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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.

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.

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.

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.

Black exploitation

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. Examples from the 1970s include Cotton Comes to Harlem, Shaft, Dolemite, Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem, Super Fly, Boss Nigger, Blacula, Coffy, The Mack, and Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which is often credited with inventing the genre.

Sex exploitation

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.

Shock exploitation

Shock exploitation films (shock 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 The Last House on the Left, Fight for Your Life, Last House on Dead End Street, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (an example of Nazi exploitation), Men Behind the Sun, Vase de Noces, Ta Paidia tou Diavolou, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, Combat Shock and I Spit on Your Grave.

Biker films

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.)

Cannibal films

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 animal killings, featuring scenes with animals eating prey and also the cannibals killing alligators, crocodiles, snakes, and other animals (scenes of this nature can be observed in the controversial 1980 film, Cannibal Holocaust).

Chambara films

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 Lone Wolf and Cub, Lady Snowblood and Hanzo the Razor 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.

Zombie films

Zombie films are graphic, gory movies that followed the success of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and "Dawn of the Dead" a shocking motion picture sequel for all times.

Mondo films

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.

Splatter films

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, who became notorious for such work as Blood Feast (1963), and Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964).

Spaghetti westerns and Euroflicks

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 Django, Death Rides a Horse and The Great Silence.

Women in prison films

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.

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.
Nazisploitation: Films such as Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, Last Orgy of the Third Reich, and Love Camp 7; sometimes tied with Women in prison films since they share a common theme of incarcerated women.
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.
Rape / Revenge: films in which a woman is raped and then, in turn, exacts a violent and often more gruesome revenge upon her attacker. See: I Spit on Your Grave and The Last House on the Left.
Martial arts film: a type of action film characterized by extensive fighting scenes employing various types of martial arts.
Slasher film:sub-genre of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer (often wearing a mask) who stalks and graphically murders a series of victims in a random, unprovoked fashion, killing many within a single day.
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.

Directors associated with exploitation film

Exploitation film distributers of note

References

Eric Schaefer, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959 Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999
Jeffrey Sconce, "'Trashing' the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style", Screen vol. 36 no. 4, Winter 1995, pp. 371-393.
Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984, 1994. ISBN 0-312-13519-X
V. Vale and Andrea Juno, RE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange Films RE/Search Publications, 1986. ISBN 0-940642-09-3
Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia 5e: The Most Comprehensive Encyclopedia of World Cinema in a Single Volume (Film Encyclopedia), 2005. ISBN 0-06-074214-3
Benedikt Eppenberger, Daniel Stapfer Maedchen, Machos und Moneten: Die unglaubliche Geschichte des Schweizer Kinounternehmers Erwin C. Dietrich. Mit einem Vorwort von Jess Franco. Verlag Scharfe Stiefel, Zurich, 2006, ISBN 3-033-00960-3

External links

THE DEUCE: Grindhouse Cinema Database The original Grindhouse/Classic Exploitation Cinema Wiki.
"Lights! Camera! Apocalypse!", an article about Rapture films as Christian exploitation filmmaking
The Cinema Snob Comedic reviews and retrospectives of Exploitation Cinema.
Lurid Cinema - Babes, Bimbos & Badasses Top 250 Exploitation & Grindhouse Movie List
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.

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