Movies - Exploitation film

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	Movies - Exploitation film

Exploitation films, exploitative films or trash cinema is a genre of films that typically sacrifice traditional notions of artistic merit for the sensational display of some topic about which the audience may be curious, or have some prurient interest, expecially sex, gore, and violence. Such films have existed since the earliest days of moviemaking, but were popularized in the 1970s with the general relaxing of moral standards in cinema in the U.S. and Europe. Exploitation films may adopt the subject matters and stylings of other film genres (particularly documentary films or horror films). Thematically, exploitation films are influenced by other so-called exploitative media like pulp magazines.

The genre's influence on contemporary cinema can be found in such films as Kill Bill
by director Quentin Tarantino, who is a self-declared lover of exploitation cinema. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention from academic circles, where it is sometimes called paracinema.

Grindhouse cinema

Another term is grindhouse cinema; referring to the usually-disreputable movie theaters that showed them. Many of these inner-city theatres formerly featured burlesque shows which featured "bump and grind" dancing, leading to the term "grindhouse." The book Sleazoid Express, a travelogue of the grindhouses of New York's 42nd Street, explains that in the 1970s-late 1980s, the etymology of "grindhouse" changed to refer to the operations of twenty-four hour theatres, which would continually "grind out" films around the clock (a reference to the cranking motion required of old film cameras and projectors).

A grindhouse is an American term for a theater that shows exploitation films; it is also used as an adjective to describe the genre of films that would play in such a theatre. While just about any film that had too much sex or too much violence to play in a mainstream theatre was fair game for the grindhouses, the term has connotations of leaning more towards movies that were unacceptable by the terms of the mainstream: especially brutally violent films, films with bizarre or perverse plot points, etc. Frequent fare for such theatres were low-budget Japanese and Chinese movies, specifically kung-fu and samurai movies, usually known for being exceptionally bloody.

The term grind-house may also refer to a kind of low-budget inner-city theater common in American cities from the 1950s until the 1980s. Having been movie palaces during the cinema boom of the 1930s and 1940s, these theaters had fallen into disrepair by the 1960s. Grind-houses were known for "grinding out" non-stop, triple-bill programs of B movies. Beginning in the late 1960s and especially during the 1970s, the subject matter of grind-house features often included explicit sex, violence, and other taboo content. By the end of the 1970s, many grind-houses were exclusively pornographic and the trashy exploitation movies shown in them were regularly discussed in the fanzine Sleazoid Express.

By the 1980s, home video threatened to render the grind-house obsolete. By the end of the decade, these theaters had vanished from New York City's 42nd Street, Los Angeles' Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard, and San Francisco's Market Street, just to name a few. By the mid-1990s, the grindhouse completely disappeared from American culture.

Early exploitation films

Some of the earliest exploitation films were pitched as sensationalist exposés of some drug or sex-related scandal, and were made independently of the major Hollywood studios, thus avoiding restrictions of the Production Code and providing a revenue source for independent theaters. Now that the major motion picture studios allow much more latitude in subject matter, it is not necessary for independent producers to cater to audiences' desires to view such things. Thus, in modern cinema, roles have reversed somewhat, with major studios catering to the so-called "lowest common denominator", while art films are more typically made independently.

Subcategories of exploitation films

Classic exploitation

Classic Exploitation films made in the 1930s and 1940s were sensationalist fare at the time, and are now valued by aficionados for their nostalgic and ironic value. The most famous example of these is the cautionary tale Reefer Madness
, a sensationalized and notoriously inaccurate attempt to demonize marijuana for Prohibition-era America.

A particularly important type of exploitation film of this era was the "sex hygiene" exploitation film, a remnant from the social or mental hygiene movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These films featured white-coated "doctors" describing the how-tos of sex education to the fascinated and naive audience. Often times, the film would be attended by another "doctor" in a white coat selling sex-hygiene booklets in the lobby after the film screening. Usually the producers would make significantly more money from the sales of the booklets than from the tickets to see the film. This type of film was also known as a "road show," because it was shown from town to town and was promoted in advance like a circus or carnival. One of the most famous of these was "Mom and Dad" which featured actual birth footage.

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