Exploitable Elements

The exploitation film is something of greatness. It is gritty, sleazy, bloody, nudie, happy, druggy, funny, action packed, and low budget. The many genres are all you need to describe an exploitation flick: blaxploitation, sexploitation, dwarfsploitation, carsploitation, drugsploitation, nazisploitation, cannibals, nunsploitation, nudies, kung fu, zombies, revenge films, spaghetti westerns, women in prison films and many more. Wikipedia defines an exploitation film as: "a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter." Or there is one major theme the film is based upon, like 60's and 70's black culture, an evil dwarf, a girl who gets revenge on all the men that have horribly screwed her over her entire life (sometimes literally). These "B movies" were known for being low budget, cheesy and sleazy. From what I have seen which is not much these movies can be intense, cool, the fight scenes can be incredible (kung fu), and some of the funniest films I have ever scene. Don't get me wrong a good chunk of exploitation flicks were definitely cheesy and sleazy. The gore was unlike hollywood's rated R requirements and the sex didn't hold back as much as mainstream movies. That is what made these movies so cool, they held nothing back. They did what they wanted and that made them classics.

Another aspect of the exploitation film was the theaters they were played in. The B movie was usually seen at night, usually after midnight, and played in grindhouse theaters. These theaters were not your mom and dad's theaters. They probably played pornography as well as any genre from the exploitation film. The reason for the name "grindhouse" is because the theaters were known to play the films one after another or they kept grinding them out. Another reason for the name is because the theaters had previously been burlesque theaters where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease use to be on the bill. Exploitation films were also played in drive in movie theatres, mainly because the business was declining and the theater owners needed something that would attract customers so they started playing exploitation films.

Nowadays these theaters are all but vanished and probably only exist in the larger cities like New York, Chicago and LA. However, since the invention of DVD's there is a huge surge in the production of these films on DVD. Some even are special edition with box sets and things like that. So even though the theaters are gone we can still get the exploitation experience right in our own homes.