B-movie
Related: American cinema - cult movies - midnight movies - exploitation film - paracinema - film
Gallery: Bmovies.de Google gallery
Beverly Garland in It Conquered the World (1956) - Roger Corman
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) - Jack Arnold
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Definition
The term B-movie originally referred to a Hollywood motion picture designed to be distributed as the "lower half" of a double feature, often a genre film featuring cowboys, gangsters, or horror. [Most American cinemas switched to double feature programming in the 1930s and 1940s --Robin Cross]. In the days of the major film studios, this was official terminology that also gave rise to the practice of referring to "A-list" or "B-list" stars. (For example, Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, made a career out of acting in B-movies.) The major studios had "B-units" that made their B-movies, but there were also small studios—such as Republic Pictures and Monogram Pictures—which specialized in making B-movies.
"B-movie" has gradually come to refer to any low-budget movie with lesser-known (and generally considered inferior) actors (B-actors). Usually the films are formulaic and campy, with cheap special effects, uninspired dialogue, and gratuitous nudity, sexuality, and/or violence. B-movies of the horror movie genre are especially popular. B-movies today are often not even released in theaters, instead going direct-to-video.
In the 1980s, with the advent of cable television, B-movies were used as a source for a type of late night television programming in some major cities where they are shown back-to-back until the early hours of the morning. The 1990s television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 used B-movies in its episodes, where they were shown in total (although often edited for time) while being subjected to sarcastic commentary by the program's stars. David A. Prior and Mario Bava are prominent figures in the B-movie industry, and Ed Wood has been credited by some as a master of the form (although the term better applicable to his work would be "Z-movies"). Roger Corman specialized in producing and/or directing the kind of films which typify B-movies of the 1950s.
Currently, certain production companies such as Troma specialize in producing large quantities of low quality B-movies. One of the classic producers of these films was the U.S. company American International Pictures (AIP), founded in 1956 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. Its films include works by Roger Corman, Vincent Price, Herman Cohen and the early efforts of then-unknown figures such as Francis Ford Coppola, Jennifer Aniston, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson. In the 1970s, such houses as Independent-International Pictures, Film Ventures International, Charles Band Productions, Cannon Films, New Line Cinema, Golan-Globus, and others leapt up to create a new generation of B-movies; most of these films died away as budgets soared in the early 1980s and even a comparatively low-budget, low-quality picture would cost millions of dollars given the public's expectations of color filmstock, original music scores, and contemporary special effects techniques. Outside of the so-called "adult" film marketplace, B-movie techniques and characteristics became largely confined to direct-to-video outfits. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-movie [Nov 2005]
Double feature
Theater owners decided that they could attract more customers if they offered two movies for the price of one. The high-budget main feature (the a-movie) ran first, and was followed by a lower-budget (and sometimes lower-quality) film (the b-movie). In between was just enough time for a single-reel short film and a newsreel. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_feature [Apr 2005]
Camp [...]
Camp - essentially, something that is so bad, that it's good, as cultural critic Susan Sontag defined camp aesthetics in her famous essay collection Against Interpretation in the 60's. This can be very well applied to B-Movies.From Bmovies.de
subtitled: movies of mystery and imagination
Visit them as http://www.bmovies.de
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Godzilla vs. the Thing (1964) - Ishirô Honda
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Godzilla (Gojira) is a giant, amphibious, dinosaur-like fictional creature first seen in the Japanese-produced 1954 tokusatsu (kaiju specifically) film Gojira produced by Toho Film Company Ltd.. In total, 28 films have been made by the Toho Film Company and a further two made unofficially (not related to the Toho Film company). The most notable unofficial movie is the 1998 film Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich. Despite being the highest grossing film of the year factoring in overseas profits, the film has been widely panned by cult followers of the Godzilla franchise, critics on both sides of the Pacific, and movie-goers in general and has since been dubbed GINO (Godzilla In Name Only). Ironically, the Americanized Godzilla featured in Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) was killed by the "true" Godzilla from a hit to the tail, and its radioactive breath. In this film, the American Godzilla appeared simply as "Zilla". Godzilla has three primary abilities: regeneration, amphibious mobility, and an atomic fire beam. Godzilla is also extremely durable and can resist almost all physical assaults. The atomic fire beam is Godzilla's trademark skill. Although much of Godzilla's significance as an anti-war symbol has been lost in the transition to pop culture, the nuclear breath remains as a visual vestige of the creature's early Cold War politics. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla [Nov 2005]
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Le Fatiche di Ercole (1958) - Pietro Francisci
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Christopher Lee in
LaFrusta e il corpo / The Whip and The Body (1963) - Mario Bava [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
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Le Frisson Des Vampires / Shiver of the Vampires (1970) - Jean Rollin [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
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The Big Book of B Movies, Or, How Low Was My Budget (1981) - Robin Cross
The Big Book of B Movies, Or, How Low Was My Budget (1981) - Robin Cross [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Psychotronic Video Guide to Film (1996) - Michael J. Weldon
The Psychotronic Video Guide to Film (1996) - Michael J. Weldon [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
As Michael Weldon says in the foreword to his Psychotronic Video Guide: "Unlike other movie guides, nothing is omitted because it's in bad taste." Bad taste barely begins to cover the 3000 resolutely grade-B movies (some with grade-A aspirations and budgets) and the odd TV show included here. Weldon, who invented the word "psychotronic" and compiled The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, includes horror (there are 15 movie titles beginning with the word "zombie"), science fiction, Blaxploitation, porn, spaghetti westerns and "anything that Roger Corman had anything to do with" in his purview. --Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc., amazon.com
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