Exploitation film

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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. Thus, films need something to "exploit", such as a big star, special effects, sex, violence, romance, etc. An "exploitation film", however relies heavily on sensationalist advertising and broad and lurid overstatement of the issues depicted, regardless of the intrinsic quality of the film. Very often, exploitation films were of low quality in every sense[citation needed]. This, however, was not always the case. Exploitation films sometimes attract critical attention and cult followings.

Contents

[edit] History

Exploitation films feature uncut unrated material. They specialize in numerous sex and nudity scenes, bloody gore, violent nonsense, and taboos. They were most popular in the late 60's to late 70's. Most are low budget films that would not be played in theaters today and would most likely receive an NC17 rating.

Exploitation films may feature suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, freaks, gore, the bizarre, destruction, rebellion, and mayhem. Such films have existed since the earliest days of moviemaking, but they were popularized in the 1960s with the general relaxing of cinematic taboos in the U.S. and Europe. Additionally, low budget filmmakers 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.

Ephraim Katz, author of The Film Encyclopedia, has defined exploitation as:

Films made with little or no attention to quality or artistic merit but with an eye to a quick profit, usually via high-pressure sales and promotion techniques emphasizing some sensational aspect of the product[citation needed]

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 avoid to keep their mainstream and respectable reputations. 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.

Several war films 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 movies 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.

[edit] Grindhouse cinema

Grindhouse is an American term for a theatre that mainly showed exploitation films. It 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.

[edit] Subgenres

Exploitation films may adopt the subject matters and stylings of film genres, particularly horror films and documentary films. 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 magazines.

[edit] Biker films

Main article: Outlaw biker film

1953's The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando, was perhaps the first of this subgenre that usually focuses on motorcycle gangs with plenty of sex and violence. But most of the films were made in the mid to late 1960s and early 1970s. Other biker films includes Motorpsycho (1965), The Wild Angels (1966), Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), The Born Losers (1967), Satan's Sadists (1969), Nam's Angels (1970), and C.C. and Company (1970). (See also List of biker films.)

[edit] Black exploitation

Main article: Blaxploitation

Black exploitation, or "blaxploitation" 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, Blacula, Boss Nigger, Coffy, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Dolemite, Foxy Brown, Hell Up in Harlem, The Mack, Shaft and Super Fly.

[edit] Cannibal films

Main article: Cannibal film

Cannibal films, 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 moviemakers. These movies mainly focused on torture and cannibalism by Stone-Age tribes deep in the South American or Asian rain forests, usually perpetrated against Westerners that the tribes hold prisoner. Similar to Mondo films, the main draw of cannibal films was the promise of exotic locales and graphic gore. These films are also notorious for their geuine animal killings, featuring scenes with animals eating prey and also the cannibals killing alligators, crocodiles, snakes, and other animals. The most well-known film of this genre is the controversial 1980 Cannibal Holocaust. Others include Cannibal Ferox and Eaten Alive!.

[edit] Chambara films

Main article: Chambara

In the 1970s, a brand of revisionist, non-traditional samurai film rose to some popularity in Japan, following the popularity of samurai manga by Kazuo Koike, on whose work many later films would be based. Films such as Hanzo the Razor, Lady Snowblood, Lone Wolf and Cub, "Sex and Fury"(which would also would be an sexploitation film) and Shogun Assassin had few of the stoic, formal sensibilities of earlier jidaigeki films such as those by Akira Kurosawa -- the new chambara featured revenge-driven antihero protagonists, gratuitous nudity, steamy sex scenes, gruesome swordplay and gallons of blood, often spurted from wounds as if from a firehose.

[edit] Mondo films

Main article: Mondo film

Mondo films, often called shockumentaries, are quasi-documentary films 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 to be shocking to the audience not only because they deal with taboo subject matter. The first and most well-known mondo film is Mondo Cane (A Dog's World). Others include Shocking Asia and the Faces of Death series.

[edit] Nazi exploitation

Main article: Nazi exploitation

Nazi exploitation films, also called "nazisploitation" films, focus on nazis torturing prisoners at death camps and brothels during World War II. The tortures inflicted are often of a sexual nature; and the prisoners, whom 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, nymphomaniatic 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.

[edit] Rape / Revenge films

Main article: Rape / Revenge

Films in which a woman is raped, left for dead, recovers and then subsequently extracts 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 Grave (also called Day of the Woman). Others include Ms. 45 and Thriller - en grym film (Thriller: A Cruel Picture). The Last House on the Left also contains rape / revenge elements; although in this film the woman is killed by the rapists and it is her parents who take revenge.

[edit] Sex exploitation

Main article: Sexploitation

Sex exploitation, or "sexploitation" 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 a high budget and eminent actors (Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole and Helen Mirren).

[edit] Shock exploitation

Shock exploitation films, or "shock films" or "shocksploitation films"; contain various shocking elements such as extremely realistic graphic violence, graphic rape depictions, simulated bestiality and depictions of incest. Examples of shock films include August Underground's Mordum, Baise-moi, Combat Shock, Fight for Your Life, Haute Tension (High Tension), I Spit on Your Grave, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, 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, Ta Paidia tou Diavolou (Island of Death), Thriller - en grym film (Thriller: A Cruel Picture) and Vase de Noces.

[edit] Slasher films

Main article: Slasher film

Slasher films 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 and peaked in the 1980s. Well-known slasher films include The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Black Christmas, Halloween (which is usually credited with starting the craze with the genre in the 1980s), Friday the 13th, Silent Night, Deadly Night, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Child's Play. Slasher films often prove phenomenally popular and spawn numerous sequels, prequels and remakes that continue to the present day.

[edit] Spaghetti westerns and Euroflicks

Main article: Spaghetti western

Spaghetti Western is a nickname for the Italian-made Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s. They were considerably more sparse and violent than typical Hollywood westerns and often eschewed (some say "demythologized") the conventions of earlier Westerns. Examples include Death Rides a Horse, Django, "My Name is Nobody", "The Grand Duel" (or "The Big Showdown", "Fistful of Dollars" The Great Silence and Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).

[edit] Splatter films

Main article: Splatter film

A splatter film 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) and Color Me Blood Red (1965).

[edit] Women in prison films

Main article: Women in prison film

Women in prison films were popular, featuring opportunities to exploit nudity, violence, and rebellion among captive women. Movies include Roger Corman's Women in Cages and Bamboo House of Dolls, Barbed Wire Dolls by Jesus Franco, Women's Prison Massacre by Joe D'Amato, Reform School Girls by Tom DeSimone, or Caged Heat by Jonathan Demme.

[edit] Zombie films

Zombie films are graphic, gory movies focusing on, as the title suggests, undead zombies that have arisen due to some factor that were made to cash in on the success of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Examples include The Beyond, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, City of the Living Dead, Flesheater, Hell of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery, Le Notti del terrore (Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror), Zombi 2 (also be called "Zombie Flesh Eaters", "Zombie", "Woodoo" or "Island of The Living Dead") and Zombie Holocaust. Many of these films were directed by Lucio Fulci, whom along with Romero are regarded as the kings of the genre.

[edit] Drive-in films

This was not so much a genre as it was another name for exploitation films. As the drive-in movie theater began to decline in the 1960's and 1970's, theater owners began to look for ways to bring in patrons. One solution was to book exploitation films. In fact some producers in the 1970's would make films directly for the drive-in market. Many of them were violent action films which some would refer to as 'drive-in' films.

[edit] Other sub-genres

  • Bruceploitation: Films profiting from the death of Bruce Lee.
  • Giallo: Italian thriller.
  • Nunsploitation: Featuring nuns in dangerous or erotic situations, such as Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentines, School of the Holy Beast, and Ken Russell's The Devils.
  • Pornochanchada: Brazilian naïve softcore pornographic films produced mostly in the 1970s, curiously the years when the country was under a right-wing military dictatorship.
  • Pinku eiga (pink film): Japanese sexploitation films popular throughout the 70s, often featuring softcore sex, rape, torture, BDSM and other sexual subjects that were considered erotic.
  • Hixploitation (hick): Stereotype films about the American South (see hillbilly and Good ol' boy).
  • Cat III: Chinese films popular throughout the mid 80s to mid 90s usually focusing on serial killers or rapists and the police's search for them and frequently displaying various forms of explicit violence. Named after the age certificates they would receive in Hong Kong (Audiences 18 years or older).
  • Teensploitation: the exploitation of teenagers by the producers of teen-oriented films, with plots involving drugs, sex, alcohol and crime; examples include juvenile delinquent films and slasher films. 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. For 1950s teen films, see American International Pictures.
  • Martial arts film: a type of action film characterized by extensive fighting scenes employing various types of martial arts.
  • Revenge films: films where a protagonist gets back at those who have hurt them or someone they love. (see vigilante)
  • Propaganda film: a film, either a documentary-style production or a fictional screenplay, that is produced to convince the viewer of a certain political point or influence the opinions or behavior of people, often by providing deliberately misleading, propagandistic content.
  • Mexploitation: an exploitation film and Mexican culture and/or portrayals of Mexican life within Mexico often dealing with crime, drug trafficking, money, and sex.
  • Carsploitation: cruising/racing/chasing/crashing chic films
  • Eschploitation (eschatology): apocalyptic Christian end-times thrillers.
  • Britsploitation: An exploitation film set in Great Britain.
  • Action film: a film genre where action sequences, such as fights, shootouts, stunts, car chases or explosions either take precedence or, in finer examples of the genre, are used as a form of exposition and character development. The action typically involves individual efforts on the part of the hero.
  • Ozploitation: a type of low budget horror, comedy and action films made in Australia after the introduction of the R rating in 1971.
  • Stoner film: 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.
  • Ninja film: a subgenre of the 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.
  • Gamesploitation film: a subgenre of films based on games of any format (video games, tabletop games, role-playing, etc.) and/or gamer culture.

Some exploitation movies cross categories freely. Doris Wishman's Let Me Die A Woman contains both shock documentary and sex exploitation elements.

[edit] Directors associated with exploitation film

[edit] Exploitation film distributers of note

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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