What is an Exploitation Film?
Of all the genres associated with the Cinema Fantastica, the Exploitation film
is the least appreciated, most derided, and often the best example of doing more
with less that the viewer is likely to find. Barely one step above the
industrial and educational films generations of schoolchildren watched in Health
and Driver’s Ed classes, at least in terms of production values, these movies
are designed to appeal to the most prurient interests in the human psyche. Sex,
violence, oddities both human and animal, depravity … all of society’s taboos
were fair game for the Exploitation filmmakers. There are multiple sub-genres of
Exploitation Film, and unlike Horror Films, the sub-genres really exist separate
from one another. In order to do justice to them each must be examined
individually.
The Cautionary Tales of the Road Show Era
The earliest form of the Exploitation film was the Cautionary film, the movies
that sought to educate the masses on the wages inherent in the sins of the
flesh. The sin itself wasn’t important; drugs, premarital sex, alcohol,
miscegenation, gambling, crime - all were subjects to be exploited. As Dave
Friedman so eloquently explained, the subject didn’t matter as long as it was in
bad taste.
SLEAZEPLOITATION
Sleazeploitation, as a sub-genre of the Exploitation Film,
combines the seediest, slimiest examples of the genre—Sexploitation,
Drugsploitation, Crimesploitation, and Primitive Terrors—into what was perhaps
the quintessential sub-genre of Exploitation Film. Now, more than fifty years
after the heyday of Exploitation Cinema, when those unfamiliar with the genre
hear the words, “Exploitation Film,” these are the movies that come to mind.
SEXPLOITATION
Sexploitation began with the Sex Hygiene films exhibited by
the Road Showmen of the ‘30s through the ‘50s . These movies, which skirted the
Production Code by claiming to be ‘educational’, featured medical footage of the
live birth of a baby, either vaginally or by Caesarian, or film of the victims
of venereal disease - hardly material one would consider titillating or spicy,
but the (barely) only legitimate way to display nudity on-screen. If the main
feature wasn’t sufficiently risqué or salacious enough to satisfy the audience,
the exhibitor would throw a square-up reel onto the projector, in order to
‘square up’ things with the audience. These were either additional reels from
the feature that were removed to comply with local censorship laws, or one-reel
shorts, which comprised little more than contrived set pieces designed to reveal
as much naked womanliness as possible, such as Hollywood Script Girl. Like all
genres of film, Sexploitation evolved over time, transitioning from the
Cautionary movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s to the XXX-rated fare of the ‘70s. The
former are covered in the section on the Road Show era, and the latter are
discussed under Adult Films.
The four main types of Sexploitation are:
The Nudie-Cuties
A development of the ‘exposes’ of nudist camps popular in the
‘30s and ‘40s, the Nudie-Cuties began as little more than filmed striptease
routines featuring performers such as Bettie Page and Lily St. Cyr. The first
Nudie-Cutie was Russ Meyer’s The Immoral Mr. Teas, released in 1959. Doris
Wishman brought them to new heights, and lows, when she began the practice of
filming her features, such as Nude on the Moon, in nudist camps. Herschell G.
Lewis and Dave Friedman made some of the sub-genre’s best films with Boin-n-g
and Daughter of the Sun. The public soon tired of such pedestrian fare as this,
and the exploiteers responded with the Roughie.
The Roughies
In the mid-‘60s, as audiences were growing tired of the
Nudie-Cuties, several filmmakers began exploring the dark side of Sexploitation.
These filmmakers - the Findlays and the Amero brothers, Doris Wishman, Dave
Friedman - all arrived at similar themes in 1965 and the Roughie was born, the
definitive example of which was The Defilers, written and produced by Friedman,
and directed by Lee Frost. These films were misogynistic in the extreme, with
the subject of the entire sub-genre being violence toward women. Though a
short-lived phenomenon, disappearing almost completely when movies such as Deep
Throat and Behind the Green Door made X-rated fare fashionable, traces of the
Roughies are visible in the hordes of Slasher films that followed in their wake.
The Bad Girls
The mirror image of the Roughie, the Bad Girl sub-genre began
with Joe Mawra’s Olga trilogy, progressing rapidly through the Women in Prison
films such as The Big Doll House and Women in Cages, to its ultimate expression
of female domination, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. It also included the short-lived
phenomenon of the Nunsploitation film, the ultimate example of the ‘good girl
gone bad.’ Much more durable than the Roughie or the Nudie-Cutie, Bad Girl films
were perhaps the most popular form of Sexploitation.
The Gender-Benders
The oddest, and most narrowly appealing, form of
Sexploitation film was the Gender-Bender, a form that owed its existence to Ed
Wood’s semi-autobiographical Glen or Glenda. That film led to a brief fad in the
‘60s of films examining transvestites and transsexuals, the best known of which
was The Christine Jorgenson Story. The form lacked widespread appeal, even to
audiences devoted to Exploitation Film, and soon died out.
DRUGSPLOITATION
A direct descendant of the “Scare-your-Children” films of the
Road Show era, films such as Reefer Madness, Marihuana, and Cocaine Fiends,
these movies were updated to reflect the times, but little else was changed.
Films such as Maryjane and Alice in Acidland communicated the same “drugs are
bad” message of their predecessors, though in a slightly more believable tone.
Other Drugsploitation titles even dealt favorably with drug
use, most notably Easy Rider (also referenced in the Motorized Mayhem section)
and Woodstock. This trend began as the ‘60s counterculture movement made illicit
drug use fashionable, and exploded in popularity with the mainstream success of
the team of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong in films such as Up in Smoke.
CRIMESPLOITATION
Perhaps the most ‘mainstream’ of the Exploitation sub-genres,
the Crimesploitation features invariably focused on violent,
‘straight-from-the-headlines’ plots, incredibly gratuitous violence, and plenty
of lurid sex, usually forcible. Titles such as Sweet Savior, which featured a
‘Manson family’-like killing spree, to The Candy-Snatchers and Last House on the
Left, which dealt with the abduction, rape and eventual murders of teen-age
girls, were the stock-in-trade of Crimesploitation.
PRIMITIVE TERRORS
The most unsavory of the Sleazeploitation sub-genres, the
Primitive Terrors encompass those films that few cared to view, or at least,
admit to—the Mondo films, the jungle Cannibal films, the oft-rumored but
never-actually-seen ‘snuff’ movies. Titles such as Mangiati Vivi (Eaten Alive),
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, and the king of gross-out cinema, Ruggero
Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust, make up this nausea-inducing list of films.
BLAXPLOITATION
Growing out of the racial unrest of the 1960s, and aided by
the increased freedom filmmakers had to explore heretofore-taboo themes and
topics, Blaxploitation films were a response to the injustice suffered by the
African-American community, while at the same time glorifying the very
stereotypes that community found insulting.
Still the sub-genre enjoyed tremendous popularity through its brief stint as a
fashionable trend. Descended from the race-baiting films of the ‘50s and ‘60s,
with titles such as High Yellow, The Black Klansman, and My Baby is Black, the
genre truly began in 1971 with Melvin Van Peebles’ X-rated Sweet Sweetback’s
Badasssss Song.
It was taken into the mainstream cinema by Gordon Park’s
Shaft, and the themes of Blaxploitation were few and simple: The black antihero,
male or female, fights against the white authoritarian power-structure, often
from outside the law. They may be Detectives, either official or private; they
may be criminals, either in name or in fact. The one thing they have in common
is their conformity to every stereotype: Both male and female are hypersexual,
violent, and completely disrespectful of authority in any form—especially the
man, the nameless, faceless personification of the Establishment, of white
America.
TEENSPLOITATION
The genre of Teensploitation film owes its existence to one
company, and two men. The company was American International Pictures, and the
men were James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. A-I-P, in the person of Sam
Arkoff, realized in the mid-1950s that the teen market was a vast untapped pool
of consumers who received absolutely no consideration from other studios.
When Arkoff screened the major studios supposed ‘teen’
offerings for groups of teenagers, their reactions to actors in their thirties
and forties playing roles meant to be teens left the test audiences cold. As
Arkoff himself stated in an interview with film historian Tom Weaver,
“When we decided to do the ‘Beach Party’ pictures for example, I looked around
for a boy and a girl of teenage age, instead of being thirty or forty or
whatever it was, or Joan Crawford. You look at Joan Crawford—Jesus Christ, there
wasn’t a teenager that’d gone to bed with her!”
Arkoff and Nicholson recognized a need for pictures that
shared a teenager’s viewpoint, pictures that talked to them instead of at them.
The first such film from AIP was I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring Michael
Landon and Whit Bissell. According to no less an authority than Arkoff himself,
that was the first time (to his knowledge) the word “teenage” had been used in a
film title. Though the genre of the Teensploitation film would grow to encompass
a significant portion of mainstream Hollywood’s efforts, it all began with Sam,
Jim, and AIP.
EUROSHLOCK
One of the less well-defined sub-genres of Exploitation,
Euroshlock is the author’s term to describe the vast catalog of cheaply produced
European film that was imported into the U.S. by the shipload. From Spaghetti
Westerns, so-called because most originated in Italy, to Franco-Spanish Horror
Films starring the prolific Paul Naschy, to the Sword-and-Sandal Peplum
exploring Greco-Roman mythology as well as Steve Reeves’ muscular physique, it
encompassed nearly every genre and style of filmmaking.
The only common factor was that they were shot cheaply to be
sold cheaply—a product tailor-made for the Drive-In. That’s not to say there
weren’t good, or even great examples of Euroshlock. One of the best examples of
the Western genre was Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Some of
the most effective Horror Films of the ‘70s, such as De Ossorio’s Blind Dead
films or Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) are Euroshlock.
HICKSPLOITATION
One of the odder sub-genres of Exploitation Film, the
Hicksploitation trend grew out of the increased popularity of Country-Western
music in the ‘50s. Mirrored on Television by such programs as The Andy Griffith
Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Green Acres, the movies focused on the
stereotypical aspects of rural life, as imagined by those living within walking
distance of New York’s Times Square. Country music, fast cars, moonshine, and
incest were the prevalent themes of Hicksploitation, which reached its zenith
with such mainstream hits as Deliverance, Smokey and the Bandit, and Convoy.
ASIAN INVASION
Though Asian cinema has all the diversity and variety of
European or American film, to American audiences, especially Drive-In moviegoers
of the 1970s, Asian cinema, whether Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Thai, was
synonymous with one narrow, heavily exploited genre—Kung Fu movies, also known
as Chop-Sockey or Brucesploitation films. Bursting upon the American scene in
the early ‘70s and driven by the popularity of its biggest star, Bruce Lee, Kung
Fu films became one of the dominant genres of the Drive-In. Lee’s films
certainly lead the way, with titles such as Enter the Dragon and Fists of Fury
becoming huge Box-Office draws. Following Lee’s death, the genre became, if
anything, more widespread, as dozens of imitators tried to capture his on-screen
magic.
MOTORIZED MAYHEM
Drive-In theaters and movies featuring cars seem a natural
combination, especially among the typical teen-age Drive-In audience of the
1960s and ‘70s. Few things were as important to teen-age males of that time,
especially Southern teen-age males, as their cars, and these films glorified
that almost-symbiotic bond. The genre can trace it’s ancestry to 1958’s Thunder
Road, starring Robert Mitchum as a fast-driving moonshine runner, but it truly
exploded in popularity in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—the era of the muscle
car, when Detroit was producing some of the finest steel ever to roll down
American highways. The genre glorified those cars, in titles such as Vanishing
Point, Gone in 60 Seconds, and Death Race 2000.
A closely related genre is the Biker film, which stemmed from
1953’s Marlon Brando film The Wild Ones. The Biker film found its ultimate
expression in 1969’s Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, and
Dennis Hopper. This exploration of the Hippie Counterculture, set to the tune of
a Harley-Davidson V-Twin, was one of the films that defined the 1960s and the
generation that came of age in that decade. At the other end of the scale were
dozens of cheaply produced exploitation features, many of which starred actual
motorcycles gangs. Titles such as Hell’s Angels on Wheels and Angels Hard as
They Come were Drive-In favorites, and helped the genre remain popular
throughout the ‘70s.
ADULT FILMS
Also called Pornographic or X-Rated films, these films were a
minor part of the Drive-In marketplace, though many smaller, out-of-the-way
theaters turned to them to boost sagging revenues in the 1980s. Following the
Supreme Court rulings striking down most obscenity laws in the 1960s and ‘70s,
Drive-Ins began to push the envelope as to what was permissible for exhibition.
In the South particularly, this led to a virtual war on
ozoners (a common term for Drive-In Theaters) by local law enforcement agencies.
In July 1969, Alabama State Troopers raided six Drive-Ins in one night, seizing
six different films. A city councilman in Jacksonville, Florida enacted an
ordinance that made it a crime to show, “… human male or female bare buttocks,
human female bare breasts, or human bare pubic areas …” on any Drive-In screen
visible from a public place. Charlotte, North Carolina attempted to make it
illegal for any Drive-In screen to be visible from the street, a move that was
defeated by industry lobbying efforts. Differentiated from simple Sexploitation
films by virtue of the fact that these movies were explicitly hardcore, these
films never were a major part of the Drive-In culture, though they undoubtedly
contributed their part to the mystique and misconceptions that surrounded the
venues, and played a small but important role in the demise of the Drive-In.
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