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The "King of the B's," Roger Corman, produced and directed The Raven (1963) for American International Pictures. Vincent Price headlines a cast of golden oldies and a young Jack Nicholson.
For the MxPx DVD, see B-Movie (DVD).

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 not intended as an arthouse film.

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.

History

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. 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.

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 1938 feature film releases from the various Hollywood studios, 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 63.6 minutes
Republic 63.1 minutes
Monogram 60.0 minutes

Even 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."[4] 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.[5]

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. Corman's first movie for AIP was It Conquered the World (1956), which he both produced and directed (he did the same for The Oklahoma Woman, a Western released by AIP's predecessor, ARC, the same year). Corman, who coproduced his first movie in 1954 (Highway Dragnet, for Allied Artists, the corporate heir to Monogram) and directed his first film the following year (Swamp Women, for independent producer Bernard Woolner) is often referred to as the "King of the B's." Corman argues that he is not technically a B-movie maker, as B-movies, in the 1930s and 1940s sense of the term, had died out by the time he began making pictures. Instead, Corman describes his movies as "low-budget exploitation films." 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 golden age of exploitation: 1960s–1970s

During the 1960s and 1970s, several B-movie subgenres emerged that can be categorized collectively as exploitation films. Many depicted women being psychologically or physically abused by men, such as the 1961 film Damaged Goods, a cautionary tale about a young woman whose boyfriend’s promiscuity leads to venereal disease. Another type of exploitation film, the “nudie film,” used footage from nudist camps, which was sometimes loosely intercut with a flimsy plot. In the so-called “blaxploitation” genre from the 1970s, actors such as Isaac Hayes, Ted Lange, and Pam Grier were featured in stereotype-filled films whose stories revolved around drugs, violent crime, and prostitution.[6] Many of the era's exploitation films were the product of a new generation of low-budget film companies founded in the late 1960s and early 1970s such as Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Cannon Films, New Line Cinema, Film Ventures International, Fanfare Films, and Independent-International Pictures.

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.[7]

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.[8] 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 late-night "filler" material for 24-hour cable channels or were made expressly for that purpose. Within a few years, however, the increasing affordability of VCRs enabled a growing number of home viewers to select any grade of movie to watch at any time, leading to a decline in the popularity of cable-ready B-films.

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.

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

Today, the distinction between "A-movies" and "B-movies" is not as clear, but there are still different tiers of perceived quality for movies. The subjective assessment of quality no longer depends entirely on production values or the reputation of actors; in some cases an artistically daring film with unknown actors that is dismissed by mainstream audiences may be lauded as a masterwork by critics.

In recent years, the production of B-movies has undergone a resurgence. In part this is due to recent technological developments in film production. Although there have always been lower cost methods of shooting movies, such as 16 mm film in the 1970s or video cameras (recording onto analog video tape), these methods could not produce films that could rival 35 mm film quality. In the 2000s, the development and widespread usage of digital cameras and digital production methods allow even lower-budget filmmakers to produce films with good image quality. In particular, high definition (HD) digital video allows moviemakers to produce motion picture images that are virtually the quality of those shot with 35 mm film.

Another factor is a shift in audience and critical preferences. As indicated above, B-movies allow for greater creative freedom, which allows B-movie filmmakers to tackle themes or topics that are less salable in the mass-market feature-film industry. As North American and European populations are becoming more diverse, the moviegoing population is seeking out a broader range of themes and stories. As well, some actors such as Bruce Campbell and Eric Roberts have embraced their role as B-movie actors.

Associated terms

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. 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 on late-night television.[9] 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.

With shows such as Mystery Science Theater 3000, poor quality horror and science fiction films were edited for brevity and presented with sarcastic commentary voiceovers that highlighted the films' scriptwriting or production shortcomings. The Elvira—Mistress of the Dark syndicated horror series, which starred Cassandra Peterson, also used this same approach of screening genre films with sarcastic commentary, focusing on the horror genre. By the 2000s, cable and satellite companies were offering hundreds of channels catering to many niche interests. To cut costs, channels often program "direct to video" movies—modest-budget genre films (action, war, horror, etc.) that were shot on video and never released in theaters.

The term has been used more formally In the Japanese film industry. According to cinema website editor Tom Mes, 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."[10]

Ed Wood has been called "the master of the 'C-movie,'" although the term "Z-movie" (see below) might be even more applicable to his work.[11] Other prominent directors in the C-movie industry have included David A. Prior and Bill Rebane.

Z-movie

File:Plan 9 poster.JPG
Ed Wood's ultra-low-budget Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) has become the most famous Z-movie of all time—and not for being unexpectedly good.

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. C-movies may be thematically or conceptually more unusual, due to the greater latitude afforded to their directors, but most films identified C-movies are nonetheless 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 lack of any 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 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.

Psychotronic movie

Psychotronic movie is a term coined by movie critic Michael J. Weldon to denote the sort of low-budget movies that are generally ignored by the critical establishment on the basis of mainstream standards that judge them to be in bad taste. 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.[12] 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.”[13] 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.

See also

Look up b movie in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. ^ Barak Y. Orbach and Liran Einav, "Uniform Prices for Differentiated Goods: The Case of the Movie-Theater Industry," Harvard Law School/NYU School of Law/Univ. of Arizona College of Law research paper (January 2006), 11 (available online).
  2. ^ Brian Taves, "The B Film: Hollywood's Other Half," in Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939, ed. Tino Balio (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1995), 313–350; 317.
  3. ^ Adapted from Joel W. Finler, The Hollywood Story (New York: Crown, 1988), 21–22.
  4. ^ James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1998), 140.
  5. ^ Naremore, 141.
  6. ^ "What Exactly is a B-Movie?" essay by Duane L. Martin, March 1, 2005; part of the Rogue Cinema website. Retrieved 10/20/06.
  7. ^ "Copyright Lawsuit Claims The Island Cloned Parts: The Clonus Horror," UPI News Service, August 10, 2005 (available online). For the budget of Clonus, see "Clonus (Parts - The Clonus Horror)" DVD review by Stuart Galbraith IV, March 17, 2005; part of the DVD Talk website. Retrieved 10/20/06.
  8. ^ Patrick Robertson, The Guinness Book of Film Facts and Feats (Guinness Superlatives: Middlesex, England, 1980), 47. See also Stephen Prince, A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980–1989 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 38.
  9. ^ "David Payne: Do Fear the Reeker" interview with the director by Eric Campos, December 12, 2005; part of the Film Threat website. Retrieved 10/20/06.
  10. ^ "Interview: Seijun Suzuki" interview with the director by Tom Mes, October 11, 2001; part of the Midnight Eye website. Retrieved 10/20/06.
  11. ^ Michael Oppermann, "Ed Wood" (film review), Journal of American Studies of Turkey, no. 3 (spring 1996) (available online).
  12. ^ The Psychotronic Vestibule portal to Weldon's Psychotronic Web site. Retrieved 10/20/06.
  13. ^ "The Psychotronic Man" interview with Michael Weldon by Bob Ignizio, April 20, 2006; part of the Utter Trash website. Retrieved 10/20/06.
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