Some Poverty Row low-budget B movies often exploit major studio projects. When Orson Welles' radio production of The War of the Worlds from The Mercury Theatre on the Air for Halloween in 1938 shocked many Americans and made news, Universal Pictures edited their serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars into a short feature called Mars Attacks the World for release in November of that year. Several war films were made about the Winter War in Finland, the Korean War and the Vietnam War before the major studios showed interest. In the early days of film, when exploitation films relied on such sensational subjects as these, they had to present a very conservative moral viewpoint to avoid censorship, as movies then were not considered to enjoy First Amendment protection. She Shoulda Said No! (1949) combined the themes of drug use and promiscuous sex. Mom and Dad, a 1945 film about pregnancy and childbirth, was promoted in lurid terms. The film Sex Madness (1938) portrayed the dangers of venereal disease from premarital sex. did in their 1969 anti- LSD, anti- counterculture film The Big Cube. With enough incentive, however, major studios might become involved, as Warner Bros. Other issues, such as drug use in films like Reefer Madness (1936), attracted audiences that major film studios would usually avoid to keep their respectable, mainstream reputations. Child Bride (1938), for example, tackled the issue of older men marrying young girls in the Ozarks. Įxploitation films have often exploited news events in the short-term public consciousness that a major film studio may avoid because of the time required to produce a major film. The audiences of art and exploitation film are both considered to have tastes that reject the mainstream Hollywood offerings. It has been suggested that if Carnival of Souls had been made in Europe, it would be considered an art film, while if Eyes Without a Face had been made in the U.S., it would have been categorized as a low-budget horror film. Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou contains elements of the modern splatter film. Examples include Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Tod Browning's Freaks and Roman Polanski's Repulsion. ![]() ![]() Many films recognized as classics contain levels of sex, violence and shock typically associated with exploitation films. Exploitation films share the fearlessness of acclaimed transgressive European directors such as Derek Jarman, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard in handling "disreputable" content. Titillating material and artistic content often 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" is loosely defined and arguably has as much to do with the viewer's perception of the film as with the film's actual content. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention in academic circles, where it is sometimes called paracinema. Their producers used sensational elements to attract audiences lost to television. The Motion Picture Association of America (and its predecessor, the MPPDA) cooperated with censorship boards and grassroots organizations in the hope of preserving the image of a "clean" Hollywood, but the distributors of exploitation film operated outside of this system and often welcomed controversy as a form of free promotion. The organisation, which applied the Hays Code for film censorship, also disapproved of the work of Dwain Esper, the director responsible for exploitation movies such as Marihuana (1936) and Maniac (1934). The film proved popular at the box office but caused concern for the American cinema trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). An early example, the 1933 film Ecstasy, included nude scenes featuring the Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr. Such films were first seen in their modern form in the early 1920s, but they were popularized in the 60s and 70s with the general relaxing of censorship and cinematic taboos in the U.S. History Įxploitation films often include themes such as suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, gore, destruction, rebellion, mayhem, and the bizarre. ![]() Exploitation films are generally low-quality " B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain a cult following. Poster for the silent exploitation film The Road to Ruin (1928)Īn exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. ( September 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) ![]() Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations.
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