left with him. The satellite rocket soon launches, but it does not reach its maximum altitude. Afterwards, it
2760-534: 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
2852-466: Is whipped up, although the finale rocket flight and danger to the hero and heroine, has a fair amount of suspense. ... Picture needs considerable editorial tightening." Boxoffice said: "The offering is believably plotted and capably enacted, while from the production standpoint the values of the piece are considerably bolstered by the injection of what appear to be authentic clips of rocket takeoff and flight. ...To appeal to feminine audiences,
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2944-643: 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
3036-472: The National Association of Theatre Owners , a role it took on in 2006. In 1937 the magazine began to publish box office reports; it ended its publication of movie reviews in 2012. The magazine was originally published every Saturday by Associated Publications. Box office performance was expressed as a percentage of normal performance with normal being expressed as 100%. A Barometer issue
3128-564: 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
3220-542: 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
3312-467: 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
3404-553: The 1952 radio play by Charles Eric Maine . The film was distributed in the UK by Exclusive Films Ltd. and in the United States by Lippert Pictures . Engineer Dr Stephen Mitchell is part of a British space programme that plans to launch a satellite that will permanently orbit Earth. At a cocktail party, it is announced to the programme's staff that the satellite project has been approved by the defence council. Mitchell's wife Vanessa
3496-418: 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
3588-586: 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
3680-535: 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
3772-611: 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 ,
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3864-785: 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
3956-457: 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
4048-630: 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
4140-406: 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
4232-465: 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
4324-442: 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
4416-511: 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
4508-482: 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
4600-420: 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
4692-591: 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,
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#17327661764254784-446: 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
4876-416: 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
4968-512: 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
5060-414: 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
5152-435: 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
5244-526: The dénouement." Glenn Erickson, writing in DVD Savant , noted: "The disappointment of Spaceways is finding out that it is really a lukewarm murder mystery in a science fiction setting". B movie A B movie , or B film , is a type of cheap, poorly made commercial motion picture . Originally, during the Golden Age of Hollywood , this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as
5336-406: The east instead of going to America, as he previously had said. When Vanessa finds out Crenshaw plans to go to Russia, she refuses to go. Crenshaw tries to persuade her, but she won't agree. Saying that she knows too much for him to leave her behind, Crenshaw takes out a gun, intending to kill her. Smith arrives and tries to stop him, but in the violent scuffle between them the gun goes off and Vanessa
5428-432: 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
5520-417: 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,
5612-776: 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
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#17327661764255704-411: 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
5796-435: 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
5888-589: The fail-safe, saving them from destruction and allowing the spaceship to return safely to Earth. Principal photography took place at Bray Studios, Windsor, England from mid-November 1952 to early January 1953. Some of the scenes of the spaceship taking off were special effects shots taken from the Lippert film, Rocketship X-M (1950) Some filming also occurred at Bray Studios in Berkshire. Monthly Film Bulletin said: "The first British science-fiction picture
5980-502: 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
6072-409: The film 1/5 stars, writing: "Why did anybody who read the radio play on which this is based think it was worth doing anything with it other than hurl it across the room? The plot has leads Howard Duff and Eva Bartok blasting off in pursuit of a satellite to prove Duff's innocence following an accusation of double murder. Terence Fisher's funereal pace kills this cheaply-made picture stone dead long before
6164-423: 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
6256-432: 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
6348-472: The first half, but the shrewd deployment of interesting and widely assorted types rivets the attention until the space-ship finally comes into its own. ... One of many, but better than most '"aerial extravaganzas," it'll entertain youngsters of all ages." Variety wrote: "Terence Fisher's direction is extremely methodical, as is the playing, and script constantly betrays its radio play origin by running to long sides of static dialog. Very little excitement
6440-502: 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
6532-419: 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
6624-469: 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
6716-593: 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,
6808-484: 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
6900-409: 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
6992-479: 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
7084-445: 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
7176-426: 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
7268-627: 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
7360-438: 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
7452-422: 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
7544-409: 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,
7636-561: 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,
7728-484: 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 ,
7820-523: 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
7912-493: 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 ,
8004-413: 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
8096-681: 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
8188-410: 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
8280-541: 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
8372-420: 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
8464-479: 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
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