Exploitation film
Encyclopedia
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex, violence, romance, etc. An exploitation film, however, relies heavily on sensationalist advertising, as well as broad overstatements of the issues depicted, regardless of how they relate to the intrinsic quality of the film. Very often, exploitation films are widely considered as being of low quality. Even so, exploitation films sometimes attract critical attention and cult followings.
(and the MPPDA before it) cooperated with censorship boards and grassroots organizations in the name of preserving the image of a "clean" Hollywood, but exploitation film distributors operated outside of this circuit and often welcomed controversy as a form of free promotion. Their producers also used sensational elements to attract audiences lost to television. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention from academic circles
, where it is sometimes called paracinema
.
"Exploitation" is very loosely defined, and has more to do with the viewer's perception of the film than with the film's actual content. Titillating material and artistic content can and often do coexist, 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 with acclaimed transgressive European directors such as Derek Jarman
, Luis Buñuel
, and Jean-Luc Godard
a fearlessness toward handling 'disreputable' content. Numerous films recognized as classics contain levels of sex, violence, and shock typically associated with exploitation films, including Stanley Kubrick
's A Clockwork Orange
, Tod Browning
's Freaks
, and Roman Polanski
's Repulsion
. Buñuel's Un chien andalou
contains elements of the modern splatter film. It has further been stated that if Carnival of Souls
had been made in Europe, that 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 art film and exploitation film audiences are both considered to have tastes that reject the mainstream Hollywood offerings.
Exploitation films often exploited events that occurred in the news and were in the short term public consciousness that a major film studio may avoid due to the length of time of producing a major film. For example Child Bride
(1938) addressed a problem of older men marrying very young women in the Ozarks. Other issues such as drug use
in films like Reefer Madness
(1936) attracted an audience that a major film studio would usually avoid to keep their mainstream
and respectable reputations. But if the motivations were strong enough, major studios might become involved, as in Warner Bros.
1969 anti-LSD
, anti-counterculture
film The Big Cube
. Sex Madness
(1938) portrayed the dangers of venereal disease from premarital sex. The film Mom and Dad
(1945), a 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 them within the context of a very conservative moral viewpoint in order to avoid censorship, as movies were not at the time considered to enjoy First Amendment
protection.
Several war film
s were made about the Winter War
in Finland
, the Korean War
and the Vietnam War
before the major studios showed interest. When Orson Welles
' Mercury Theatre
Halloween
1938 radio production of The War of the Worlds
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
lower budget B movie
s often exploit major studio projects. Their rapid production schedule can take advantage of publicity attached to major studio films. For example, Edward L. Alperson produced William Cameron Menzies
' Invaders from Mars
in order to beat Paramount Pictures
' prestigious production of director George Pal
's The War of the Worlds
to the cinemas. Pal's The Time Machine
was also beaten to the cinemas by Robert Clarke
's Edgar G. Ulmer film Beyond the Time Barrier
(1960). As a result, many major studios, producers, and stars keep their projects secret.
is an American term for a theatre that mainly showed exploitation films. One theory is the word is named after the defunct burlesque
theatres, on 42nd Street, New York
, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease
used to be on the bill. In the 1960s these theatres were put to new use as venues for exploitation films.
As the drive-in movie theater
(an outdoor theater into which the patrons drive and watch the film from their car) began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, theater owners began to look for ways to bring in patrons. One solution was to book exploitation films. In fact, some producers from the 1950s to the 1980s would make films directly for the drive-in market, the mass product needed for a weekly change led to another theory that the producers would "grind" films out. Many of them were violent action films which some would refer to as 'drive-in' films.
s and documentary film
s. The subgenres of exploitation films are categorized by which characteristics they utilize. Thematically, exploitation films can also be influenced by other so-called exploitative media, like pulp magazine
s. Exploitation films often blur genre lines by containing elements of two or more genres at a time. For example, Doris Wishman's Let Me Die A Woman
contains both shock documentary and sexploitation elements.
about the alleged dangers of premarital sex
and drug use
. Examples include Marihuana
(1936), Reefer Madness
(1938), Sex Madness
(1938), Mom and Dad
(1945), and She Shoulda Said No!
(1949). One exploitation film concerning homosexuality, Children of Loneliness (1937), is now considered a lost film
.
, starring Marlon Brando, was the first film about a motorcycle gang. A string of low-budget juvenile delinquent films centered around hot-rods and motorcycles followed in the 1950s. The success of American International Pictures
' The Wild Angels
in 1966 ignited a trend that continued into the early 1970s. Other biker films include Motorpsycho
(1965), Hells Angels on Wheels
(1967), The Born Losers
(1967), Satan's Sadists
(1969), Roger Corman
's Naked Angels
(1969), Nam's Angels
(1970), and C.C. and Company
(1970). (See also List of biker films.)
As well as David Kebo and Rudi Liden 's Death Valley, 2008 film.
" films, are made with black actors, ostensibly for black audiences, often within a stereotypically African American
urban milieu. A prominent theme was African-Americans overcoming the Man
through cunning and violence. The progenitor of this subgenre was Melvin Van Peebles
' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
. Other examples include Black Caesar
, Black Devil Doll, Blacula
, Black Shampoo
, Boss Nigger
, Coffy
, Coonskin
, Cotton Comes to Harlem
, Dolemite
, Foxy Brown, Hell Up in Harlem
, Live and Let Die
, The Mack
, Mandingo
, Shaft
, Sugar Hill
, Super Fly, The Thing With Two Heads
and Truck Turner
. Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown
and Scott Sanders' Black Dynamite are modern homages to this genre.
s, otherwise known as the cannibal genre
, are a collection of graphic, gory movies made in the early 1970s on into the late 1980s, primarily by Italian and Spanish moviemakers. These movies mainly focused on cannibalism by tribes deep in the South American or Asian rain forests, usually perpetrated against Westerners that the tribes hold prisoner. Similar to Mondo film
s, the main draw of cannibal films was the promise of exotic locales and graphic gore involving any living creatures, human or animal. The best known film of this genre is the controversial 1980 Cannibal Holocaust
in which six animals are killed. Others include Cannibal Ferox
, Eaten Alive!
, The Mountain of the Cannibal God
, Last Cannibal World, and the first cannibal film
, The Man From Deep River
. Famous directors in this genre include Umberto Lenzi
, Ruggero Deodato
, Jesús Franco
, and Joe D'Amato
.
and Bob Clark
.
(1971), The Cars That Ate Paris
(1974), Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974), Gone in 60 Seconds (1974), Death Race 2000
(1975), Race with the Devil
(1975), Cannonball
(1976), Mad Max
(1979), The Blues Brothers
(1980), Dead End Drive-In
(1986) and The Hitcher (1986). Quentin Tarantino
's Death Proof
(2007) is a modern homage to this genre, as well as to slasher films and the films of Russ Meyer
. The Fast and the Furious
franchises fit into this subgenre as well, as do the French Taxi
series.
, whose films featured moral grayness and exaggerated violence, but 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. Well-known chambara films include Hanzo the Razor, Lady Snowblood
, Lone Wolf and Cub
, Sex and Fury and Shogun Assassin
. Modern Japanese films such as Azumi
and anime such as Shigurui
continue the chambara tradition, and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill
series is a prominent American tribute to the genre, along with Ninja Assassin
. Other films such as The Machine Girl
and Tokyo Gore Police
contain elements of chambara, combining it with body horror
.
, Them!, and Tarantula
. The trend was revived in the 1970s as awareness of pollution increased, with corporate greed and military irresponsibility being blamed for destruction of the environment. Night of the Lepus
, Frogs
, and Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster
are examples of these movies. After the massive success of Steven Spielberg
's 1975 Jaws
, a number of highly similar films (sometimes regarded as outright rip-offs) were produced in hopes of cashing in on its success. These included Alligator
, Cujo
, Day of the Animals
, Great White
, Grizzly
, Humanoids from the Deep
, Monster Shark
, Orca
, The Pack
, Piranha, Prophecy
, Razorback
, Blood Feast (Night of 1,000 Cats), Tentacles
, and Tintorera
. Roger Corman
was a major producer of these films in both decades. The genre has experienced a revival in recent years, with films such as Mulberry Street
and Larry Fessenden
's The Last Winter
reflecting concerns over global warming and overpopulation.
The Sci-fi (now known as SyFy) Channel is a massive producer of such films with their original movies often consisting of nothing more than, "Giant _____ attacks!" Examples include Sharktopus and Dinoshark.
-made slasher film
s that focus both on the cruel deaths committed by the killers and the subsequent search of detectives for the said killers. They are named for the Italian word for yellow, "Giallo", the color of which was the background of the pulp novels
these movies were initially adapted from or inspired by. The progenitor of this genre was La ragazza che sapeva troppo
(The Girl Who Knew Too Much). Other examples of Giallo films include 4 mosche di velluto grigio
(Four Flies on Grey Velvet), Il gatto a nove code
(The Cat o' Nine Tails), L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo
(The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), La coda dello scorpione
(The Case of the Scorpion's Tail), La tarantola dal ventre nero
(Black Belly of the Tarantula), Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh/Blade of the Ripper), Sei donne per l'assassino
(Blood and Black Lace) and Tenebrae
. Dario Argento
, Lucio Fulci
and Mario Bava
were the most proficient directors of this genre.
, who prefers to call them "tie-ins", is a prominent producer of these films. These have historically been associated with Italian cinema, which has been quick to latch on to such trends as 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. These are beginning to attract attention from major Hollywood studios, who served The Asylum with a cease and desist
order in an attempt 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.
Though the term has gone as far back as the fifties (with The Monster of Piedras Blancas
as a clear derivative of Creature From The Black Lagoon
), it didn't become popular until the seventies with Starcrash
, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam
and Süpermen dönüyor with the latter two using unauthorized excerpts of John Williams
score as well as scenes from Star Wars
among others.
s, often called shockumentaries
, are quasi-documentary film
s that focus on sensationalized topics, such as exotic customs from around the world or gruesome death footage. Similar to shock exploitation, the goal of Mondo films is shocking the audience in dealing with taboo
subject material. The first and best-known mondo film is Mondo Cane
(A Dog's World). Others include Shocking Asia
and the Faces of Death
series.
s during World War II
. The tortures inflicted are often of a sexual nature; and the prisoners, who are often female, are nude. The progenitor of this subgenre was Love Camp 7
(1969). The quintessential film of the genre which launched its popularity and its typical tropes 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/Elsa: Fraulein SS/Fraulein Kitty), La Bestia in Calore
(SS Hell Camp/SS Experiment Part 2/The Beast in Heat/Horrifying Experiments of the S.S. Last Days), L'ultima orgia del III Reich
(Gestapo's Last Orgy/Last Orgy of The Third Reich/Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler), Salon Kitty
and SS Experiment Camp
. A lot of nazisploitation film were influenced by art films like Pier Paolo Pasolini
's infamous Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
(Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom) and Liliana Cavani
's Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter
) .
, which has been credited as the first film which unapologetically placed its exploitation elements 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 obsoleted the nudist genre, which is ironic, as the nudist film Garden of Eden was the subject of the court case. After this, the nudist genre split into subgenres such as the "nudie-cutie", which featured nudity, but did not contain 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 placing their main focus on the nudist camps' most beautiful female residents, while denying the existence of such exploitation. They depicted a lifestyle unbound by the restrictions of clothing, yet this depiction was restricted by the requirement that genitals not be shown. Still, there was a subversive element to these, 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 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.
, or Australian sub-genre films, broadly covers horror, erotic or crime films of the 1970s and 1980s. Reforms to Australia's film classification systems in 1971 led to a number of such comparatively low-budget, privately funded films being produced, assisted by tax exemptions and targeting export markets. Often an internationally recognised actor (but of waning notability) would be hired to play a lead role. While laconic characters and desert scenes feature in many Ozploitation films, the term has been used to apply for a variety of Australian films of the era that relied on shocking or titilating their audiences. Some of the better known Ozploitation films include Mad Max
, Alvin Purple
, Patrick
and Turkey Shoot
; a documentary covering the genre was Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!. Such films address themes concerning Australian society, particularly in respect of masculinity (especially the Ocker
male), male attitudes towards women, attitudes towards and treatment of Indigenous Australians, violence, alcohol, and environmental exploitation and destruction. They are also typically given rural or outback
settings which emphasise the Australian landscape and environment as an almost spiritually malign force which alienates white Australians and frustrates both their personal ambitions and activities and their attempts to subdue it.
(also called Day of the Woman). It is not unusual for the main character in these films to be a successful, independent woman from the city, who is attacked by a man from the country. The genre has more recently drawn praise from feminists such as Carol J. Clover
, whose 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws
: Gender in the Modern Horror Film examines the implications of its reversals of traditional film gender roles. These 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; including thrillers (Ms. 45
), dramas (Lipstick
), westerns (Hannie Caulder
), and art films (Memento). One of the genre's most significant examples, 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 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 major-studio rape/revenge movies such as The Accused.
" films, are similar to softcore
pornography
, in that the film serves largely as a vehicle for showing scenes involving nude or semi-nude women. While many films contain vivid sex scenes, sexploitation shows these scenes more graphically than mainstream films, often overextending the sequences or showing full frontal nudity. Russ Meyer
's body of work is probably the best known example; with his best known films being Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
and Supervixens
. Other well-known sexploitation films include the Emmanuelle
series, Showgirls and Caligula
. Caligula is unique among sexploitation films and exploitation films in general in that it features high budget and eminent actors (Malcolm McDowell
, John Gielgud
, Peter O'Toole
and Helen Mirren
).
, graphic rape
depictions, simulated bestiality and depictions of incest
. Examples of shock films include Antichrist
, Angst
, Assault on Precinct 13
, August Underground's Mordum
, Baise-moi
, Blood Sucking Freaks
, Combat Shock
, I Drink Your Blood
, Fight for Your Life
,Seven Servants
, Hostel, House of 1000 Corpses
, I Spit on Your Grave
, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and its sequels, Irréversible
, Last House on Dead End Street
, The Last House on the Left
, Men Behind the Sun, Nekromantik
, Pink Flamingos
, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
(Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom), SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
, Snuff, Strange Days
, Ta Paidia tou Diavolou (Island of Death), Thriller - en grym film
(Thriller: A Cruel Picture) and Vase de Noces
(Wedding Trough/One Man and his Pig/The Pig Fucking Movie), and many of the films of Paul Verhoeven, Ruggero Deodato
, Takashi Miike
, and Gaspar Noé
.
s focus on a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner. The victims are often teenagers or young adults. Alfred Hitchcock
's Psycho
is often credited as creating the basic premise of the genre. It truly emerged as a genre during the 1970s with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
in 1974 and John Carpenter's Halloween
(1978), which is usually credited with starting the genre, most specifically with masked villains, groups of weak teenagers with one strong, hero female, isolated or stranded in precarious locations or situations, and either the protagonists or antagonists experiencing warped family lives or values. Then the slasher genre peaked again in the 1980s with other well-known films like A Nightmare on Elm Street
, The Anthropophagus Beast, Black Christmas
, Child's Play, The Driller Killer
. After The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in the early 1970s the 1980s saw very similar slasher films being produced using TCSM and Halloween's basic format. Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine
, Prom Night, The Funhouse
, Silent Night, Deadly Night
, Sleepaway Camp
, and The Toolbox Murders
many of which also used elements found in the 1974 original slasher Black Christmas. The genre experienced a mainstream revival in the 1990s with the success of Scream
, which both mocked and paid homage to traditional slasher conventions. Slasher films often prove phenomenally popular and spawn numerous sequels, prequels and remakes that continue to the present day. Adam Green
's Hatchet
and Ryan Nicholson
's Gutterballs
bill themselves as throwbacks to the slasher films of the 1980s.
is a nickname for the Italian-made Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s. They were considerably more violent and amoral than typical Hollywood westerns (some films have body counts of over 200 people killed) and often eschewed (some say "demythologized") the conventions of earlier Westerns. Examples include Death Rides a Horse
, Django
, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Navajo Joe
, The Grand Duel, The Great Silence
, For a Few Dollars More
, The Big Gundown
, and A Fistful of Dollars
.
or gore film is a type of horror film
that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and violence. As a distinct genre, the splatter film began in the 1960s with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis
and David F. Friedman
, whose most famous films (and quintessential examples of the genre) include Blood Feast
(1963), Two Thousand Maniacs!
(1964), Color Me Blood Red
(1965), The Gruesome Twosome (1967) and The Wizard of Gore
(1970). Some later splatter films, such as Sam Raimi
's Evil Dead series, along with Peter Jackson
's Bad Taste and Dead Alive (also called Braindead) featured such excessive, unrealistic, over-the-top gore that they crossed the line from horror to comedy.
's Women in Cages
and The Big Doll House
, Bamboo House of Dolls, Barbed Wire Dolls by Jesus Franco
, Women's Prison Massacre by Bruno Mattei
, Reform School Girls
by Tom DeSimone
, and Caged Heat
by Jonathan Demme
.
History
Exploitation films may feature suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, freaks, gore, the bizarre, destruction, rebellion, and mayhem. Such films were first seen in their modern form in the early 1920s, but they were popularized in the 1960s and 70s with the general relaxing of censorship and cinematic taboos in the USA and Europe. The Motion Picture Association of AmericaMotion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
(and the MPPDA before it) cooperated with censorship boards and grassroots organizations in the name of preserving the image of a "clean" Hollywood, but exploitation film distributors operated outside of this circuit and often welcomed controversy as a form of free promotion. Their producers also used sensational elements to attract audiences lost to television. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention from academic circles
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
, where it is sometimes called paracinema
Paracinema
Paracinema is an academic term to refer to a wide variety of film genres out of the mainstream, bearing the same relationship to 'legitimate' film as paraliterature like comic books and pulp fiction bears to literature. The term was coined by Jeffrey Sconce, an American media scholar, and...
.
"Exploitation" is very loosely defined, and has more to do with the viewer's perception of the film than with the film's actual content. Titillating material and artistic content can and often do coexist, 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 with acclaimed transgressive European directors such as Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.-Life:...
, Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
, and Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
a fearlessness toward handling 'disreputable' content. Numerous films recognized as classics contain levels of sex, violence, and shock typically associated with exploitation films, including Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange (film)
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...
, Tod Browning
Tod Browning
Tod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras...
's Freaks
Freaks
Freaks is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film about sideshow performers, directed and produced by Tod Browning and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with a cast mostly composed of actual carnival performers. The film was based on Tod Robbins' 1923 short story "Spurs"...
, and Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
's Repulsion
Repulsion
Repulsion is a 1965 British psychological thriller film directed by Roman Polanski, based on a scenario by Gérard Brach and Roman Polanski. It was Polanski's first English language film, and was shot in Britain, as such being his second film made outside his native Poland. The cast includes...
. Buñuel's Un chien andalou
Un chien andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months....
contains elements of the modern splatter film. It has further been stated that if Carnival of Souls
Carnival of Souls
Carnival of Souls is a 1962 independent horror film starring Candace Hilligoss. Produced and directed by Herk Harvey for an estimated $33,000, the film did not gain widespread attention when originally released, as a B film; today, however, it is a cult classic...
had been made in Europe, that it would be considered an art film, while if Eyes Without a Face
Eyes Without a Face
Eyes Without a Face is a 1960 French-language horror film adaptation of Jean Redon's novel, directed by Georges Franju, and starring Pierre Brasseur and Alida Valli. During the film's production, consideration was given to the standards of European censors by setting the right tone, minimizing...
had been made in the U.S., it would have been categorized as a low-budget horror film. The art film and exploitation film audiences are both considered to have tastes that reject the mainstream Hollywood offerings.
Exploitation films often exploited events that occurred in the news and were in the short term public consciousness that a major film studio may avoid due to the length of time of producing a major film. For example Child Bride
Child Bride
Child Bride, also known as Child Brides , is a 1938 film directed by Harry Revier. Set in a remote town in the Ozarks, it claims to be an attempt to draw attention to the lack of laws banning child marriage in many states...
(1938) addressed a problem of older men marrying very young women in the Ozarks. Other issues such as drug use
Recreational drug use
Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
in films like Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness is a well-known 1936 American propaganda exploitation film revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try "marijuana" — from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, and descent into madness...
(1936) attracted an audience that a major film studio would usually avoid to keep their mainstream
Mainstream
Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....
and respectable reputations. But if the motivations were strong enough, major studios might become involved, as in Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
1969 anti-LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
, anti-counterculture
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...
film The Big Cube
The Big Cube
The Big Cube is a 1969 Warner Bros. thriller directed by Tito Davison and starring Lana Turner, Karin Mossberg , George Chakiris, Dan O'Herlihy and Richard Egan; it was one of Lana Turner's last movies...
. Sex Madness
Sex Madness
Sex Madness is an exploitation film directed by Dwain Esper, along the lines of Reefer Madness, supposedly to warn teenagers and young adults of the dangers of venereal diseases, specifically syphilis....
(1938) portrayed the dangers of venereal disease from premarital sex. The film Mom and Dad
Mom and Dad
Mom and Dad is a feature-length 1945 film directed by William Beaudine, and largely produced by the exploitation filmmaker and presenter Kroger Babb. Mom and Dad is considered the most successful film within its genre of "sex hygiene" films...
(1945), a film about pregnancy and childbirth, was promoted in lurid terms. She Shoulda Said No!
She Shoulda Said No!
"She Shoulda Said 'No'!" is a 1949 exploitation film that follows in the spirit of morality tales such as the 1936 films Reefer Madness and Marihuana...
(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 them within the context of a very conservative moral viewpoint in order to avoid censorship, as movies were not at the time considered to enjoy First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
protection.
Several war film
War film
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...
s were made about the Winter War
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
in Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
and the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
before the major studios showed interest. When Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
' Mercury Theatre
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the...
Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
1938 radio production of The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds is an 1898 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells.The War of the Worlds may also refer to:- Radio broadcasts :* The War of the Worlds , the 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles...
shocked many Americans and made news, Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
edited their serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars
Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars
Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars is a 1938 serial film of 15 episodes, based on the comic strip Flash Gordon. It is the second of three Flash Gordon serials made between 1936 and 1940....
into a short feature called Mars Attacks the World for release in November of that year.
Some Poverty Row
Poverty Row
Poverty Row is a slang term used in Hollywood from the late silent period through the mid-fifties to refer to a variety of small and mostly short-lived B movie studios...
lower budget B movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
s often exploit major studio projects. Their rapid production schedule can take advantage of publicity attached to major studio films. For example, Edward L. Alperson produced William Cameron Menzies
William Cameron Menzies
William Cameron Menzies was an Academy Award-winning American film production designer and art director who also worked as a director, producer, and screenwriter during a career spanning five decades...
' Invaders from Mars
Invaders from Mars (1953 film)
Invaders From Mars is a science fiction film directed by William Cameron Menzies, taken from a scenario by Richard Blake, and based on a story treatment by John Tucker Battle who was inspired by a dream recounted by his wife. It was produced independently by Edward L. Alperson Jr. and starred...
in order to beat Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
' prestigious production of director George Pal
George Pál
George Pal , born György Pál Marczincsak, was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre...
's The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds (1953 film)
The War of the Worlds is a 1953 science fiction film starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. It was the first on-screen loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic novel of the same name...
to the cinemas. Pal's The Time Machine
The Time Machine (1960 film)
The Time Machine is a 1960 American science fiction film based on the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells in which a man in Victorian England constructs a time-travelling machine which he uses to travel to the future...
was also beaten to the cinemas by Robert Clarke
Robert Clarke
Robert Irby Clarke was an American actor best known for his cult classic science fiction films of the 1950s.-Early life:...
's Edgar G. Ulmer film Beyond the Time Barrier
Beyond the Time Barrier
Beyond the Time Barrier is a 1959 Cold War era black and white time travel science fiction film filmed in ten days in Texas. It was produced by and starred Robert Clarke and was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Ulmer's wife Shirley acted as a script editor whilst their daughter Arianne Arden...
(1960). As a result, many major studios, producers, and stars keep their projects secret.
Grindhouses and drive-ins
GrindhouseGrindhouse
A grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly shows exploitation films. It is named after the defunct burlesque theaters located on 42nd Street in New York City, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease were featured.- History :...
is an American term for a theatre that mainly showed exploitation films. One theory is the word is named after the defunct burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
theatres, on 42nd Street, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease
Striptease
A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...
used to be on the bill. In the 1960s these theatres were put to new use as venues for exploitation films.
As the drive-in movie theater
Drive-in theater
A drive-in theater is a form of cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor screen, a projection booth, a concession stand and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers can view movies from the privacy and comfort of their cars.The screen can be as simple as a...
(an outdoor theater into which the patrons drive and watch the film from their car) began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, theater owners began to look for ways to bring in patrons. One solution was to book exploitation films. In fact, some producers from the 1950s to the 1980s would make films directly for the drive-in market, the mass product needed for a weekly change led to another theory that the producers would "grind" films out. Many of them were violent action films which some would refer to as 'drive-in' films.
Subgenres
Exploitation films may adopt the subject matters and stylings of film genres, particularly horror filmHorror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
s and documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
s. The subgenres of exploitation films are categorized by which characteristics they utilize. Thematically, exploitation films can also be influenced by other so-called exploitative media, like pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
s. Exploitation films often blur genre lines by containing elements of two or more genres at a time. For example, Doris Wishman's Let Me Die A Woman
Let Me Die a Woman
Let Me Die a Woman is a semi-documentary film by exploitation film director Doris Wishman, who started production in 1972.-Plot:The film features interviews with sex reassignment surgeon Dr...
contains both shock documentary and sexploitation elements.
1930s and 1940s cautionary films
Exploitation films made in the 1930s and 1940s were films that got around the strict censorship and scrutiny of the era despite featuring lurid subject matter by claiming to be educational in nature. They were generally cautionary storiesCautionary tale
A cautionary tale is a tale told in folklore, to warn its hearer of a danger. There are three essential parts to a cautionary tale, though they can be introduced in a large variety of ways. First, a taboo or prohibition is stated: some act, location, or thing is said to be dangerous. Then, the...
about the alleged dangers of premarital sex
Premarital sex
Premarital sex is sexual activity, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex, practiced by persons who are unmarried. Although it has always been practiced, in the West it has increased in prevalence since the mid-1950s...
and drug use
Recreational drug use
Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
. Examples include Marihuana
Marihuana (film)
Marihuana is a 1936 exploitation film directed by Dwain Esper, and written by Esper's wife, Hildegarde Stadie.- Pot :Burma is a confused girl who likes to party. One day, she meets some strangers in a bar who invite her and her group to a party...
(1936), Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness is a well-known 1936 American propaganda exploitation film revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try "marijuana" — from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, and descent into madness...
(1938), Sex Madness
Sex Madness
Sex Madness is an exploitation film directed by Dwain Esper, along the lines of Reefer Madness, supposedly to warn teenagers and young adults of the dangers of venereal diseases, specifically syphilis....
(1938), Mom and Dad
Mom and Dad
Mom and Dad is a feature-length 1945 film directed by William Beaudine, and largely produced by the exploitation filmmaker and presenter Kroger Babb. Mom and Dad is considered the most successful film within its genre of "sex hygiene" films...
(1945), and She Shoulda Said No!
She Shoulda Said No!
"She Shoulda Said 'No'!" is a 1949 exploitation film that follows in the spirit of morality tales such as the 1936 films Reefer Madness and Marihuana...
(1949). One exploitation film concerning homosexuality, Children of Loneliness (1937), is now considered a lost film
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
.
Biker films
In 1953 The Wild OneThe Wild One
The Wild One is a 1953 outlaw biker film directed by László Benedek and produced by Stanley Kramer. It is famed for Marlon Brando's iconic portrayal of the gang leader Johnny Strabler.-Basis:...
, starring Marlon Brando, was the first film about a motorcycle gang. A string of low-budget juvenile delinquent films centered around hot-rods and motorcycles followed in the 1950s. The success of American International Pictures
American International Pictures
American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
' The Wild Angels
The Wild Angels
The Wild Angels is a 1966 Roger Corman film, made on location in Southern California. The Wild Angels was made three years before Easy Rider and was the first film to associate actor Peter Fonda with Harley-Davidson motorcycles and 1960s counterculture...
in 1966 ignited a trend that continued into the early 1970s. Other biker films include Motorpsycho
Motorpsycho (film)
Motorpsycho or Motor Psycho is a 1965 film by Russ Meyer. Made just before the better-known Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! , the film explores similar themes of sex and violence...
(1965), Hells Angels on Wheels
Hells Angels on Wheels
Hells Angels on Wheels is a 1967 American biker film directed by Richard Rush, and starring Jack Nicholson, Adam Roarke, and Sabrina Scharf...
(1967), The Born Losers
The Born Losers
This article is about the film. You may be looking for the song http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_LosersBorn Losers is a 1967 action film and the first of the Billy Jack movies. The film introduced Tom Laughlin as the half-Indian Green Beret Vietnam veteran Billy Jack...
(1967), Satan's Sadists
Satan's Sadists
Satan's Sadists is a 1969 biker film directed by Al Adamson and starring Russ Tamblyn.-Plot:...
(1969), Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
's Naked Angels
Naked Angels
Naked Angels is a 1969 outlaw biker film, directed by Bruce D. Clark. Starring Michael Greene as Mother, Jennifer Gan as Marlene and Richard Rust as Fingers. Later documentary director Penelope Spheeris is a cast member in her first appearance as an actress...
(1969), Nam's Angels
Nam's Angels
Nam's Angels is a 1970 action film, that was filmed in the Philippines. This film was directed by Jack Starrett. This film was originally released with the title, The Losers.-Plot:...
(1970), and C.C. and Company
C.C. and Company
C.C. and Company is a movie that was released in 1970. It starred Joe Namath as biker C.C. Ryder, Ann-Margret as fashion journalist Ann and William Smith as Moon, the leader of the fictitious outlaw biker gang the "Heads".- Plot summary :...
(1970). (See also List of biker films.)
As well as David Kebo and Rudi Liden 's Death Valley, 2008 film.
Blaxploitation
Black exploitation, or "blaxploitationBlaxploitation
Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is a film genre which emerged in the United States circa 1970. It is considered an ethnic sub-genre of the general category of exploitation films. Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban black audience, although the genre's audience...
" films, are made with black actors, ostensibly for black audiences, often within a stereotypically African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
urban milieu. A prominent theme was African-Americans overcoming the Man
The Man
"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise....
through cunning and violence. The progenitor of this subgenre was Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin Van Peebles
Melvin "Block" Van Peebles is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer.He is most famous for creating the acclaimed film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which heralded a new era of African American focused films...
' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 American independent drama film, written, produced, scored, directed by, and starring Melvin Van Peebles, father of actor Mario Van Peebles . It tells the picaresque story of a poor African American man on his flight from the white authority...
. Other examples include Black Caesar
Black Caesar (film)
Black Caesar is a 1973 American blaxploitation film, starring Fred Williamson and Gloria Hendry. The film was written and directed by Larry Cohen. It is a remake of the 1931 film Little Caesar. It features a notable musical score by James Brown , his first experience with writing music for film...
, Black Devil Doll, Blacula
Blacula
Blacula is a 1972 American horror film produced for American International Pictures. It was directed by William Crain and stars William Marshall in the title role about an 18th century African prince named Mamuwalde, who is both turned into a vampire and locked inside a coffin by Count Dracula...
, Black Shampoo
Black Shampoo
Black Shampoo is an American 1976 blaxploitation drama film directed by Greydon Clark and starring John Daniels.-Plot:John Daniels plays Jonathan Knight, the owner of "Mr. Jonathan's", the most successful hair salon for women on the Sunset Strip...
, Boss Nigger
Boss Nigger
Boss Nigger is a 1975 blaxploitation film directed by Jack Arnold. It stars former football player Fred Williamson, who both wrote and co-produced the film. Boss Nigger is the first film for which Williamson was credited as screenwriter or producer....
, Coffy
Coffy
- Track listing :# "Coffy Is The Color" - 3:03Vocals – Dee Dee Bridgewater, Roy Ayers, Wayne Garfield# "Priscilla's Theme" - 3:58# "King George" - 3:00Vocals – Roy Ayers# "Aragon" - 2:55# "Coffy Sauna" - 2:16# "King's Last Ride" - 1:10# "Coffy Baby" - 2:26...
, Coonskin
Coonskin (film)
Coonskin is a 1975 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi, about an African American rabbit, fox, and bear who rise to the top of the organized crime racket in Harlem, encountering corrupt law enforcement, con artists and the Mafia...
, Cotton Comes to Harlem
Cotton Comes to Harlem (film)
Cotton Comes to Harlem is a 1970 blaxploitation film co-written and directed by Ossie Davis and starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx: it is based on Chester Himes' novel of the same name...
, Dolemite
Dolemite
Dolemite is a 1975 blaxploitation feature film, and is also the name of its principal character, played by Rudy Ray Moore, who co-wrote the film and its soundtrack...
, Foxy Brown, Hell Up in Harlem
Hell Up in Harlem
Hell Up in Harlem is a 1973 blaxploitation film, starring Fred Williamson and Gloria Hendry. The film was written and directed by Larry Cohen...
, Live and Let Die
Live and Let Die (film)
Live and Let Die is the eighth spy film in the James Bond series, and the first to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman...
, The Mack
The Mack
The Mack is a 1973 blaxploitation film starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor. Although the movie was produced during the era of such blaxploitation movies as Dolemite, its producers do not label it a true blaxploitation picture...
, Mandingo
Mandingo (film)
Mandingo is a 1975 film, based on the novel Mandingo by Kyle Onstott and upon the play based thereon by Jack Kirkland. The film was directed by Richard Fleischer and featured James Mason, Susan George, Perry King, Lillian Hayman, boxer-turned-actor Ken Norton, and bodybuilder and pro...
, Shaft
Shaft (1971 film)
Shaft is a 1971 American blaxploitation film directed by Gordon Parks, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. An action film with elements of film noir, Shaft tells the story of a black private detective, John Shaft, who travels through Harlem and to the Italian mob neighborhoods in order to find the...
, Sugar Hill
Sugar Hill (1974 film)
Sugar Hill is a 1974 zombie film released by AIP, who had previously combined the horror and blaxploitation genres with Blacula and its sequel, Scream Blacula Scream.-Plot:...
, Super Fly, The Thing With Two Heads
The Thing with Two Heads
The Thing with Two Heads is a 1972 film, starring Rosey Grier, Ray Milland and Don Marshall directed by Lee Frost, and written by Wes Bishop. Frost and Bishop also had parts in the movie....
and Truck Turner
Truck Turner
Truck Turner is a 1974 blaxploitation film, starring Isaac Hayes and Yaphet Kotto, and directed by Jonathan Kaplan. The screenplay was written by Michael Allin, Jerry Wilkes and Oscar Williams...
. Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown
Jackie Brown (film)
Jackie Brown is a 1997 American crime drama film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It is an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch by American novelist Elmore Leonard and pays homage to 1970s blaxploitation films....
and Scott Sanders' Black Dynamite are modern homages to this genre.
Cannibal films
Cannibal filmCannibal film
Cannibal films are a sub genre of exploitation film made mostly by Italian filmmakers through the 1970s and 1980s. This sub genre is a collection of graphically gory movies that usually depict cannibalism by primitive, Stone-age natives deep inside the Asian or South American rain forests...
s, otherwise known as the cannibal genre
Cannibal film
Cannibal films are a sub genre of exploitation film made mostly by Italian filmmakers through the 1970s and 1980s. This sub genre is a collection of graphically gory movies that usually depict cannibalism by primitive, Stone-age natives deep inside the Asian or South American rain forests...
, are a collection of graphic, gory movies made in the early 1970s on into the late 1980s, primarily by Italian and Spanish moviemakers. These movies mainly focused on cannibalism by tribes deep in the South American or Asian rain forests, usually perpetrated against Westerners that the tribes hold prisoner. Similar to Mondo film
Mondo film
A mondo film is an exploitation documentary film, sometimes resembling a pseudo-documentary, usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, and situations...
s, the main draw of cannibal films was the promise of exotic locales and graphic gore involving any living creatures, human or animal. The best known film of this genre is the controversial 1980 Cannibal Holocaust
Cannibal Holocaust
Cannibal Holocaust is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Ruggero Deodato from a screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest and dealing with indigenous tribes, it was cast mostly with United States actors and filmed in English to achieve wider distribution...
in which six animals are killed. Others include Cannibal Ferox
Cannibal Ferox
Cannibal Ferox, also known as Make Them Die Slowly, is a 1981 Italian exploitation film written and directed by Umberto Lenzi. Upon its release, the film made claims to being "The most violent film ever made"...
, Eaten Alive!
Eaten Alive!
Mangiati vivi!, also known by its English title Eaten Alive!, is an Italian cannibal-rape film, directed by Umberto Lenzi, released in 1980. Alternative titles for the movie, include "The Emerald Jungle" and "Eaten Alive by Cannibals". It stars Robert Kerman, Janet Agren and Me Me Lai. In secondary...
, The Mountain of the Cannibal God
The Mountain of the Cannibal God
The Mountain of the Cannibal God is an Italian cult movie starring Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach with English dialogue that was filmed in Sri Lanka. The film was also widely released as Slave of the Cannibal God and released in the UK as Prisoner of the Cannibal God...
, Last Cannibal World, and the first cannibal film
Cannibal film
Cannibal films are a sub genre of exploitation film made mostly by Italian filmmakers through the 1970s and 1980s. This sub genre is a collection of graphically gory movies that usually depict cannibalism by primitive, Stone-age natives deep inside the Asian or South American rain forests...
, The Man From Deep River
Il paese del sesso selvaggio
Il paese del sesso selvaggio , better known as The Man from the Deep River in North America or Deep River Savages in Europe, is an Italian exploitation film directed by Umberto Lenzi...
. Famous directors in this genre include Umberto Lenzi
Umberto Lenzi
Umberto Lenzi , is an Italian film director who was very active in low budget crime films, peplums, spaghetti westerns, war movies, cannibal films and giallo murder mysteries ....
, Ruggero Deodato
Ruggero Deodato
Ruggero Deodato is an Italian film director and screen writer, best known for directing violent and gory horror films. Deodato is infamous for his 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust.- Biography :...
, Jesús Franco
Jesús Franco
Jesús "Jess" Franco is a Spanish film director, writer, cinematographer and actor. His career took off in 1961 with his cult classic The Awful Dr. Orloff, which received wide distribution in the United States and England...
, and Joe D'Amato
Joe D'Amato
Joe D'Amato, was a prolific Italian filmmaker who directed roughly 200 films, usually at the same time acting as producer and cinematographer, and sometimes providing the script as well...
.
Canuxploitation
Canuxploitation films are Canadian made exploitation films about Canadian culture and/or portrayals of Canadian life.The term is believed to have come from the Fall 1999 article Canuxploitation! Goin' Down the Road with the Cannibal Girls that Ate Black Christmas. Your Complete Guide to the Canadian B-Movie that appeared in Broken Pencil magazine. With the funding of the Canadian Film Development Corporation in the 1970s, Canadian film distributors were able to produce their own versions of exploitation films they had imported from other nations. The genre brought forth such respected directors as David CronenbergDavid Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...
and Bob Clark
Bob Clark
Benjamin "Bob" Clark was an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer best known for directing and writing the script with Jean Shepherd to the 1983 Christmas film A Christmas Story...
.
Carsploitation
Carsploitation films are films featuring many scenes of cars racing and crashing with sports and muscle cars and car wrecks that were popular around the era. The films were mainly produced in the United States and Australia. The quintessential film of this genre is Vanishing Point (1971). Others include Two-Lane BlacktopTwo-Lane Blacktop
Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 road movie directed by Monte Hellman, starring singer-songwriter James Taylor, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird. Esquire magazine declared the film its movie of the year for 1971, and even published the entire screenplay in its April, 1971...
(1971), The Cars That Ate Paris
The Cars that Ate Paris
The Cars That Ate Paris is a 1974 Australian horror comedy film. Directed by Peter Weir, it was his first feature film. Shot mostly in the rural town of Sofala, New South Wales, the film is set in the fictional town of Paris in which most of the inhabitants appear to be directly, or indirectly,...
(1974), Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974), Gone in 60 Seconds (1974), Death Race 2000
Death Race 2000
Death Race 2000 is a 1975 cult action film directed by Paul Bartel, and starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth and Sylvester Stallone. The film takes place in a dystopian American society in the year 2000, where the murderous Transcontinental Road Race has become a form of national entertainment...
(1975), Race with the Devil
Race with the Devil
Race with the Devil is a 1975 occult thriller and action film starring Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit and Lara Parker. This was the second of three films Fonda and Oates would star in together...
(1975), Cannonball
Cannonball (film)
Cannonball, also known as Carquake, is a 1976 film starring David Carradine. The film is one of two released in 1976 that were based on a real illegal cross-continent road race that took place for a number of years in the United States...
(1976), Mad Max
Mad Max
Mad Max is a 1979 Australian dystopian action film directed by George Miller and revised by Miller and Byron Kennedy over the original script by James McCausland. The film stars Mel Gibson, who was unknown at the time. Its narrative based around the traditional western genre, Mad Max tells a story...
(1979), The Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers (film)
The Blues Brothers is a 1980 musical comedy film directed by John Landis and starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues, characters developed from a musical sketch on the NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. It features musical numbers by R&B and soul singers James...
(1980), Dead End Drive-In
Dead End Drive-In
Dead End Drive-In is a 1986 Australian New Wave film about a teenage couple trapped in a drive-in theater which is really a concentration camp for societal rejects. The inmates, many of whom sport punk fashion, are fed a steady diet of junk food, New Wave music, drugs, and bad movies.The film was...
(1986) and The Hitcher (1986). Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
's Death Proof
Death Proof
Death Proof is a 2007 American action thriller film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film centers on a psychopathic stunt man who stalks young women before murdering them in staged car accidents using his "death-proof" stunt car...
(2007) is a modern homage to this genre, as well as to slasher films and the films of Russ Meyer
Russ Meyer
Russell Albion "Russ" Meyer was a U.S. motion picture director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, actor and photographer....
. The Fast and the Furious
The Fast and the Furious (film series)
The Fast and the Furious is a series of action films that focuses on street racing and heists. Produced by Universal Studios, the series was established in 2001 with the eponymous first installment, which has since been followed by four sequels, and two short films that tie into the series...
franchises fit into this subgenre as well, as do the French Taxi
Taxi (1998 film)
Taxi is a 1998 French action-comedy film starring Samy Naceri, written by Luc Besson, and directed by Gérard Pirès.- Plot :The film takes place in Marseille, France, and involves an aspiring racecar driver named Daniel , who initially works as a pizza delivery boy, but changes jobs to become a taxi...
series.
Chambara films
In the 1970s, a brand of revisionist, non-traditional samurai film rose to some popularity in Japan; the subgenre became known as chambara, an onomatopoeia describing the clash of swords. Chambara's origins can be traced as far back as Akira KurosawaAkira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
, whose films featured moral grayness and exaggerated violence, but the genre is mostly associated with 1970s samurai manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
by Kazuo Koike
Kazuo Koike
is a prolific Japanese manga writer, novelist and entrepreneur.-Biography:Early in Koike's career, he studied under Golgo 13 creator Takao Saito and served as a writer on the series....
, on whose work many later films would be based. Chambara features few of the stoic, formal sensibilities of earlier jidaigeki
Jidaigeki
is a genre of film, television, and theatre in Japan. The name means "period drama" and is usually the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1603 to 1868. Some, however, are set much earlier—Portrait of Hell, for example, is set during the late Heian period—and the early Meiji era is also a popular...
films—the new chambara featured revenge-driven antihero protagonists, nudity, sex scenes, swordplay and blood. Well-known chambara films include Hanzo the Razor, Lady Snowblood
Lady Snowblood (film)
is a 1973 Japanese film directed by Toshiya Fujita and starring Meiko Kaji. It is based on the manga of the same name by writer Kazuo Koike and artist Kazuo Kamimura and follows the story of the eponymous assassin seeking vengeance upon the bandits who raped her mother and murdered her father.It...
, Lone Wolf and Cub
Lone Wolf and Cub
is a manga created by writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima. First published in 1970, the story was adapted into six films starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, four plays, a television series starring Yorozuya Kinnosuke, and is widely recognized as an important and influential work.Lone Wolf and Cub...
, Sex and Fury and Shogun Assassin
Shogun Assassin
Shogun Assassin, known in Japan as , is a jidaigeki film made for the British and American markets and released in 1980. In 2006 it was restored and re-released on DVD in North America by AnimEigo....
. Modern Japanese films such as Azumi
Azumi
is a Japanese manga series created by Yū Koyama in 1994. The manga was originally published by Shogakukan and serialized in Big Comic Superior, and was later adapted to two feature films starring Aya Ueto, a video game and a stage play. Azumi received an Excellence Prize at the 1997 Japan Media...
and anime such as Shigurui
Shigurui
is a manga series written by Norio Nanjo and illustrated by Takayuki Yamaguchi, based on the first chapter of the novel Suruga-jō Gozen Jiai by Norio Nanjō....
continue the chambara tradition, and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill
Kill Bill
Kill Bill Volume 1 is a 2003 action thriller film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It is the first of two volumes that were theatrically released several months apart, the second volume being Kill Bill Volume 2....
series is a prominent American tribute to the genre, along with Ninja Assassin
Ninja Assassin
Ninja Assassin is a 2009 American martial arts film directed by James McTeigue. The story was written by Matthew Sand, with a screenplay penned by J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5. The film stars South Korean pop musician Rain as a disillusioned assassin looking for retribution against his...
. Other films such as The Machine Girl
The Machine Girl
is a 2008 Japanese action shock/gore film written and directed by Noboru Iguchi with special effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura . The film stars Minase Yashiro in the lead role as Ami, Asami in the role of Miki, Kentarō Shimazu as the yakuza leader Ryūgi Kimura and Honoka as his wife, Mrs. Kimura...
and Tokyo Gore Police
Tokyo Gore Police
is a 2008 Japanese gore film co-written, edited, and directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura and stars Eihi Shiina as Ruka, a vengeful police officer.Tokyo Gore Police was released to several film festivals in North America...
contain elements of chambara, combining it with body horror
Body horror
Body horror, biological horror, organic horror or venereal horror is horror fiction in which the horror is principally derived from the graphic destruction or degeneration of the body. Such works may deal with disease, decay, parasitism, mutilation, or mutation...
.
Eco-terror films
Eco-terror films, also called "nature-run-amok" or "natural horror" films or "eco-horror" films, focus on an animal or group of animals that are far larger and more aggressive than is usual for its species, terrorizing humans within a particular locale whilst a group of other humans attempt to hunt it down. This genre began in the 1950s, when concern over atomic testing led to the popularity of movies about giant monsters. These were typically either giant prehistoric creatures awakened by atomic blasts, or ordinary animals mutated by radiation. These films included GodzillaGodzilla (1954 film)
is a 1954 Japanese science fiction film directed by Ishirō Honda and produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka. The film stars Akira Takarada, Momoko Kōchi, Akihiko Hirata and Takashi Shimura. The film tells the story of Godzilla, a giant monster mutated by nuclear radiation, who ravages Japan, bringing back the...
, Them!, and Tarantula
Tarantula (film)
Tarantula is a 1955 science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Leo G. Carroll, John Agar, and Mara Corday. Among other things, the film is notable for the appearance of a 25-year-old Clint Eastwood in an uncredited role as a jet pilot at the end of the film.-Plot summary:The plot...
. The trend was revived in the 1970s as awareness of pollution increased, with corporate greed and military irresponsibility being blamed for destruction of the environment. Night of the Lepus
Night of the Lepus
Night of the Lepus, also known as Rabbits, is a 1972 American science fiction horror film based on the 1964 science fiction novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit. Released theatrically on October 4, 1972, it focuses on members of a small Arizona town who battle thousands of mutated, carnivorous killer...
, Frogs
Frogs (film)
Frogs is a 1972 horror film directed by George McCowan. The film falls into the "eco-horror" category since it tells the story of an upper-class U.S. Southern family who are victimized by several different animal species, including snakes, birds, and lizards, as well as the occasional butterfly...
, and Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster
Godzilla vs. Hedorah
, also known as Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, is a 1971 science fiction kaiju film. The eleventh film in Toho Co. Ltd.'s Godzilla series , it was directed by Yoshimitsu Banno with special effects by Teruyoshi Nakano. It was the first film to feature Hedorah. The score was composed by Riichiro Manabe...
are examples of these movies. After the massive success of Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
's 1975 Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
, a number of highly similar films (sometimes regarded as outright rip-offs) were produced in hopes of cashing in on its success. These included Alligator
Alligator (film)
Alligator is a 1980 monster movie, directed by Lewis Teague with a screenplay by John Sayles. It stars Robert Forster, Robin Riker, and Michael V. Gazzo...
, Cujo
Cujo (film)
Cujo is a 1983 American horror/thriller film based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Cujo was directed by Lewis Teague from a screenplay by Lauren Currier. The film was #58 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.-Plot:...
, Day of the Animals
Day of the Animals
The Day of the Animals is a 1977 American horror film thriller directed by William Girdler and based on a story written by Edward L. Montoro...
, Great White
Great White (film)
Great White is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Enzo G. Castellari and starring James Franciscus and Vic Morrow. The film is extremely similar to Steven Spielberg's Jaws.-Plot:...
, Grizzly
Grizzly (film)
Grizzly is a 1976 horror film directed by William Girdler. The film is about an 18-foot man-eating Grizzly bear that terrorizes a National Forest. The film stars Christopher George, Andrew Prine and Richard Jaeckel...
, Humanoids from the Deep
Humanoids from the Deep
Humanoids from the Deep is a 1980 science fiction monster movie, starring Doug McClure, Ann Turkel, and Vic Morrow. Roger Corman served as the film's Executive Producer, and the film was distributed by his New World Pictures. It was directed by Barbara Peeters...
, Monster Shark
Monster Shark
Monster Shark is a 1984 Italian horror film, and one of several environmental disaster films to emerge following the success of the 1975 film Jaws, including films such as: Great White, Orca, Piranha, Tentacles and Tintorera.- Plot :The film takes place along...
, Orca
Orca (film)
Orca is a 1977 horror film directed by Michael Anderson and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, and Will Sampson. The film was poorly received by critics and audiences alike due in part to its similarities to the film Jaws released two years prior...
, The Pack
The Pack (1977 film)
The Pack is a 1977 horror film about a pack of abandoned dogs who turn against humans in Seal Island.-Plot:A pack of feral dogs are attacking the people on Seal Island. One of the islanders, Jerry , must stop them....
, Piranha, Prophecy
Prophecy (film)
Prophecy is a 1979 horror film directed by John Frankenheimer and written by David Seltzer. It stars Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire and Armand Assante....
, Razorback
Razorback (film)
Razorback is a 1984 Australian film, based on Peter Brennan's novel, written by Everett De Roche, and directed by Russell Mulcahy who would later make the first two of the Highlander trilogy...
, Blood Feast (Night of 1,000 Cats), Tentacles
Tentacles (film)
Tentacles is a 1977 Italian-American horror film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and starring John Huston and Shelley Winters.- Plot :The tourist spot Ocean Beach has come under attack by a giant octopus, which captures human swimmers and picks clean the skeletons of flesh and bone marrow...
, and Tintorera
Tintorera
Tintorera is a 1977 Mexican-British horror directed by René Cardona Jr and starring Susan George, Hugo Stiglitz, Fiona Lewis and Andrés García. It is based on the novel of the same name by oceanographer Ramón Bravo that studied the species of shark known as "tintorera" and discovered the...
. Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
was a major producer of these films in both decades. The genre has experienced a revival in recent years, with films such as Mulberry Street
Mulberry Street (film)
Mulberry Street is a 2007 horror film that was released by After Dark Films as a part of their 8 Films to Die For 2007. It was released on DVD in the United States on March 18, 2008...
and Larry Fessenden
Larry Fessenden
-Life and career:He is president of Glass Eye Pix, an independent film production company based in New York City. Fessenden produced the Dark Sky film The Inkeepers which is directed by Ti West and the thriller Hypothermia, besides his work as producer he stars in the psychological thriller I Can...
's The Last Winter
The Last Winter
The Last Winter is a 2006 thriller film, directed by Larry Fessenden. The Last Winter premiered in The Contemporary World Cinema Programme at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2006...
reflecting concerns over global warming and overpopulation.
The Sci-fi (now known as SyFy) Channel is a massive producer of such films with their original movies often consisting of nothing more than, "Giant _____ attacks!" Examples include Sharktopus and Dinoshark.
Giallo films
Giallo films are ItalianItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
-made slasher film
Slasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
s that focus both on the cruel deaths committed by the killers and the subsequent search of detectives for the said killers. They are named for the Italian word for yellow, "Giallo", the color of which was the background of the pulp novels
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
these movies were initially adapted from or inspired by. The progenitor of this genre was La ragazza che sapeva troppo
La ragazza che sapeva troppo
The Girl Who Knew Too Much is a 1963 Italian giallo film. Directed by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, the film stars John Saxon as Dr. Marcello Bassi and Letícia Román as Nora Davis. The plot revolves around a young woman named Nora, who travels to Rome and witnesses a murder. The police and Dr....
(The Girl Who Knew Too Much). Other examples of Giallo films include 4 mosche di velluto grigio
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Four Flies on Grey Velvet is a 1971 Italian mystery thriller film, directed by Dario Argento. The screenplay is also by Argento, from a story by him, Luigi Cozzi, Mario Foglietti and Bryan Edgar Wallace .-Plot:...
(Four Flies on Grey Velvet), Il gatto a nove code
The Cat o' Nine Tails
The Cat o' Nine Tails is a 1971 Italian giallo thriller film written and directed by Dario Argento; it was his second film as director....
(The Cat o' Nine Tails), L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a 1970 giallo suspense thriller directed by Dario Argento . The film is considered a landmark in the Italian giallo genre...
(The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), La coda dello scorpione
The Case of the Scorpion's Tail
The Case of the Scorpion's Tail is a 1971 thriller film by Italian director Sergio Martino. Its Italian title is La Coda dello scorpione.-Plot:...
(The Case of the Scorpion's Tail), La tarantola dal ventre nero
Black Belly of the Tarantula
The Black Belly of the Tarantula is a 1971 Italian film directed by Paolo Cavara. It is one of many Italian giallo films to be inspired by Dario Argento's successful debut thriller The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. The film was shot on location in Rome, Italy in 1970...
(Black Belly of the Tarantula), Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh/Blade of the Ripper), Sei donne per l'assassino
Blood and Black Lace
Blood and Black Lace is a 1964 Italian thriller film directed by Mario Bava. Bava cowrote the screenplay with Giuseppe Barilla and Marcello Fondato. The film stars Cameron Mitchell and Eva Bartok...
(Blood and Black Lace) and Tenebrae
Tenebrae (film)
Tenebrae is a 1982 Italian horror thriller film written and directed by Dario Argento. The film stars Anthony Franciosa, John Saxon, and Daria Nicolodi...
. Dario Argento
Dario Argento
Dario Argento is an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, particularly in the subgenre known as giallo, and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies....
, Lucio Fulci
Lucio Fulci
Lucio Fulci was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is perhaps best known for his directorial work on gore films, including Zombie and The Beyond , although he made films in genres as diverse as giallo, western, and comedy...
and Mario Bava
Mario Bava
Mario Bava was an Italian director, screenwriter, and cinematographer remembered as one of the greatest names from the "golden age" of Italian horror films.-Biography:Mario Bava was born in San Remo, Liguria, Italy...
were the most proficient directors of this genre.
Mockbusters
Mockbusters, sometimes called "remakesploitation films", are copycat movies that attempt to cash in on the advertising of heavily promoted major-studio films. Production company The AsylumThe Asylum
The Asylum is an American film studio and distributor which focuses on producing low-budget, usually direct-to-video productions. The studio has produced titles that capitalize on productions by major studios; these titles have been dubbed "mockbusters" by the press.-History:The Asylum was founded...
, who prefers to call them "tie-ins", is a prominent producer of these films. These have historically been associated with Italian cinema, which has been quick to latch on to such trends as Westerns, James Bond movies, and zombie films. They have long been a staple of directors such as Jim Wynorski
Jim Wynorski
Jim Wynorski is an American screenwriter, director, and producer.-Career:Wynorski has been making B-movies and exploitation movies since the early 1980s. He has directed over 75 feature films. His earliest films were released to the theatrical audience and played in movie theaters...
(The Bare Wench Project, and the Cliffhanger
Cliffhanger (film)
Cliffhanger is a 1993 American action film directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow. Stallone plays a mountain climber, who becomes embroiled in a failed heist set in a U.S. Treasury plane flying through the Rocky Mountains...
imitation Sub Zero) who make movies for the direct-to-video market. These are beginning to attract attention from major Hollywood studios, who served The Asylum with a cease and desist
Cease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
order in an attempt to prevent them from releasing The Day the Earth Stopped
The Day the Earth Stopped
The Day the Earth Stopped is a 2008 direct-to-DVD science fiction film made by American studio The Asylum, directed by and starring C. Thomas Howell...
to video stores in advance of the release of The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008 film)
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a 2008 science fiction film, a remake of the 1951 film of the same name. The screenplay is based on the 1940 classic science fiction short story "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates, and the 1951 screenplay adaptation by Edmund H...
to theaters.
Though the term has gone as far back as the fifties (with The Monster of Piedras Blancas
The Monster of Piedras Blancas
The Monster of Piedras Blancas is a 1959 science fiction/horror film written and directed by Irvin Berwick and starring Jeanne Carmen, Les Tremayne, John Harmon, Don Sullivan, Forrest Lewis, and Pete Dunn...
as a clear derivative of Creature From The Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 monster horror film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. The eponymous creature was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning in underwater scenes...
), it didn't become popular until the seventies with Starcrash
Starcrash
Starcrash is an Italian 1979 science fiction film, which was also released under the English title of The Adventures of Stella Star . The film is a low budget and is often regarded as a rip-off of Star Wars...
, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam
Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam
Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam is a 1982 Turkish-made B-movie commonly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious use of unauthorized Star Wars footage worked into the film.-Cast:...
and Süpermen dönüyor with the latter two using unauthorized excerpts of John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
score as well as scenes from Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
among others.
Mondo films
Mondo filmMondo film
A mondo film is an exploitation documentary film, sometimes resembling a pseudo-documentary, usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, and situations...
s, often called shockumentaries
Mondo film
A mondo film is an exploitation documentary film, sometimes resembling a pseudo-documentary, usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, and situations...
, are quasi-documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
s that focus on sensationalized topics, such as exotic customs from around the world or gruesome death footage. Similar to shock exploitation, the goal of Mondo films is shocking the audience in dealing with taboo
Taboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
subject material. The first and best-known mondo film is Mondo Cane
Mondo cane
Mondo cane is a documentary written and directed by Italian filmmakers Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti. The film consists of a series of travelogue vignettes that provide glimpses into cultural practices around the world with the intention to shock or surprise Western film...
(A Dog's World). Others include Shocking Asia
Shocking Asia
Shocking Asia is a 1974 documentary film written and directed by Rolf Olsen with Ingeborg Stein Steinbach. The film was banned in Finland due to its graphic content. A sequel titled Shocking Asia II: The Last Taboos was released in 1985....
and the Faces of Death
Faces of Death
Faces of Death is a 1978 mondo film which guides viewers through explicit scenes depicting a variety of ways to die and violent acts....
series.
Nazisploitation
Nazi exploitation films, also called "Nazisploitation" films, or "Il Sadiconazista", focus on Nazis torturing prisoners at death camps and brothelBrothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
s during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The tortures inflicted are often of a sexual nature; and the prisoners, who are often female, are nude. The progenitor of this subgenre was Love Camp 7
Love Camp 7
Love Camp 7 is a 1969 U.S. women-in-prison B-movie directed by Lee Frost and written by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse, the latter of whom also acts as a sadistic camp commandant.-Plot:...
(1969). The quintessential film of the genre which launched its popularity and its typical tropes was Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974); about the buxom, nymphomaniacal dominatrix
Dominatrix
Dominatrix or mistress is a woman or women who takes the dominant role in bondage, discipline and sadomasochism, or BDSM. A common form of address for a submissive to a dominatrix is "mistress", "ma'am", "domina" or "maîtresse"...
Ilsa torturing prisoners in a Stalag
Stalag
In Germany, stalag was a term used for prisoner-of-war camps. Stalag is a contraction of "Stammlager", itself short for Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager.- Legal definitions :...
. Others include Fräulein Devil
Fräulein Devil
Fräulein Devil, also known as Captive Women 4, Elsa: Fraulein SS and Fraulein Kitty, is a 1977 French Nazi exploitation film.-Plot:...
(Captive Women 4/Elsa: Fraulein SS/Fraulein Kitty), La Bestia in Calore
La Bestia in Calore
La Bestia in Calore is an Italian exploitation film released in 1977. Directed by Luigi Batzella and written by Batzella and Lorenzo Artale, it gained notoriety when it was banned in the UK as a video nasty...
(SS Hell Camp/SS Experiment Part 2/The Beast in Heat/Horrifying Experiments of the S.S. Last Days), L'ultima orgia del III Reich
L'ultima orgia del III Reich
Last Orgy of the Third Reich is a 1977 Italian Nazi exploitation film directed by Cesare Canevari.- Plot :...
(Gestapo's Last Orgy/Last Orgy of The Third Reich/Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler), Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty was a Berlin brothel used by the SD for espionage purposes before and during World War II.In the 1930s Berlin, Salon Kitty was a high-class brothel in 11 Giesebrechtstrasse. Its usual clientele included German dignitaries and foreign diplomats...
and SS Experiment Camp
SS Experiment Camp
SS Experiment Camp is a 1976 Nazi exploitation film directed by Sergio Garrone. The plot concerns a Nazi officer who wanted a testicles transplant. It gained infamy in the 1980s for its bad-taste sexual and violent content involving, as the title suggests, Nazi human experimentation...
. A lot of nazisploitation film were influenced by art films like Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
's infamous Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom , commonly referred to as Salò, is a controversial 1975 Italian drama film written and directed by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini with uncredited writing contributions by Pupi Avati. It is based on the book The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade...
(Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom) and Liliana Cavani
Liliana Cavani
Liliana Cavani is an Italian film director and screenwriter. She belongs to a generation of Italian filmmakers that came into prominence in the 1970s and includes Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellochio. Cavani became internationally known after the success of her 1974 feature...
's Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter
The Night Porter
The Night Porter is a controversial 1974 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling.- Synopsis :...
) .
Nudist Films
Nudist films originated in the 1930s as films that skirted the Hays Code restrictions on nudity by purportedly depicting the nudist 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 for more open depictions of nudity, starting with Russ Meyer's 1959 The Immoral Mr. TeasThe Immoral Mr. Teas
The Immoral Mr. Teas is the first commercially successful film of director Russ Meyer.-Etymology:The name "Teas" is a homophone of the word tease, and one of the meanings of "tease" includes to sexually excite another person by subtle means, usually explicitly avoiding advancement to more...
, which has been credited as the first film which unapologetically placed its exploitation elements 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 obsoleted the nudist genre, which is ironic, as the nudist film Garden of Eden was the subject of the court case. After this, the nudist genre split into subgenres such as the "nudie-cutie", which featured nudity, but did not contain 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 placing their main focus on the nudist camps' most beautiful female residents, while denying the existence of such exploitation. They depicted a lifestyle unbound by the restrictions of clothing, yet this depiction was restricted by the requirement that genitals not be shown. Still, there was a subversive element to these, 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 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.
Ozploitation
OzploitationOzploitation
Ozploitation films are a type of low budget horror, comedy and action films made in Australia after the introduction of the R rating in 1971. The year also marked the beginnings of the Australian New Wave movement, and the Ozploitation style peaked within the same time frame...
, or Australian sub-genre films, broadly covers horror, erotic or crime films of the 1970s and 1980s. Reforms to Australia's film classification systems in 1971 led to a number of such comparatively low-budget, privately funded films being produced, assisted by tax exemptions and targeting export markets. Often an internationally recognised actor (but of waning notability) would be hired to play a lead role. While laconic characters and desert scenes feature in many Ozploitation films, the term has been used to apply for a variety of Australian films of the era that relied on shocking or titilating their audiences. Some of the better known Ozploitation films include Mad Max
Mad Max
Mad Max is a 1979 Australian dystopian action film directed by George Miller and revised by Miller and Byron Kennedy over the original script by James McCausland. The film stars Mel Gibson, who was unknown at the time. Its narrative based around the traditional western genre, Mad Max tells a story...
, Alvin Purple
Alvin Purple
Alvin Purple was a 1973 Australian comedy film starring Graeme Blundell, written by Alan Hopgood and directed by Tim Burstall.It received largely negative reviews from local film critics. Despite this it was a major hit with Australian audiences...
, Patrick
Patrick (film)
Patrick is a 1978 Australian horror film directed by Richard Franklin and written by Everett De Roche. It is the pivotal movie of respected Australian director Richard Franklin's career.-Plot summary:...
and Turkey Shoot
Turkey Shoot (film)
Turkey Shoot is a 1982 Australian dystopian futurist exploitation film directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith notable for its extreme violence and sadistic prison sequences...
; a documentary covering the genre was Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!. Such films address themes concerning Australian society, particularly in respect of masculinity (especially the Ocker
Ocker
The term "ocker" is used both as a noun and adjective for an Australian who speaks and acts in an uncultured manner, using a broad Australian accent...
male), male attitudes towards women, attitudes towards and treatment of Indigenous Australians, violence, alcohol, and environmental exploitation and destruction. They are also typically given rural or outback
Outback
The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...
settings which emphasise the Australian landscape and environment as an almost spiritually malign force which alienates white Australians and frustrates both their personal ambitions and activities and their attempts to subdue it.
Rape / Revenge films
Films in which a woman is raped, left for dead, recovers and then subsequently exacts a typically graphic, gory revenge against the person/persons who raped her. By far the most famous film of this genre is I Spit on Your GraveI Spit On Your Grave
Day of the Woman is a 1978 controversial rape revenge film. The film received a limited release, with a wider release in 1980. Prominent film critics condemned the film for its graphic violence and lengthy depictions of gang rape, and the motion picture remains controversial to this day...
(also called Day of the Woman). It is not unusual for the main character in these films to be a successful, independent woman from the city, who is attacked by a man from the country. The genre has more recently drawn praise from feminists such as Carol J. Clover
Carol J. Clover
Carol J. Clover is an American professor of film studies, rhetoric language and Scandinavian mythology. She has been widely published in her areas of expertise...
, whose 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws
Men, Women, and Chainsaws
Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film is a 1992 book by American academic Carol J. Clover. In it she investigates the appeal of horror cinema, in particular the slasher, occult, and rape-revenge genres, from a feminist perspective...
: Gender in the Modern Horror Film examines the implications of its reversals of traditional film gender roles. These 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; including thrillers (Ms. 45
Ms. 45
Ms. 45, also known as Angel of Vengeance, is a 1981 American low-budget exploitation film directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Zoë Tamerlis Lund...
), dramas (Lipstick
Lipstick (film)
Lipstick is a 1976 drama film directed by Lamont Johnson. Starring Margaux and Mariel Hemingway, it contains one of the most infamous scenes in motion picture history, showing an extremely graphic rape scene.- Plot :...
), westerns (Hannie Caulder
Hannie Caulder
Hannie Caulder is a 1971 British Western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring Raquel Welch, Robert Culp and Ernest Borgnine.-Plot:Hannie Caulder is a frontier wife whose husband is murdered by the Clemens brothers, a trio of rather inept outlaw brothers .After a disastrous bank raid, the...
), and art films (Memento). One of the genre's most significant examples, The Last House on the Left
The Last House on the Left (1972 film)
The Last House on the Left is a 1972 horror film written and directed by Wes Craven and produced by Sean S. Cunningham.The story is inspired by the 1960 Swedish film The Virgin Spring, directed by Ingmar Bergman, which in turn is based on the 13th century Swedish ballad "Töres döttrar i Wänge"...
, was an uncredited remake of Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman was a Swedish director, writer and producer for film, stage and television. Described by Woody Allen as "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera", he is recognized as one of the most accomplished and...
's The Virgin Spring
The Virgin Spring
The Virgin Spring is a 1960 Swedish drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set in medieval Sweden, it is a revenge tale about a father's merciless response to the rape and murder of his young daughter. The story was adapted by screenwriter Ulla Isaksson from a 13th century Swedish ballad, "Töres...
, 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 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 major-studio rape/revenge movies such as The Accused.
Sexploitation
Sex exploitation, or "sexploitationSexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
" films, are similar to softcore
Softcore
Softcore pornography is a form of filmic or photographic pornography or erotica that is less sexually explicit than hardcore pornography. It is intended to tickle and arouse men and women. Softcore pornography depicts nude and semi-nude performers engaging in casual social nudity or non-graphic...
pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, in that the film serves largely as a vehicle for showing scenes involving nude or semi-nude women. While many films contain vivid sex scenes, sexploitation shows these scenes more graphically than mainstream films, often overextending the sequences or showing full frontal nudity. Russ Meyer
Russ Meyer
Russell Albion "Russ" Meyer was a U.S. motion picture director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, actor and photographer....
's body of work is probably the best known example; with his best known films being Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a 1965 exploitation film directed by Russ Meyer, who also wrote the script with Jack Moran. It stars Tura Satana, Haji, and Lori Williams....
and Supervixens
Supervixens
Supervixens is a 1975 sexploitation film by American filmmaker Russ Meyer. The cast features Meyer regulars Charles Napier, Uschi Digard, and Haji...
. Other well-known sexploitation films include the Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle
Emmanuelle is the lead character in a series of French softcore erotic movies based on a character created by Emmanuelle Arsan in the novel Emmanuelle...
series, Showgirls and Caligula
Caligula (film)
Caligula is a 1979 American-produced Italian biographical film directed by Tinto Brass, with additional scenes filmed by Giancarlo Lui and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione. The film concerns the rise and fall of Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula...
. Caligula is unique among sexploitation films and exploitation films in general in that it features high budget and eminent actors (Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor with a career spanning over forty years.McDowell is principally known for his roles in the controversial films If...., O Lucky Man!, A Clockwork Orange and Caligula...
, John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole
Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole is an Irish actor of stage and screen. O'Toole achieved stardom in 1962 playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, and then went on to become a highly-honoured film and stage actor. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and holds the record for most...
and Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...
).
Shocksploitation
Shock exploitation films, or "shock films" or "shocksploitation films"; contain various shocking elements such as extremely realistic graphic violenceGraphic violence
Graphic violence is the depiction of especially vivid, brutal and realistic acts of violence in visual media such as literature, film, television, and video games...
, graphic rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
depictions, simulated bestiality and depictions of incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
. Examples of shock films include Antichrist
Antichrist (film)
Antichrist is a 2009 arthouse-horror film written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It follows horror film conventions and tells the story of a couple who, after the death of their child, retreat to a cabin in the woods where the man experiences strange...
, Angst
Angst (1983 film)
Angst is a 1983 Austrian film. Written and directed by Gerald Kargl with cinematography by Academy Award winner Zbigniew Rybczyński, it tells the story of a psychopath recently released from prison and is loosely based on the mass murderer Werner Kniesek...
, Assault on Precinct 13
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 film)
Assault on Precinct 13 is a 1976 American action-thriller film written and directed by John Carpenter. It stars Austin Stoker as a police officer who defends a defunct precinct against an attack by a relentless criminal gang, along with Darwin Joston as a convicted murderer who helps him. Laurie...
, August Underground's Mordum
August Underground's Mordum
August Underground's Mordum is an independent exploitation film released by the Pittsburgh-based film production/special effects/design company Toetag Pictures in 2003...
, Baise-moi
Baise-moi
Baise-moi is a French film co-directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, released in 2000. It is based on the novel by Despentes, first published in 1999. The film received intense media coverage because of its graphic mix of violence and explicit sex scenes...
, Blood Sucking Freaks
Blood Sucking Freaks
Blood Sucking Freaks is a 1976 horror-exploitation film. Shot under the title Sardu: Master of the Screaming Virgins, it was retitled The Incredible Torture Show during its original theatrical run....
, Combat Shock
Combat Shock
Combat Shock is a 1986 drama film written and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo and distributed by Troma Entertainment.The plot of the film takes place in Staten Island, and follows an unemployed Vietnam veteran living in total poverty with his nagging wife, his deformed baby due to Ricky having been...
, I Drink Your Blood
I Drink Your Blood
I Drink Your Blood is a cult horror film originally released in 1970. The film was written and directed by David E. Durston, produced by Jerry Gross, and starred Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury and Lynn Lowry ....
, Fight for Your Life
Fight For Your Life
Fight for Your Life is a 1977 action film starring William Sanderson .-Synopsis:Sanderson plays Kane, a hate-fuelled redneck who absconds from jail with his sidekicks...
,Seven Servants
Seven Servants
Seven Servants is a USA - Germany co-production 1996 German drama -comedy film made by Daryush Shokof. The movie is about a man who wants to unite and "connect" the races until his last breath.-Plot:...
, Hostel, House of 1000 Corpses
House of 1000 Corpses
House of 1000 Corpses is a 2003 exploitation horror film written and directed by Rob Zombie; it is his directorial debut. It was released in the United States on April 11, 2003 by Lions Gate Entertainment.-Plot:...
, I Spit on Your Grave
I Spit On Your Grave
Day of the Woman is a 1978 controversial rape revenge film. The film received a limited release, with a wider release in 1980. Prominent film critics condemned the film for its graphic violence and lengthy depictions of gang rape, and the motion picture remains controversial to this day...
, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and its sequels, Irréversible
Irréversible
Irréversible is a 2002 French drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a non-linear narrative and follows two men as they try to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend...
, Last House on Dead End Street
Last House on Dead End Street
Last House on Dead End Street is a horror film released in 1977 about a disgruntled man, recently released from prison, who takes out his anguish by making snuff films....
, The Last House on the Left
The Last House on the Left (1972 film)
The Last House on the Left is a 1972 horror film written and directed by Wes Craven and produced by Sean S. Cunningham.The story is inspired by the 1960 Swedish film The Virgin Spring, directed by Ingmar Bergman, which in turn is based on the 13th century Swedish ballad "Töres döttrar i Wänge"...
, Men Behind the Sun, Nekromantik
Nekromantik
NEKRomantik is a 1987 West German horror film directed by Jörg Buttgereit. This frequently controversial movie, banned in a number of countries, has become a cult film over the years due to its transgressive subject matter and audacious imagery...
, Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos
Pink Flamingos is a 1972 transgressive black comedy film written, produced, composed, shot, edited, and directed by John Waters. When the film was initially released, it caused a huge degree of controversy and thus became one of the most notorious cult films ever made. It made an underground star...
, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom , commonly referred to as Salò, is a controversial 1975 Italian drama film written and directed by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini with uncredited writing contributions by Pupi Avati. It is based on the book The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade...
(Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom), SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is a 1997 documentary film directed by Kirby Dick about Bob Flanagan, a Los Angeles writer, poet, performance artist, comic, and BDSM celebrity, who suffered from and later died of cystic fibrosis...
, Snuff, Strange Days
Strange Days (film)
Strange Days is a 1995 cyberpunk science fiction film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and produced and co-written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott and Vincent D'Onofrio. Despite positive reviews, the film was a...
, Ta Paidia tou Diavolou (Island of Death), Thriller - en grym film
Thriller - en grym film
Thriller – A Cruel Picture is a 1973 Swedish exploitation film in the "rape and revenge" genre written and directed by Bo Arne Vibenius under the name "Alex Fridolinski"...
(Thriller: A Cruel Picture) and Vase de Noces
Vase de Noces
Vase de Noces is a Belgian arthouse film directed by Thierry Zéno and stars Dominique Garny.The film deals openly, and sometimes graphically, with bestiality, and is informally known as The Pig Fucking Movie...
(Wedding Trough/One Man and his Pig/The Pig Fucking Movie), and many of the films of Paul Verhoeven, Ruggero Deodato
Ruggero Deodato
Ruggero Deodato is an Italian film director and screen writer, best known for directing violent and gory horror films. Deodato is infamous for his 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust.- Biography :...
, Takashi Miike
Takashi Miike
is a highly prolific and controversial Japanese filmmaker. He has directed over seventy theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. In the years 2001 and 2002 alone, Miike is credited with directing fifteen productions...
, and Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé is an Argentine filmmaker and the son of Argentine painter and intellectual Luis Felipe Noé. He graduated from Louis Lumière College and is the visiting professor of film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland...
.
Slasher films
Slasher filmSlasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
s focus on a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner. The victims are often teenagers or young adults. Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
is often credited as creating the basic premise of the genre. It truly emerged as a genre during the 1970s with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 American independent horror film directed and produced by Tobe Hooper, who cowrote it with Kim Henkel. It stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, and Gunnar Hansen, who respectively portray Sally Hardesty, Franklin Hardesty, the...
in 1974 and John Carpenter's Halloween
Halloween (1978 film)
Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film directed, produced, and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut and the first installment in the Halloween franchise. The film is set in the fictional midwestern...
(1978), which is usually credited with starting the genre, most specifically with masked villains, groups of weak teenagers with one strong, hero female, isolated or stranded in precarious locations or situations, and either the protagonists or antagonists experiencing warped family lives or values. Then the slasher genre peaked again in the 1980s with other well-known films like A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film directed and written by Wes Craven, and the first film of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film features Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film...
, The Anthropophagus Beast, Black Christmas
Black Christmas (1974 film)
Black Christmas is a 1974 Canadian slasher film directed by Bob Clark and written by A. Roy Moore, and largely based on a series of murders that took place in Quebec, Canada around Christmas time. The film's score is by Carl Zittrer. It was distributed by Ambassador Film Distributors in Canada and...
, Child's Play, The Driller Killer
The Driller Killer
The Driller Killer is a 1979 slasher film directed by and starring Abel Ferrara. It was on a list of banned so-called video nasties in the United Kingdom...
. After The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in the early 1970s the 1980s saw very similar slasher films being produced using TCSM and Halloween's basic format. Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine
My Bloody Valentine (film)
My Bloody Valentine is a 1981 Canadian slasher film released in the wake of the popularity of the slasher genre that had overtaken the 1970s...
, Prom Night, The Funhouse
The Funhouse
The Funhouse is a 1981 horror film in which four teenagers are trapped in a dark ride and stalked by a deformed killer. The film was directed by Tobe Hooper, and the screenplay written by Larry Block...
, Silent Night, Deadly Night
Silent Night, Deadly Night
Silent Night, Deadly Night is a 1984 slasher film produced by Ira R Barmak, directed by Charles E. Sellier Jr. and starring Robert Brian Wilson, Lilyan Chauvin, Gilmer McCormick, Toni Nero, Linnea Quigley, Britt Leach, and Leo Geter...
, Sleepaway Camp
Sleepaway Camp
Sleepaway Camp is a 1983 cult classic slasher film written and directed by Robert Hiltzik—who also served as executive producer. The film is about teen campers getting killed at a summer camp...
, and The Toolbox Murders
The Toolbox Murders
The Toolbox Murders is a 1978 slasher film starring Cameron Mitchell, Tim Donnelly, Pamelyn Ferdin, and Wesley Eure. It is notorious for its reputation as a video nasty due to its violent murder scenes in the film's first act...
many of which also used elements found in the 1974 original slasher Black Christmas. The genre experienced a mainstream revival in the 1990s with the success of Scream
Scream (film)
Scream is a 1996 American slasher film written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven. The film stars Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Drew Barrymore, and David Arquette...
, which both mocked and paid homage to traditional slasher conventions. Slasher films often prove phenomenally popular and spawn numerous sequels, prequels and remakes that continue to the present day. Adam Green
Adam Green
Adam Green may refer to:*Adam Green , writer/director of Hatchet*Adam Green , staff cartoonist for the New Art Examiner, early 1990s...
's Hatchet
Hatchet
A hatchet is a single-handed striking tool with a sharp blade used to cut and split wood...
and Ryan Nicholson
Ryan Nicholson
Ryan Nicholson is a Canadian makeup artist and director of independent horror films.- Biography :Ryan Nicholson was born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia...
's Gutterballs
Gutterballs (film)
Gutterballs is a 2008 Canadian comedy horror/slasher film written and directed by Ryan Nicholson and starring Mihola Terzic and Alastair Gamble.-Plot:...
bill themselves as throwbacks to the slasher films of the 1980s.
Spaghetti Westerns
Spaghetti WesternSpaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...
is a nickname for the Italian-made Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s. They were considerably more violent and amoral than typical Hollywood westerns (some films have body counts of over 200 people killed) and often eschewed (some say "demythologized") the conventions of earlier Westerns. Examples include Death Rides a Horse
Death Rides a Horse
Death Rides a Horse is a 1967 spaghetti western directed by Giulio Petroni, written by Luciano Vincenzoni, and starring Lee Van Cleef and John Phillip Law. Bill Meceita, a boy whose family was murdered in front of him by a gang, sets out 15 years later to exact revenge...
, Django
Django (film)
Django is a 1966 Italian spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Franco Nero in the eponymous role. The film earned a reputation as being one of the most violent films ever made up to that point and was subsequently refused a certificate in Britain until 1993, when it was...
, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Navajo Joe
Navajo Joe
Navajo Joe is a 1966 Italian/Spanish Spaghetti Western, directed by Sergio Corbucci. It was filmed in Spain.Navajo Joe stars Burt Reynolds in his second leading role in a feature film, as the titular character, a Navajo Indian opposing a group of bandits responsible for killing his tribe.The film's...
, The Grand Duel, The Great Silence
The Great Silence
The Great Silence , or The Big Silence, is an Italian spaghetti western. It is widely considered by critics as the masterpiece of director Sergio Corbucci and is one of his better known movies, along with Django...
, For a Few Dollars More
For a Few Dollars More
For a Few Dollars More is a 1965 Italian spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonté. German actor Klaus Kinski also plays a supporting role as a secondary villain...
, The Big Gundown
The Big Gundown
The Big Gundown is a 1966 spaghetti western directed by Sergio Sollima and starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian...
, and A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars is a 1964 Italian Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto, and Joseph Egger. Released in Italy in 1964 then in the United States in...
.
Splatter films
A splatter filmSplatter film
A splatter film or gore film is a subgenre of horror film that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence. These films, through the use of special effects and excessive blood and guts, tend to display an overt interest in the vulnerability of the human body and the...
or gore film is a type of horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and violence. As a distinct genre, the splatter film began in the 1960s with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis
Herschell Gordon Lewis
Herschell Gordon Lewis is an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter film" subgenre of horror...
and David F. Friedman
David F. Friedman
David Frank Friedman was an American filmmaker and film producer.-Life and career:Friedman first became interested in entertainment after spending part of his childhood in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama, traveling carnival sites. He met exploitation film pioneer Kroger Babb during his stay in...
, whose most famous films (and quintessential examples of the genre) include Blood Feast
Blood Feast
Blood Feast is a 1963 American horror film directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, often considered the first "splatter film". It was produced by David F. Friedman. The screenplay was written by Alison Louise Downe, who had previously appeared in several of Lewis' other films. Lewis also wrote the...
(1963), Two Thousand Maniacs!
Two Thousand Maniacs!
Two Thousand Maniacs! is a low budget 1964 splatter film directed and written by Herschell Gordon Lewis. It is the second part of what the director's fans have dubbed "The Blood Trilogy", including Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red...
(1964), Color Me Blood Red
Color Me Blood Red
Color Me Blood Red is a low budget 1965 horror film directed and written by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Color Me Blood Red is the third part of what the director's fans have dubbed "The Blood Trilogy", including Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs! .-Film synopsis:An eccentric artist is criticized by...
(1965), The Gruesome Twosome (1967) and The Wizard of Gore
The Wizard of Gore
The Wizard of Gore is a 1970 film directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis. It stars Ray Sager and Judy Cler. According to crew member Daniel Krogh in his book The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis , the film was shot in Chicago, Illinois and a number of surrounding suburbs during the early summer of...
(1970). Some later splatter films, such as Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi
Samuel Marshall "Sam" Raimi is an American film director, producer, actor and writer. He is best known for directing cult horror films like the Evil Dead series, Darkman and Drag Me to Hell, as well as the blockbuster Spider-Man films and the producer of the successful TV series Hercules: The...
's Evil Dead series, along with Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson, KNZM is a New Zealand film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter, known for his The Lord of the Rings film trilogy , adapted from the novel by J. R. R...
's Bad Taste and Dead Alive (also called Braindead) featured such excessive, unrealistic, over-the-top gore that they crossed the line from horror to comedy.
Women in prison films
Women in prison films emerged in the early seventies and remain a popular subgenre to this day. They are primarily voyeuristic sexual fantasies about prison life that rely on heavy quantities of nudity, lesbianism, sexual assault, humiliation, sadism, and rebellion among captive women. Movies include Roger CormanRoger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
's Women in Cages
Women in Cages
Women in Cages is a 1971 film in the women in prison sexploitation sub-genre, co-produced by Roger Corman and directed by Gerardo de León. It was prominently featured in the Planet Terror portion of the 2007 film Grindhouse....
and The Big Doll House
The Big Doll House
The Big Doll House is a 1971 women in prison film starring Pam Grier, Judy Brown, Roberta Collins, Brooke Mills, and Pat Woodell. The film follows six female inmates throughout daily life in a gritty, unidentified supra-tropical prison...
, Bamboo House of Dolls, Barbed Wire Dolls by Jesus Franco
Jesús Franco
Jesús "Jess" Franco is a Spanish film director, writer, cinematographer and actor. His career took off in 1961 with his cult classic The Awful Dr. Orloff, which received wide distribution in the United States and England...
, Women's Prison Massacre by Bruno Mattei
Bruno Mattei
Bruno Mattei was an Italian film director, screenwriter and editor who gained a cult following for a wide variety of exploitation films that covered many genres, ranging from women in prison to zombie films...
, Reform School Girls
Reform School Girls
Reform School Girls is a 1986 American film directed by Tom DeSimone, starring Wendy O. Williams, Pat Ast, and Sybil Danning. It depicts a reform school for girls that is operated by a sadistic and evil warden, Sutter, and her henchwoman Edna.-Plot:...
by Tom DeSimone
Tom DeSimone
Tom DeSimone is an American director, writer, producer and editor best known for such films and TV series as Hell Night, The Concrete Jungle, Reform School Girls, Freddy's Nightmares and Dark Justice.-External links:...
, and Caged Heat
Caged Heat
Caged Heat is an exploitation film from 1974 of the "women-in-prison" film genre. Caged Heat was written and directed by Jonathan Demme for the New World Pictures company, headed by Roger Corman...
by Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme
Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop...
.
Minor sub-genres
- Britsploitation|Britsploitation films: an exploitation film set in Great BritainGreat BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, sometimes in homage to the Hammer HorrorHammer Film ProductionsHammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
range of films. Examples include the 19741974 in filmThe year 1974 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 7 - Blazing Saddles is released in the USA.*August 7 - Peter Wolf, lead singer of The J...
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue and the 19811981 in film-Events:*January 19 - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquires beleaguered concurrent United Artists. UA was humiliated by the astronomical losses on the $40,000,000 movie Heaven's Gate, a major factor in the decision of owner Transamerica to sell it....
Academy Award-winning AmericanCinema of the United StatesThe cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
film An American Werewolf in LondonAn American Werewolf in LondonAn American Werewolf in London is a 1981 British-American horror film, written and directed by John Landis. It stars David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, and Griffin Dunne....
.
- Bruceploitation filmsBruceploitationBruceploitation is a cultural phenomenon mostly seen in the 1970s after the 1973 death of martial artist and actor Bruce Lee. Movie makers in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan hired a great number of Bruce Lee look-alike actors to star in many cheap knock-off martial arts movies to cash in on...
: films profiting from the death of Bruce LeeBruce LeeBruce Lee was a Chinese American, Hong Kong actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement...
utilizing look-alike actors.
- Cat III films: Chinese films named after the age certificates they would receive in Hong KongHong Kong motion picture rating systemThe Hong Kong motion picture rating system is a legal system of movie screening and rating. An official government agency issues ratings for any movie that will be shown in Hong Kong movie theatres.-History:...
(audiences 18 years or older). These films are estimated to make up 25% of Hong Kong's film industry, and as in exploitation film itself, every genre of filmmaking is represented. Additionally, Western films such as Wild ThingsWild ThingsWild Things is a 1998 erotic thriller film starring Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Kevin Bacon, Denise Richards, Theresa Russell and Bill Murray. It was directed by John McNaughton. In some countries the film was released as Sex Crimes...
and Eyes Wide ShutEyes Wide ShutEyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama film based upon Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle . The film was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and was his last film. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the sexually-charged adventures of Dr...
often receive the Category III rating. These have been classed into three categories, based on censorship criteria: "quasi-pornographic" softcore pornography such as Sex and ZenSex and ZenSex and Zen is a 1991 Hong Kong erotic comedy film directed by Michael Mak and starring Lawrence Ng and Amy Yip....
, "genre films" which present films from every genre of Hong Kong filmmaking in adult-oriented versions, and disturbing "pornoviolence" films such as The Untold Story, which depict sexual violence and are often based on actual police cases. Well-known actors and directors, such as Jackie ChanJackie ChanJackie Chan, SBS, MBE is a Hong Kong actor, action choreographer, comedian, director, producer, martial artist, screenwriter, entrepreneur, singer and stunt performer. In his movies, he is known for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, use of improvised weapons, and innovative stunts...
or Chow Yun-fatChow Yun-FatChow Yun-fat, SBS is an actor from Hong Kong. He is best known in Asia for his collaboration with filmmaker John Woo in heroic bloodshed genre films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled; and to the West for his role as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon...
, may be associated with genre films.
- Dykesploitation: Sexploitation films featuring lesbian and bisexual women, such as "That Tender Touch (1969)".
- Eschploitation films: apocalyptic Christian end-times thrillers.(see: eschatologyEschatologyEschatology is a part of theology, philosophy, and futurology concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world or the World to Come...
)
- Hixploitation filmsHixploitationHicksploitation, also spelled hixploitation, is a genre of exploitation film relying on stereotypical depictions of rural whites of the American South and Appalachia Hicksploitation, also spelled hixploitation, is a genre of exploitation film relying on stereotypical depictions of rural whites of...
: films about the American South featuring stereotypical hillbillyHillbillyHillbilly is a term referring to certain people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas of the United States, primarily Appalachia but also the Ozarks. Owing to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term is frequently considered derogatory, and so is usually offensive to those Americans of...
caricature characters. Examples include Eaten AliveEaten AliveEaten Alive is a 1977 horror film directed by Tobe Hooper...
, Hillbillies in a Haunted House, Moonshine Mountain, Poor White Trash 2, Redneck ZombiesRedneck ZombiesRedneck Zombies is a 1987 very low budget independent horror comedy trash film directed by Pericles Lewnes and released by Troma Entertainment.-Plot:...
and Two Thousand Maniacs!Two Thousand Maniacs!Two Thousand Maniacs! is a low budget 1964 splatter film directed and written by Herschell Gordon Lewis. It is the second part of what the director's fans have dubbed "The Blood Trilogy", including Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red...
.
- Martial arts filmMartial arts filmMartial arts film is a film genre. A sub-genre of the action film, martial arts films contain numerous fights between characters, usually as the films' primary appeal and entertainment value, and often as a method of storytelling and character expression and development. Martial arts are frequently...
s: action films that are characterized by extensive fighting scenes employing various types of martial arts. Examples include The Street FighterThe Street Fighter, literally Clash, Killer Fist!, is a Japanese martial arts film released in 1974 and produced by Toei Company Ltd. It was released in the US by New Line Cinema and became one of the first films to be a commercial success for the distributor....
and Sister Street FighterSister Street Fighteris a spin off of The Street Fighter . The plot revolves around Lǐ Hóng-Lóng , the female martial artist of the title. When her brother Lǐ Wàn-Qīng is kidnapped by drug lords, she seeks revenge. The drug lord's colorful collection of "killers" includes a toga-clad group of Thai Boxers called the...
series, and the films starring Bruce LeeBruce LeeBruce Lee was a Chinese American, Hong Kong actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement...
(The Big BossThe Big BossThe Big Boss, previously known by its U.S. title Fists Of Fury is a 1971 Hong Kong martial arts action crime thriller film. The Big Boss was Bruce Lee's first major film. It was written to star James Tien; however, Lee's strong performance relegated Tien, already a star in Hong Kong, to second...
, Fist of FuryFist of FuryFist of Fury, formerly known as The Chinese Connection and The Iron Hand in the United States, is a 1972 Hong Kong martial arts film directed by Lo Wei. It starred Bruce Lee in his second major film after The Big Boss...
, Way of the DragonWay of the DragonThe Way of the Dragon is a 1972 Hong Kong martial arts film written, produced, directed by and starring Bruce Lee.- Plot :Tang Lung is sent from Hong Kong to Rome to help his friend's niece Chen Ching Hua, and family friends, whose restaurant is being targeted by the local Mafia, which has been...
and Enter the DragonEnter the DragonEnter the Dragon is a 1973 Hong Kong martial arts co-production with Golden Harvest and Warner Bros. studios, directed by Robert Clouse; starring Bruce Lee, Jim Kelly and John Saxon. This is Bruce Lee's final film appearance before his death on July 20, 1973...
).
- Mexploitation filmsMexploitationMexploitation is a film genre of low-budget films that combine elements of an Exploitation film and Mexican culture and/or portrayals of Mexican life within Mexico often dealing with crime, drug trafficking, money and sex.- Common qualities :...
: films about Mexican culture and/or portrayals of Mexican life within Mexico often dealing with crime, drug trafficking, money and sex. Hugo StiglitzHugo StiglitzHugo Stiglitz is a Mexican actor. He was mostly famous in the 1970s and 1980s in Mexico after filming such film horror classics as Tintorera and La Noche de los mil gatos. He also filmed several movies in Hollywood and Italy...
is a famous Mexican actor of this genre, along with Mario AlmadaMario Almada (actor)Mario Almada Otero is a Mexican actor. His career has run for over seventy years. He is mostly known for his roles in Mexican urban westerns and action cinema, often portraying the 'good guy'. The IMDB lists him appearing in about three hundred films...
and Fernando Almada, brothers who made literally hundreds of movies on the same theme.
- Ninja filmsNinjaA or was a covert agent or mercenary of feudal Japan specializing in unorthodox arts of war. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination, as well as open combat in certain situations...
: a subgenre of martial arts films, these films center on the stereotypical, historically inaccurate, image of the ninja costume and his arsenal of weapons often including fantasy elements such as ninja magic. Many such movies were produced by splicing stock ninja fight footage with footage from unrelated film projects.
- Nunsploitation filmsNunsploitationNunsploitation is a subgenre of exploitation film which had its peak in Europe in the 1970s. These films typically involve Christian nuns living in convents during the Middle Ages. The main conflict of the story is usually of a religious or sexual nature, such as religious oppression or sexual...
: films featuring nunNunA nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...
s in dangerous or erotic situations. Examples include The DevilsThe Devils (film)The Devils is a 1971 British historical drama directed by Ken Russell and starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave. It is based partially on the 1952 book The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley, and partially on the 1960 play The Devils by John Whiting, also based on Huxley's book...
, Killer NunKiller NunKiller Nun is an Italian nunsploitation film directed/co-written by Giulio Berruti and co-written by Alberto Tarallo...
, School of the Holy BeastSchool of the Holy Beastis a film in the nunsploitation sub-genre of Pinky violence made by Toei Company in 1974.-Plot:A young woman becomes a nun at the Sacred Heart Convent to find out what happened to her mother years earlier. She encounters a lesbian mother superior, lecherous archbishops, and uncovers many dark...
, Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentines and "Nude Nuns with Big GunsNude Nuns with Big GunsNude Nuns with Big Guns is a 2010 nunsploitation thriller film.The film was the subject of one of the largest copyright lawsuits in California...
".
- Pinku eiga (pink films): Japanese sexploitation films popular throughout the 70s, often featuring softcore sex, rape, torture, BDSMBDSMBDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
and other unconventional sexual subjects that were considered erotic.
- Pornochanchada filmsPornochanchadaPornochanchada is the name given to a genre of sexploitation films produced in Brazil that was popular during the 1970s and early 1980s. Its name combined pornô and chanchada ....
: BrazilBrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian naïve softcore pornographic films produced mostly in the 1970s
- Stoner filmStoner filmStoner film is a subgenre of films that revolve around the use of marijuana. Typically, such movies show cannabis use in a comic and positive fashion...
s: a subgenre of films that center around an explicit use of the drug marijuana. Typically, such movies show marijuana use in a comic and positive fashion. Marijuana use is one of the main themes, and inspires most of the plot. Cheech and ChongCheech and ChongCheech & Chong are a comedy duo consisting of Richard "Cheech" Marin and Tommy Chong, who found a wide audience in the 1970s and 1980s for their films and stand-up routines, which were based on the hippie and free love era, and especially drug culture movements, most notably their love for...
collaborations are a good example. A more recent series of films that fit this description is Harold & KumarHarold & KumarHarold & Kumar is the common name for a series of stoner comedy films starring John Cho and Kal Penn . The first film, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, was released on July 30, 2004 by New Line Cinema and spawned a sequel titled Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, released four years...
.
- Teensploitation films: the exploitation of teenagers by the producers of teen-oriented films, with plots involving drugs, sex, alcohol and crime. The word Teensploitation first appeared in a show business publication in 1982 and was included in the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for the first time in 2004. River's EdgeRiver's EdgeRiver's Edge is a 1986 American drama film written by Neal Jimenez and starring Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck, and Dennis Hopper.It was awarded Best Picture from the Independent Spirit Awards in 1986.- Plot :...
, inspired by the murder of Marcy Renee ConradMurder of Marcy Renee ConradThe murder of Marcy Renee Conrad was perpetrated by Anthony Jacques Broussard, a 16-year-old American high school student. Conrad's death gained national attention due to the age of her killer, forcing a re-evaluation of California statutes regarding juvenile sentencing for violent crimes...
, is arguably the most acclaimed of the genre, featuring early performances by Crispin GloverCrispin GloverCrispin Hellion Glover is an American film actor, director and screenwriter, recording artist, publisher, and author. Glover is known for portraying eccentric people on screen such as George McFly in Back to the Future, Layne in River's Edge, unfriendly recluse Rubin Farr in Rubin and Ed, the...
and Keanu ReevesKeanu ReevesKeanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. Reeves is perhaps best known for his roles in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Speed, Point Break and the science fiction-action trilogy The Matrix...
and a cameo appearance by Dennis HopperDennis HopperDennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
. The films of Larry ClarkLarry ClarkLawrence Donald "Larry" Clark is an American film director, photographer, writer and film producer who is best known for the movie Kids and his photography book Tulsa...
, BullyBully (film)Bully is a 2001 independent American drama film, based on actual events, starring Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Michael Pitt, Leo Fitzpatrick and Nick Stahl. The story concerns the plot to murder a mutual friend of several young adults in Southern Florida, in revenge for his continual...
, Ken ParkKen ParkKen Park is a 2002 drama film. The screenplay was written by Harmony Korine, who based it on Larry Clark's journals and stories. The film was directed by Larry Clark and Ed Lachman....
and KidsKids (film)Kids is a 1995 drama film written by Harmony Korine and directed by Larry Clark.The film features Chloë Sevigny, Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce, Harold Hunter, and Rosario Dawson, all of them in their debut performances...
are probably the best-known teensploitation films. For 1950s teen films, see American International PicturesAmerican International PicturesAmerican International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
.
- Vigilante filmsVigilanteA vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....
: films in which a person violates the law to exact justice. These films were rooted in 1970s unease over government corruption, failure in the Vietnam WarVietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, and rising crime rates. These movies point toward the rising political trend of neoconservatismNeoconservatismNeoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....
. The genre is believed to have originated with the 1970 film JoeJoe (film)Joe is a 1970 drama film starring Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, and Susan Sarandon in her film debut. The film was directed by John G. Avildsen.-Plot:...
. The classic example is the Death WishDeath Wish (film)Death Wish is a 1974 crime thriller film loosely based on the novel Death Wish by Brian Garfield. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, a man who becomes a vigilante after his wife is murdered and his daughter is sexually assaulted by muggers.The film was...
series, starring Charles BronsonCharles BronsonCharles Bronson , born Charles Dennis Buchinsky was an American actor, best-known for such films as Once Upon a Time in the West, The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape, Rider on the Rain, The Mechanic, and the popular Death Wish series...
. These films often deal with individuals who are unable to find help within the system, such as the Native AmericanIndigenous peoples of the AmericasThe indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
protagonist of Billy JackBilly JackBilly Jack is a 1971 action film. It is the second, and highest grossing, in a series of motion pictures centering on a character of the same name, played by Tom Laughlin who also directed and co-wrote the script. Filming began in Prescott, Arizona, in fall 1969, but the movie was not completed...
, or characters in blaxploitationBlaxploitationBlaxploitation or blacksploitation is a film genre which emerged in the United States circa 1970. It is considered an ethnic sub-genre of the general category of exploitation films. Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban black audience, although the genre's audience...
films such as CoffyCoffy- Track listing :# "Coffy Is The Color" - 3:03Vocals – Dee Dee Bridgewater, Roy Ayers, Wayne Garfield# "Priscilla's Theme" - 3:58# "King George" - 3:00Vocals – Roy Ayers# "Aragon" - 2:55# "Coffy Sauna" - 2:16# "King's Last Ride" - 1:10# "Coffy Baby" - 2:26...
, and persons from small towns who go to larger cities in pursuit of runaway relatives (i.e. 1979's Hardcore, and 1976's TrackdownTrackdownTrackdown is an American Western television series starring Robert Culp that aired on CBS between 1957 and 1959. The series offered more than seventy episodes and was produced by Dick Powell's Four Star Television and filmed at the Desilu-Culver Studio...
). There are also "vigilante cop" movies which concern a policeman who feels thwarted by the legal system, as in the Walking TallWalking TallWalking Tall is a 1973 semi-biopic of Sheriff Buford Pusser, a former professional wrestler-turned-lawman in McNairy County, Tennessee. It starred Joe Don Baker as Pusser...
series, Mad MaxMad MaxMad Max is a 1979 Australian dystopian action film directed by George Miller and revised by Miller and Byron Kennedy over the original script by James McCausland. The film stars Mel Gibson, who was unknown at the time. Its narrative based around the traditional western genre, Mad Max tells a story...
, and the Dirty HarryDirty HarryDirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....
series of Clint EastwoodClint EastwoodClinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
movies. These are not considered to be true vigilante films in the classic sense, because they do not involve ordinary citizens seeking justice for a personal hurt. Similarly, Martin ScorseseMartin ScorseseMartin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
's Taxi DriverTaxi DriverTaxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...
does not fit the category because of its mentally disturbed protagonist. Other examples include Sam PeckinpahSam PeckinpahDavid Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
's Straw Dogs, Clint EastwoodClint EastwoodClinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
's The Outlaw Josey WalesThe Outlaw Josey WalesThe Outlaw Josey Wales is a 1976 American revisionist Western film set during and after the end of the American Civil War. It was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood , with Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Sam Bottoms, and Geraldine Keams.The film was adapted by Sonia Chernus and Philip Kaufman...
, Joel SchumacherJoel SchumacherJoel T. Schumacher is an American film director, screenwriter and producer.-Early life:Schumacher was born in New York City, the son of Marian and Francis Schumacher. His mother was a Swedish Jew, and his father was a Baptist from Knoxville, Tennessee, who died when Joel was four years old...
's Falling DownFalling DownFalling Down is a 1993 crime-drama film directed by Joel Schumacher. The film stars Michael Douglas in the lead role of William Foster , a divorcee and unemployed former defense engineer...
, and F. Gary GrayF. Gary GrayFelix Gary Gray is an American music video and film director.-Life and career:Gray began his career in 1992 with his music video for Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day." The video, a literal adaptation of the lyrics, was critically well received. He would go on to direct subsequent videos for Ice Cube,...
's Law Abiding CitizenLaw Abiding CitizenLaw Abiding Citizen is a 2009 thriller film directed by F. Gary Gray from a screenplay written by Kurt Wimmer, starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. The film takes place in Philadelphia and tells the story of a man whose developed sociopathic tendencies drove him into killing while targeting not...
.
Directors associated with exploitation film
- Stephen Apostolof
- Dario ArgentoDario ArgentoDario Argento is an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, particularly in the subgenre known as giallo, and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies....
- Mario BavaMario BavaMario Bava was an Italian director, screenwriter, and cinematographer remembered as one of the greatest names from the "golden age" of Italian horror films.-Biography:Mario Bava was born in San Remo, Liguria, Italy...
- William "One Shot" BeaudineWilliam BeaudineWilliam Beaudine was an American film actor and director. He was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors, turning out films in remarkable numbers and in a wide variety of genres.-Early life and career:...
- Uwe BollUwe BollUwe Boll is a German director, producer and screenwriter, whose work includes several films adapted from video games. He finances his own films through his Boll KG production company. He is often cited as the worst director of all time.-Early life:...
- Giovanni "Tinto" BrassTinto BrassGiovanni Brass , better known as Tinto Brass, is an Italian filmmaker. He is noted especially for his work in the erotic genre, with films such as Così fan tutte , Paprika, Monella and Trasgredire...
- John CarpenterJohn CarpenterJohn Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
- Roger CormanRoger CormanRoger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
- Wes CravenWes CravenWesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the...
- Joe D'AmatoJoe D'AmatoJoe D'Amato, was a prolific Italian filmmaker who directed roughly 200 films, usually at the same time acting as producer and cinematographer, and sometimes providing the script as well...
- Ruggero DeodatoRuggero DeodatoRuggero Deodato is an Italian film director and screen writer, best known for directing violent and gory horror films. Deodato is infamous for his 1980 film Cannibal Holocaust.- Biography :...
- Don DohlerDon DohlerDonald Michael Dohler was an American film director known for making low-budget science fiction and horror films as well as work in underground comix and publishing.-Early life:...
- David E. DurstonDavid E. DurstonDavid E. Durston is an American screenwriter and film director best known for directing the Charles Manson-inspired cult classic drive-in horror exploitation film, I Drink Your Blood, which was released in 1970....
- Dwain EsperDwain EsperDwain Esper was an American director and producer of exploitation films . Esper died in 1982. He and Hildegarde had two children, Dwain, Jr...
- Abel FerraraAbel FerraraAbel Ferrara is an American film screenwriter and director. He is best known as an independent filmmaker of such films as The Driller Killer , Ms. 45 , King of New York , Bad Lieutenant and The Funeral .-Early life:Ferrara was born in the Bronx of Italian and Irish descent...
- Michael and Roberta Findlay
- Jess FrancoJesús FrancoJesús "Jess" Franco is a Spanish film director, writer, cinematographer and actor. His career took off in 1961 with his cult classic The Awful Dr. Orloff, which received wide distribution in the United States and England...
- Lucio FulciLucio FulciLucio Fulci was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is perhaps best known for his directorial work on gore films, including Zombie and The Beyond , although he made films in genres as diverse as giallo, western, and comedy...
- Samuel FullerSamuel FullerSamuel Michael Fuller was an American screenwriter, novelist, and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes.-Personal life:...
- William GirdlerWilliam GirdlerWilliam Girdler was an American filmmaker. In a span of seven years, from 1972 to 1978, he directed nine feature films in such genres as horror and action...
- Frank HenenlotterFrank HenenlotterFrank Henenlotter, , is an American screenwriter, director and film historian. He is known primarily for his horror comedies, though he would prefer to be classified as an "exploitation" filmmaker . "I never felt that I made ‘horror films’, he has said. "I always felt that I made exploitation films...
- Jack HillJack HillJack Hill is an U.S. film director, noted for his work in the exploitation film genre. Despite this, several of Hill's later films have been characterized as feminist works.Hill was born in Los Angeles...
- Tobe HooperTobe HooperTobe Hooper is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. His works include the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , along with its first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ; the three-time Emmy-nominated Stephen King film adaptation...
- Lloyd KaufmanLloyd KaufmanLloyd Kaufman is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and occasional actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet. Kaufman also serves as...
- Harmony KorineHarmony KorineThe story is told from the perspective of a young man suffering from untreated schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner, as he tries to understand his deteriorating world. Julien's abusive father is played by Werner Herzog...
- José Ramón LarrazJosé Ramón LarrazJosé Ramón Larraz is a Spanish director of exploitation and horror fims such as the erotic and bloody Vampyres ....
- Umberto LenziUmberto LenziUmberto Lenzi , is an Italian film director who was very active in low budget crime films, peplums, spaghetti westerns, war movies, cannibal films and giallo murder mysteries ....
- Herschell Gordon LewisHerschell Gordon LewisHerschell Gordon Lewis is an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter film" subgenre of horror...
- Nico MastorakisNico MastorakisNico Mastorakis is a Greek Z movie filmmaker, director and radio producer.-Early career:At the age of 18 Mastorakis as a young reporter with the Greek newspaper "Ethnikos Kirikas" scored his first international scoop, an exclusive interview with the exiled Princess Soraya...
- Bruno MatteiBruno MatteiBruno Mattei was an Italian film director, screenwriter and editor who gained a cult following for a wide variety of exploitation films that covered many genres, ranging from women in prison to zombie films...
- Radley MetzgerRadley MetzgerRadley Metzger is an American filmmaker and distributor. He is also credited under the pseudonym Henry Paris, a name he adopted in the 1970s when he began to direct hardcore pornography....
- Russ MeyerRuss MeyerRussell Albion "Russ" Meyer was a U.S. motion picture director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, actor and photographer....
- Takashi MiikeTakashi Miikeis a highly prolific and controversial Japanese filmmaker. He has directed over seventy theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. In the years 2001 and 2002 alone, Miike is credited with directing fifteen productions...
- Carl MonsonCarl MonsonCarl Monson aka Carlos Monsoya, Charles Monsoya and Nosnom Lrak, was at the forefront of independent low budget sexploitation/grindhouse films or paracinema during the 1970s and 1980s...
- Fred Olen RayFred Olen RayFred Olen Ray is an American director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and cinematographer.-Biography:He is the producer, director, and screenwriter of low to medium-budget feature films in many genres, including horror, science fiction, action/adventure, softcore sex films and crime dramas...
- Ron OrmondRon OrmondRon Ormond was an American author, showman, screenwriter, film producer, and film director of Western, musical, and exploitation films. Following his survival of a 1968 plane crash, Ormond began making Christian films.-Films:...
- Melvin Van PeeblesMelvin Van PeeblesMelvin "Block" Van Peebles is an American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer.He is most famous for creating the acclaimed film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which heralded a new era of African American focused films...
- Robert RodriguezRobert RodriguezRobert Anthony Rodríguez is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in his native Texas and Mexico. He has directed such films as Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet...
- Jean RollinJean RollinJean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his films in the fantastique genre such as the vampire film Le Viol du Vampire and the first French gore film Les Raisins de la Mort .-Early life:Jean Rollin was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine , France to...
- George A. RomeroGeorge A. RomeroGeorge Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
- Eli RothEli RothEli Raphael Roth is an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for his role as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Award and a BFCA Critic's Choice Award...
- Daryush ShokofDaryush ShokofDaryush Shokof is an Iranian artist, film director, philosopher, writer, art director, and film producer, and singer...
- Lindsay ShonteffLindsay ShonteffLindsay Craig Shonteff was a Canadian born film director, film producer and screenwriter who achieved fame for low budget films produced in England.-Biography:...
- Juan Piquer SimónJuan Piquer SimónJuan Piquer Simón was a Spanish film director most well known for directing the cult classic horror exploitation films, Pieces and Slugs: The Movie ....
- Jack SmithJack Smith (film director)Jack Smith was an American filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema...
- Ray Dennis StecklerRay Dennis StecklerRay Dennis Steckler , also known by the pseudonym Cash Flagg, was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor best known as the low-budget auteur of such cult films as The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies...
- Quentin TarantinoQuentin TarantinoQuentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
- Paul Verhoeven
- John WatersJohn Waters (filmmaker)John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
- Sean WeathersSean WeathersSean Weathers is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, editor and actor. Weathers is a no budget horror filmmaker. He began with House of the Damned but has shown improvement with his other two productions...
- Doris WishmanDoris WishmanDoris Wishman was an American film director, screenwriter and independent film producer....
- Edward D. Wood, Jr.
- Jim WynorskiJim WynorskiJim Wynorski is an American screenwriter, director, and producer.-Career:Wynorski has been making B-movies and exploitation movies since the early 1980s. He has directed over 75 feature films. His earliest films were released to the theatrical audience and played in movie theaters...
- Rob ZombieRob ZombieRob Zombie is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the...
See also
- Aestheticization of violenceAestheticization of violenceThe aestheticization of violence in high culture art or mass media is the depiction of or references to violence in what Indiana University film studies professor Margaret Bruder calls a "stylistically excessive," "significant and sustained way." When violence is depicted in this fashion in films,...
- B movieB movieA B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
- Cult filmCult filmA cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...
- Video nastyVideo nasty"Video nasty" was a colloquial term coined in the United Kingdom by 1982 which originally applied to a number of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by the press, commentators such as Mary Whitehouse and various religious organizations.While violence...
- Midnight movie
External links
- THE DEUCE: Grindhouse Cinema Database The original Grindhouse/Classic Exploitation Cinema Wiki.
- "Lights! Camera! Apocalypse!", an article about RaptureRaptureThe rapture is a reference to the "being caught up" referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet "the Lord"....
films as Christian exploitation filmmaking - Cultuurschok Dutch website dedicated to Cult and Exploitation
- Paracinema Magazine Quarterly film magazine dedicated to b-movies, cult classics, indie, horror, science fiction, exploitation, underground and Asian films from past and present.
- Grindhouseland | Exploitation Film Reviews
- MIDNIGHT-THEATRE.com - The Home of Exploitation Cinema
- BoulevardMovies.com - Exploitation Films on DVD & Blu-ray