Exploitation film
Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies",[1] though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain a cult following.
[2] Exploitation films often include themes such as suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, gore, destruction, rebellion, mayhem, and the bizarre.
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).
[4] 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)[5] and Maniac (1934).
[6] The Motion Picture Association of America (and its predecessor, 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.
Exploitation films share the fearlessness of acclaimed transgressive European directors such as Derek Jarman, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard in handling "disreputable" content.
Examples include Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Tod Browning's Freaks and Roman Polanski's Repulsion.
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.
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 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.
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 a long decline during the mid-1980s with the advent of home video.
Although they featured lurid subject matter, exploitation films of the 1930s and 1940s evaded the strict censorship and scrutiny of the era by claiming to be educational.
[13] Modern homages of this genre include Jackie Brown, Pootie Tang, Undercover Brother, Black Dynamite, Proud Mary and BlacKkKlansman.
[16] While some important and noteworthy films were made under the program, including The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Lies My Father Told Me,[15] and some film directors who cut their teeth in 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.
[17] 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 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.
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.
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 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.
[19] 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.
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.
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.
[25][26] 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.
[31] One instance of 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.
[36] Examples are the Billy Jack tetralogy, The Ransom, the Thunder Warrior trilogy, Johnny Firecloud, Angry Joe Bass, The Manitou, Prophecy, Avenged (aka Savaged), Scalps, Clearcut and The Ghost Dance.
The plots of sexploitation films include pulp fiction elements such as killers, slavery, female domination, martial arts, 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.
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).
[41][42] Despite ambitious literary works that depicted space travel as 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.
Initially derided by the American press as "appalling", it quickly became a national sensation, playing not just in drive-ins but at midnight showings in indoor theaters across the country.
[45][46][47][48][49] Well-known films of this subgenre are Welcome Home Soldier Boys (1972), The No Mercy Man (1973), Rolling Thunder (1977), Cannibal Apocalypse (1980), and Thou Shalt Not Kill...
[66] In Japan, on the other hand, the low-budget Japanese zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead (2017) became a sleeper hit, making box office history by earning over a thousand times its budget.
The novel Our Lady of the Inferno is both written as an homage to exploitation films and features several chapters that take place in a grindhouse theater.
