B-movie

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For the MxPx DVD, see B-Movie (DVD).

For the English New Wave band, see B-Movie (band).

The term B-movie originally referred to a motion picture, made on a low or modest budget, intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. Although double features largely disappeared over the course of the 1950s, the term B-movie continues to be used in a broader sense, referring to any low-budget commercial motion picture intended neither as an arthouse film nor as pornography. In its post–Golden Age usage, there is ambiguity on both sides: on the one hand, many B-movies display a high degree of craft and aesthetic ingenuity; on the other, the primary interest of many exploitation B-movies is prurient—in some cases, both are true. The terms drive-in movie and midnight movie, which emerged in association with specific historical phenomena, are now roughly synonymous with B-movie. The terms C-movie and Z-movie describe progressively lower grades of films in the category. A more recently coined synonym is psychotronic movie.

Contents 1 Overview 2 History 2.1 Roots of the B-movie: 1920s 2.2 B's in the Golden Age of Hollywood: 1930s–1940s 2.3 Transition I: 1950s 2.4 The golden age of exploitation: 1960s–1970s 2.5 Transition II: 1980s 2.6 The B-movie in the digital age: 1990s–2000s 3 Associated terms 3.1 C-movie 3.2 Z-movie 3.3 Psychotronic movie 4 See also 5 References and footnotes 6 External links

[edit] Overview

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, most B-movies were readily identifiable with a particular genre (e.g., horror or the Western) and many were part of series in which the star repeatedly played the same character. Almost always shorter than the top-billed films they were paired with, many B-movies had running times of 70 minutes or less. With the dissolution, beginning in the late 1940s, of the classic Hollywood studio system, double features—the raison d'être of the B-movie—became a rarity.

Since this time, the term B-movie has come to designate any motion picture made for relatively little money and marketed as popular entertainment. In its current usage, the term has two primary and somewhat contradictory connotations; it may be used to indicate an opinion that a certain movie is (a) a genre film with minimal artistic ambitions or (b) a lively, energetic film uninhibited by the constraints imposed on more expensive projects and unburdened by the conventions of putatively "serious" independent film.

Since their beginnings, B-movies have been a significant means of entry into the motion picture industry. Celebrated filmmakers such as Anthony Mann and Jonathan Demme learned their craft in B-movies, which also gave émigré directors from Europe such as Michael Curtiz and Douglas Sirk an opportunity to establish themselves in Hollywood. B-movies are where actors such as Robert Mitchum and Jack Nicholson got their starts, and the Bs have also provided work for former A-movie actors, such as Vincent Price and Karen Black. Some actors, such as Bela Lugosi and Sybil Danning, worked in B-movies for most of their careers.

[edit] History

[edit] Roots of the B-movie: 1920s

From the early days of the Hollywood studio system, there was a hierarchy of film financing and status. By the 1920s, "production lines of varying quality [had] formed based on budget, leading actors’ popularity, genre, and story quality. Films from these production lines were graded A, B, or C, and admission prices were set accordingly."^[1] While there is no evidence that the term B-movie (or B-film or B-picture) was in general use before the 1930s, this industrial arrangement did give rise to the practice of referring to "A-list" and "B-list" stars. Some silent-era studios at the lower end of the industry, such as Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), specialized in cheap productions with relatively short running times, targeting theaters that had to economize on rental and operating costs—particularly those in small towns and so-called neighborhood venues in big cities. With the widespread arrival of sound film in American theaters in 1929, an increasing number of exhibitors replaced the old presentation model, which involved live acts and a series of shorts before the featured film, with a trimmer program: a newsreel, possibly a cartoon, and a double feature—that second feature costing the exhibitor less per minute than the equivalent running time in shorts. Though the major studios fought the concept, all ultimately established "B-units," not only to provide films for the expanding market but to serve as training grounds for new talent. Smaller, so-called Poverty Row studios such as Mascot Pictures and Sono Art–World Wide concentrated almost exclusively on the B-movie market.

[edit] B's in the Golden Age of Hollywood: 1930s–1940s

In the 1930s and 1940s, most films referred to as "B-movies" were genre pictures produced to occupy the lower-billed halves of double features. However, a broad range of Hollywood motion pictures occupied the B-movie category: The leading studios made not only clear-cut A- and B-pictures, but also movies known as "programmers" (also "in-betweeners" or "intermediates") that, as historian Brian Taves describes, "straddle[d] the A-B boundary." During the era of the double feature, "[d]epending on the prestige of the theater and the other material on the double bill, a programmer could show up at the top or bottom of the marquee."^[2] A number of the top Poverty Row firms consolidated—Mascot became part of the new Republic Pictures and Sono Art joined in the merger that created Monogram Pictures; these new studios produced films on a par with the low end of the majors' output, while less well-established Poverty Row companies turned out dirt-cheap "quickies." Joel Finler has analyzed the average length of feature film releases from the various Hollywood studios in 1938, which indicates the degree to which each emphasized the production of B-films (United Artists directly produced no features, focusing instead on the distribution of prestigious films made by independent outfits):^[3]

The Big Five majors
MGM	87.9 minutes
Paramount	76.4 minutes
20th Century-Fox	75.3 minutes
Warner Bros.	75.0 minutes
RKO	74.1 minutes
The Little Three majors
United Artists	87.6 minutes
Columbia	66.4 minutes
Universal	66.4 minutes
Poverty Row
Grand National[4]	63.6 minutes
Republic	63.1 minutes
Monogram	60.0 minutes

By the late 1940s, when the average cost of a Hollywood feature was around $1 million, even the most expensive Poverty Row releases rarely had budgets of more than $200,000; according to scholar James Naremore, between 1945 and 1950, "the average B western from Republic Pictures was made for about $50,000."^[5] Referencing the work of historian Lea Jacobs, Naremore describes how the line between A and B movies was "ambiguous and never dependent on money alone." Films shot on B-level budgets were occasionally marketed as A pictures or emerged as sleeper hits (e.g., Hitler's Children, a 1943 RKO thriller). A-pictures, particularly in the realm of film noir, sometimes echoed visual styles generally associated with cheaper films. Programmers—with budgets between $250,000 and $500,000 and, as described above, a flexible exhibition role—were ambiguous by definition, leading in certain cases to historical confusion. Ronald Reagan, frequently identified as a "B-movie star," in fact often had leading parts not only in programmers but also run-of-the-mill A-movies that were B's only in the sense of perceived aesthetic quality. Series films of the era are often unquestioningly consigned to the B-movie category, but even here there is ambiguity:

[T]he most profitable B pictures functioned much like the comic strips in the daily newspapers, showing the continuing adventures of Roy Rogers [Republic], Boston Blackie [Columbia], the Bowery Boys [Warner Bros./Universal], Blondie and Dagwood [Columbia], Charlie Chan [Fox/Monogram], and so on. Even a major studio like MGM [the industry leader from 1931 through 1941] was equipped with a so-called B unit that specialized in these serial productions. At MGM, however, the Andy Hardy, Dr. Kildaire, and Thin Man films were made with major stars and with what some organizations would have considered A budgets.^[6]

From a latter-day perspective, the most famous of the major studios' Golden Age B units is producer Val Lewton's horror unit at RKO, which produced such classics as Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Body Snatcher (1945).

[edit] Transition I: 1950s

While screening double features became less common over the course of the 1950s in the United States, the term B-movie continued to be used in a broader sense, referring to any low-budget commercial film that featured relatively unheralded performers ("B-actors"), formulaic plots, and "stock" characters and themes. While B-movies were professionally made commercial products, the lower budgets, lower degree of oversight by studio managers, and diminished focus on box office returns often allowed B-movie directors to take more creative risks. While Hollywood movies with big budgets and top stars tended to convey conventional messages, B-movies explored a wide range of themes; in particular, they touched on xenophobic anxieties and conformist pressures in allegorical science fiction films such as The Thing from Another World (1951), It Came from Outer Space (1953), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

One of the leading American studios focused on B-movie production toward the end of the decade and beyond was American International Pictures (AIP), founded in 1956 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff in a reorganization of their American Releasing Corporation (ARC). AIP helped launch the careers of Roger Corman and later such figures as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson. I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), perhaps the best known AIP film of the era, was produced by Herman Cohen and starred a twenty-year-old Michael Landon. In 1956, Corman produced and directed his first movies for ARC—The Oklahoma Woman, a Western—and then AIP—It Conquered the World. Corman, who coproduced his first movie in 1954 (Highway Dragnet, for Allied Artists, the corporate heir to Monogram) and directed his first film in 1955 (Swamp Women, for independent producer Bernard Woolner), is often referred to as the "King of the B's." Corman has said that "to my way of thinking, I never made a 'B' movie in my life," as B-movies, in the classic Hollywood sense of the term, had died out by the time he began making pictures; Corman describes his metier as "low-budget exploitation films."^[7] Between 1955 and 1990, Corman directed over fifty feature films. As of 2006, he remains active as a producer, with more than 350 movies to his credit.

The growth of the drive-in theater market was one of the major spurs to the expansion of the independent B-movie industry. In 1946, there were approximately 300 drive-ins in the United States; a decade later, the number had reached 4,500, one-quarter of all American cinemas.^[8] B-pictures with simple, familiar plots and reliable shock effects were ideally suited for auto-based film viewing, with all its attendant distractions. The phenomenon of the drive-in movie became one of the defining symbols of American popular culture in the 1950s. Over the course of the decade, many local television stations began showing B genre films in late-night slots, popularizing the notion of the midnight movie. In the spring of 1954, Los Angeles TV station KABC expanded on the concept by having an appropriately offbeat host introduce the films: on Saturday nights, The Vampira Show, with Maila Nurmi as the titular MC, screened low-budget horror and suspense movies, including at least one that would become a cult classic—Detour, produced in 1945 for $117,000. Variations on the Vampira format were soon running at stations around the country.^[9]

[edit] The golden age of exploitation: 1960s–1970s

The 1960s and 1970s saw a major expansion in the production and commercial viability of a variety of B-movie subgenres collectively categorizable as exploitation films. The “nudie" films of the 1950s, featuring nudist-camp footage or striptease artists like Bettie Page, had simply been the softcore pornography of the era. In the 1960s, movies in the style were given some greater semblance of plots and legitimacy by a number of filmmakers. In particular, there was Russ Meyer, who released his first successful narrative nudie, The Immoral Mr. Teas, in 1959. Meyer, a talented director, would gain renown for what became known as sexploitation films such as Lorna (1964), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), and Vixen! (1968). Other exploitation films of the era were based in a tradition of films dating back to the 1930s that graphically depicted the wages of sin in the context of promoting prudent lifestyle choices, particularly "sexual hygiene." These films were not generally booked as part of movie theaters' regular schedules but rather presented as special events by traveling roadshow promotors; they tended to depict women paying a steep price for premarital sex, as in Damaged Goods (1961), a cautionary tale about a young lady whose boyfriend’s promiscuity leads to venereal disease.^[10]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new generation of low-budget film companies emerged that focused on the production of films drawing from both of these fringe commercial practices as well as the horror and action traditions of B-movies created within the established studio system. Operations such as Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Cannon Films, New Line Cinema, Film Ventures International, Fanfare Films, and Independent-International Pictures brought exploitation films to mainstream theaters around the country. The growth of exploitation was not limited to such relatively small companies; many examples of the so-called blaxploitation genre of the 1970s, featuring actors such as Pam Grier and Jim Brown in stereotype-filled stories revolving around drugs, violent crime, and prostitution, were the product of major Hollywood studios.^[11]

In a variety of ways, the B-movies of the era have inspired later filmmakers blessed with much better financial backing. Almost all the work of present-day director Quentin Tarantino—in particular, Jackie Brown and the Kill Bill movies—pays explicit tribute to classic exploitation cinema. The plot of Parts: The Clonus Horror (aka Clonus; 1979), made for $257,000, was evidently used as the basis for the big-budget DreamWorks production The Island (2005), prompting a lawsuit by the creators of the original.^[12]

In the early 1970s, the growing practice of screening nonmainstream motion pictures as late shows, with the goal of building a cult film audience, brought the midnight movie concept home to the cinema, now with transgressive connotations. Socializing in a countercultural milieu was part of the original attraction of the midnight filmgoing experience, something like a drive-in movie for the hip.^[13] The midnight movie success of low-budget pictures made entirely outside of the studio system, like John Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972), with its campy spin on exploitation, spurred the development of the independent film movement. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), an inexpensive film from 20th Century-Fox that spoofed all manner of classic B-picture clichés, became an unparalleled hit when it was relaunched as a late show feature the year after its initial, unprofitable release. Even as Rocky Horror generated its own subcultural phenomenon, it contributed to the mainstreaming of the theatrical midnight movie.

On television, the parallels between the weekly series that became the mainstay of prime-time programming and the Hollywood series films of an earlier day had long been clear. In the 1970s, original feature-length programming increasingly began to echo the B-movie as well. While there had been dramatic feature presentations made especially for TV since the beginning of the medium's mass commercialization in the late 1940s, they had by and large not crossed over with the realm of the B-movie. In the 1950s, the live television drama—a unique amalgam of cinematic and theatrical elements exemplified by Playhouse 90 (1956–1961)—had predominated. Over the course of the 1960s, there was a transition to filmed features, most of which either aspired to the prestige of major motion pictures or were intended as pilots for projected series. As production of TV movies expanded with the introduction of the ABC Movie of the Week in 1969, soon followed by the dedication of other network slots to original feature presentations, time and financial factors shifted the medium progressively into B-picture territory. The production of TV films inspired by recent scandals or medical scares harkened all the way back to the 1920s and such films as Human Wreckage and When Love Grows Cold, FBO pictures made swiftly in the wake of celebrity misfortunes.

[edit] Transition II: 1980s

Most of the B-movie production houses founded during the exploitation era collapsed or were subsumed by larger companies as the field's financial situation changed in the early 1980s. Even a comparatively cheap, efficiently made genre picture intended for theatrical release began to cost millions of dollars, as the major movie studios increasingly moved into the production of expensive genre movies, raising audience expectations for spectacular action sequences and realistic special effects. Between 1960 and 1970, the cost of the average Hollywood feature had not even doubled, rising from $1 million to $1.75 million; by 1980, it was approximately $7.5 million and climbing rapidly.^[14] Nonetheless, many low-budget commercial films continued to be turned out; horror was the strongest B-movie genre of the era, particularly in the "slasher" mode (e.g., Motel Hell [1980], Slumber Party Massacre [1982]) and in science-fiction crossovers (e.g., Re-Animator [1985], The Stuff [1985]). In September 1980, Roger Corman released his most expensive movie to date: Battle Beyond the Stars, with screenplay by John Sayles and art direction by James Cameron, cost Corman's New World a grand total of $2 million. By comparison, The Empire Strikes Back, which came out three-and-a-half months before the Corman epic, was budgeted at $25 million and wound up costing $35 million. The growth of the cable television industry in the 1980s helped support the low-budget film market, as many B-movies quickly wound up as "filler" material for 24-hour cable channels or were made expressly for that purpose. The broadcast version of the midnight movie remained popular: the nationally syndicated Movie Macabre package starring Cassandra Peterson—aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark—was essentially a brassier copy of The Vampira Show, presenting mostly low-budget horror films interspersed with Elvira's satiric commentary and abundant display of cleavage.

One of the most succesful B-movie companies of the 1980s was a survivor from the heyday of the exploitation era, Troma Pictures, founded in 1974. Troma's most characteristic productions, including Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986), Redneck Zombies (1986), and Surf Nazis Must Die (1987), take exploitation for an absurdist spin. Troma also engaged in the B-studio tradition of re-releasing the often embarassing early films of actors who have become major stars. In 1986, the company acquired and distributed Sizzle Beach U.S.A., shot in 1974 but never previously released; in this case, Troma capitalized on the appearance in the film by Kevin Costner, who had recently starred in the popular Silverado (1985) and was set to headline The Untouchables (1987). Troma's best-known production is The Toxic Avenger (1985), whose hero, after being immersed by viciously violent villains in toxic waste, mutates into a hideous creature with enhanced physical strength and revenge on what's left of his mind. After the film's successful release, the Toxic Avenger character became the symbol of Troma and an icon of the 1980s B-movie.

[edit] The B-movie in the digital age: 1990s–2000s

As big-budget Hollywood movies continue to usurp the genre and exploitation territories that were traditionally the domain of the B's, the ongoing commercial viability of the B-movie sector in terms of cinematic distribution and exhibition is in doubt. Critic A. O. Scott of the New York Times warns of the impending "extinction" of

the cheesy, campy, guilty pleasures that used to bubble up with some regularity out of the B-picture ooze of cut-rate genre entertainment. Those cherished bad movies—full of jerry-built effects, abominable acting, ludicrous story lines—once flickered with zesty crudity in drive-ins and grind houses across the land. B-picture genres—science fiction and comic-book fantasy in particular, but also kiddie cartoons and horror pictures—now dominate the A-list, commanding the largest budgets and the most attention from the market-research and quality-control departments of the companies that manufacture them.... [F]or the most part, the schlock of the past has evolved into star-driven, heavily publicized, expensive mediocrities....^[15]

On the other hand, recent technological developments are greatly facilitating the production of low-budget motion pictures. Although there have always been economical means with which to shoot movies, including Super 8 and 16 mm film and video cameras recording onto analog videotape, these mediums could not rival the image quality of 35 mm film. The development and widespread usage of digital cameras and postproduction methods allow even low-budget filmmakers to produce films with excellent image quality and precise editing effects. In particular, high definition (HD) digital video allows moviemakers to shoot motion picture images that are virtually the equal of those made with 35 mm film. The popularity of Internet sites such as YouTube have opened up entirely new avenues for the presentation of low-budget motion pictures, which may, like television, become largely insitutionalized as a parallel production and exhibition model with the cinema, or may lead to a redefinition of the concept of cinema itself.

[edit] Associated terms

[edit] C-movie

The C-movie is the grade of motion picture at the low end of the B-movie, or—in some taxonomies—simply below it.^[16] In the 1980s, with the growth of cable television, the C-grade began to be applied with increasing frequency to low-quality genre films used as filler programming for that market. The "C" in the term then does double duty, referring not only to quality that is lower than "B" but also to the initial c of cable. Helping to popularize the notion of the C-movie was the successful series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988–1999), which ran on national cable channels (first Comedy Central, then the Sci-Fi Channel) after its first year; updating the concept introduced by Vampira over three decades before, MST3K presented cheap, low-grade movies, primarily science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, along with running voiceover commentary highlighting the films' shortcomings in script and production. Ed Wood has been called "the master of the 'C-movie,'" in this sense, although the term Z-movie (see below) is perhaps even more applicable to his work.^[17] The rapid expansion of niche cable and satellite outlets such as Sci-Fi and HBO's genre channels in the 1990s and 2000s has meant an ongoing market for contemporary C-pictures, many of them "direct to cable" movies—modestly budgeted genre films never released in theaters.^[18]

The term has been used more formally in the Japanese film industry. According to cinema website editor Tom Mes, during the 1950s and 1960s films were “divided into degrees of importance. The A movie was most important to the studio, so it was closely monitored and controlled. The B movie was a little bit less important to them and the C movie was not important at all. But because nobody cared about him, the C director had the most freedom and he would often make the most interesting film of the three."^[19]

[edit] Z-movie

The term Z-movie (or grade-Z movie) arose in the 1970s to describe low-budget films with quality standards well below those of most B- and even C-movies. While B-movies may have mediocre scripts and actors who are relatively unknown or past their prime, they are for the most part competently lit, shot, and edited. The economizing shortcuts of films identified as C-movies tend to be be evident throughout; nonetheless, they are products of relatively stable entities within the commercial film industry and thus still adhere to certain production norms.

In contrast, most films referred to as Z-movies are made outside of the organized studio system on very small budgets. As a result, scripts are often laughably bad, continuity errors tend to arise during shooting, and nonprofessional actors are frequently cast. Many Z-movies are also poorly lit and edited. The shoestring-budget "quickies" of 1930s and 1940s fly-by-night Poverty Row production houses may be thought of as Z-movies avant la lettre. Latter-day Z's are often characterized by violent, gory, and/or sexual content and a minimum of artistic interest, readily falling into the category of exploitation, or "grindhouse," films.

Two films are frequently cited as exemplifying the Z-movie:

• Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), directed by Ed Wood, has an incoherent plot, bizarre dialogue, inept acting, and shoestring special effects and sets. Stock footage is used throughout, individual shots and whole sequences are used multiple times, boom mics are visible, and actors frequently appear to be reading from cue cards. The movie stars Maila Nurmi in her Vampira persona and Bela Lugosi, who was dead when the film was made—footage he shot for another project is intercut with the performance of a double with the fortunate habit of covering his face with a cape.

• The Creeping Terror (1964), directed by Arthur J. Nelson (who also stars in the film under the pseudonym Vic Savage), uses some memorable bargain-basement effects: stock footage of a rocket launch is played in reverse to depict the landing of an alien spacecraft; what appears to be shag carpet is draped over several actors shambling about at a snail's pace, thus bringing the monstrous "creeping terror" to the screen. The movie also employs a technique that has come to be synonymous with Z-movie horror: voiceover narration that paraphrases dialogue being silently enacted onscreen.

[edit] Psychotronic movie

Psychotronic movie is a term coined by movie critic Michael J. Weldon to denote the sort of low-budget genre movies that are generally disdained or ignored entirely by the critical establishment. Weldon's immediate source for the term was the Chicago cult film The Psychotronic Man (1980), whose titular character is a barber who develops the bizarre ability to kill using psychic energy.^[20] According to Weldon, “My original idea with that word is that it’s a two-part word. 'Psycho' stands for the horror movies, and 'tronic' stands for the science fiction movies. I very quickly expanded the meaning of the word to include any kind of exploitation or B-movie.”^[21] Weldon's publications, including The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film and Psychotronic Video magazine, are among the leading works in the field of B-movie literature.

[edit] See also

• B-Movie Film Festival
• Hammer Film Productions
• List of B-movie directors and actors
• Vestron Video

[edit] References and footnotes

[edit] External links

• The Astounding B-Monster historically oriented compendium of B-movie articles and interviews
• Badmovies.org B-movie site with reviews and sound and audio clips
• The Biology of B-Movie Monsters analysis by Professor Michael C. LaBarbera, University of Chicago
• B-Masters Cabal confederation of movie review sites specializing in B- and cult movies
• The B-Movie primer on the B-movie genre; part of the GreenCine website
• B-Movie Central site with detailed reviews of many B-movies
• The B-Movie Comic webcomic parodying a B-movie while describing relevant filmmaking techniques
• Clash TV B-movies for download each month, with related news and games
• Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension focusing on "the very bottom of the cinematic bell curve"
• Stomp Tokyo B-movie reviews with an emphasis on monster films