A B movie, or B film, is a type of low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second half of a double feature, somewhat similar to B-sides in the world of recorded music. However, the production of such films as "second features" in the United States largely declined by the end of the 1950s. This shift was due to the rise of commercial television, which prompted film studio B movie production departments to transition into television film production divisions. These divisions continued to create content similar to B movies, albeit in the form of low-budget films and series.
An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain a cult following.
13 Ghosts is a 1960 American supernatural horror film produced and directed by William Castle, written by Robb White and starring Rosemary DeCamp, Margaret Hamilton, Charles Herbert, Martin Milner, Jo Morrow, John van Dreelen, and Donald Woods.
A grindhouse or action house is an American term for a theatre that mainly shows low-budget horror, splatter, and exploitation films for adults. According to historian David Church, this theater type was named after the "grind policy", a film-programming strategy dating back to the early 1920s which continuously showed films at cut-rate ticket prices that typically rose over the course of each day. This exhibition practice was markedly different from the era's more common practice of fewer shows per day and graduated pricing for different seating sections in large urban theatres, which were typically studio-owned.
Mom and Dad is a 1945 American sexploitation film directed by William Beaudine, and largely produced by the exploitation film maker and presenter Kroger Babb. Mom and Dad is considered the most successful film within its genre of "sex hygiene" films. Although it faced numerous legal challenges and was condemned by the National Legion of Decency, it became one of the highest-grossing films of the 1940s.
Howard W. "Kroger" Babb was an American film producer and showman. His marketing techniques were similar to a travelling salesman's, with roots in the medicine show tradition. Self-described as "America's Fearless Young Showman", he is best known for his presentation of the 1945 exploitation film Mom and Dad, which was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005.
I Drink Your Blood is a 1971 American exploitation horror film written and directed by David E. Durston, produced by Jerry Gross, and starring Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury, Jadine Wong, and Lynn Lowry. The film centers on a small town that is overrun by rabies-infected members of a Satanic hippie cult after a revenge plot goes horribly wrong.
The 1960s and 1970s marked the rise of exploitation-style independent B movies; films which were mostly made without the support of Hollywood's major film studios. As censorship pressures lifted in the early 1960s, the low-budget end of the American motion picture industry increasingly incorporated the sort of sexual and violent elements long associated with so-called ‘exploitation’ films. The demise of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1968, coupled with the success of the exploitation film Easy Rider the following year fueled the trend throughout the subsequent decade. The success of the B-studio exploitation movement had a significant effect on the strategies of the major studios during the 1970s.
The Sea Beast is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Millard Webb, starring John Barrymore, Dolores Costello and George O'Hara. The film was a major commercial success and one of the biggest pictures of 1926 becoming Warner Brothers' highest grossing film. The Sea Beast is the first adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, a story about a monomaniacal hunt for a great white whale. However, the film alters the novel's plotline by establishing prequel and sequel elements that are not in the original story—such as the romancing of Esther and Ahab's safe return, respectively—and substitutes a happy ending for Melville's original tragic one. Some of the characters in the film do not appear in Melville's original novel. The film was so successful that in 1930 Warner Bros redid it in English and German, under the title Moby Dick, with Joan Bennett taking the role of Ahab's love because Dolores Costello was pregnant at the time.
The Lawton Story of "The Prince of Peace", originally released as The Lawton Story and later reissued as The Prince of Peace, is a religious-themed film that later made the roadshow rounds presented by exploitation pioneer Kroger Babb. Filmed in Cinecolor in 1948, it is based on an annual passion play in Lawton, Oklahoma, "The Prince of Peace," created in 1926 by Rev. A. Mark Wallock. This Easter pageant became immensely popular among locals, attracting as many as 250,000 people.
Sam S. Millard was a filmmaker of the 1920s through the 1950s and 1960s. Nicknamed "Steamship", he was one of the Forty Thieves of exploiters. Considered an early father of the roadshow-style exploitation film circuit, his film productions and presentations laid the groundwork for a number of later exploitation films.
Damaged Goods (1914) is an American silent drama film directed by Tom Ricketts, starring Richard Bennett. It is based on Eugène Brieux's play Les Avariés (1901) about a young couple who contract syphilis. No print of the film is known to exist, making it a lost film, although according to the silent film survival database a fragment survives. It is believed to have begun the sex hygiene/venereal disease film craze of the 1910s.
Who's Your Neighbor? is a 1917 silent American propaganda and drama film directed by S. Rankin Drew. The film's plot focuses around reformers who pass a law to force prostitutes, including Hattie Fenshaw, out of the red light district. Fenshaw becomes Bryant Harding's mistress and lives in an apartment next door to a reformer, and continues to ply her trade. After Fenshaw becomes familiar with Harding, his son, daughter and the daughter's fiancé, the climax of the film occurs as the cast assembles at Fenshaw's apartment. Harding returns and a fight breaks out that results in the reformers' arrival and concludes with the presumption that Fenshaw returns to a place of "legalized vice". The drama was written by Willard Mack and was his first foray into screen dramas. The film proved controversial, but is noted as a great success. The film originally debuted on June 15, 1917, but it was rejected by the National Board of Review and was later approved after a revision, but the film continued to be labeled as an immoral production. The film is presumed to be lost.
Enlighten Thy Daughter is a 1917 American silent drama film directed and written by Ivan Abramson.
The End of the Road is a 1919 American silent drama film produced by the American Social Hygiene Association. The film was directed by Lieutenant Edward H. Griffith for the purposes of health propaganda. The plot follows the lives of two young women - one raised by "the right kind of mother" and the other by a mother that is judged to be wrong. This film was targeted at young women with warnings about premarital sex and venereal disease and was notably produced during World War I.
La Follette–Bulwinkle Act or Venereal Diseases Control and Prevention Act of 1938 sanctioned federal assistance to U.S. states establishing preventive healthcare for venereal diseases. The United States federal statute commissioned the United States Public Health Service for demonstrations, investigations, and studies as related to the control, prevention, and treatment of opportunistic infections. The public law amended the Army Appropriations Act of 1918 appending the judicial context which created the Division of Venereal Diseases within the Bureau of the Public Health Service.
Open Your Eyes is a 1919 American silent drama film directed by Gilbert P. Hamilton, and starring Faire Binney, Mrs. Joupert, Jack Hopkins, Halbert Brown, Eddie Beryll, Emily Marceau, Viola Allen, Ben Lyon, and Gaston Glass. Intended to warn about venereal disease and shot in The Bronx in 1917, the film was given a general release by Warner Bros. in May 1919. Jack L. Warner, one of the founders of Warner Bros., has a cameo appearance as a World War I soldier.
The Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA), also popularly known as the Fosdick Commission, was an umbrella agency within the United States Department of War during World War I that provided recreational and educational activities for soldiers as they trained for combat. Established in April 1917, the CTCA had the mandate to keep American troops "physically healthy and morally pure", while also motivating them to fight.
Fit to Fight is a silent sex hygiene film about the dangers of venereal disease written and directed by Edward H. Griffith. It was produced by the Commission on Training Camp Activities and initially shown to American World War I soldiers. After the war, a slightly edited version was commercially released to the public in 1919, under the title Fit to Win. The film proved controversial due to its graphic imagery and its limited support for prophylaxis. It was subject to censorship attempts, and contributed to the emergence of the exploitation film as a distinct niche.
Street of Forgotten Women is a 1927 American silent exploitation film directed by Norton S. Parker about a young woman who becomes a prostitute. Like many exploitation films, it casts itself as performing a public service by educating the public and warning families of the dangers facing young women in large cities. It was distributed through independent film exchanges directly to local theaters. The names of the actors in the cast are not known.
