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The 1960s and 1970s mark the golden age of the independent B movie, made outside 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 death of the Production Code in 1968 and the major success of the exploitation-style ''Easy Rider'' the following year fueled the trend through 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. ==Cheesecake and choppers: 1960s== Despite the many transformations in the industry, the average production cost of an American feature film was effectively stable over the course of the 1950s. In 1950, the figure had been $1 million; in 1961, it reached $2 million—after adjusting for inflation, the increase in real terms was less than 10 percent.〔Finler (2003), p. 42.〕 The traditional twin bill of B film preceding and balancing a subsequent-run A film had largely disappeared from American theaters. The dual genre-movie package, popularized by American International Pictures (AIP) the previous decade, was the new face of the double feature. In July 1960, the latest Joseph E. Levine sword-and-sandals import, ''Hercules Unchained'', opened at neighborhood theaters in New York. An 82-minute-long suspense film, ''Terror Is a Man'', produced by a Manila-based, American-Philippine company, ran as a "co-feature." It had a now familiar sort of exploitation gimmick: "The dénouement helpfully includes a 'warning bell' so the sensitive can 'close their eyes.'"〔Thompson (1960).〕 That year, Roger Corman took American International down a new road: "When they asked me to make two ten-day black-and-white horror films to play as a double feature, I convinced them instead to finance one horror film in color."〔Quoted in Di Franco (1979), p. 97.〕 A period piece in the vein of Britain's Hammer Films, ''House of Usher'' was a success, launching a series of Poe-based movies Corman would direct for AIP.〔See, e.g., Hogan (1997), pp. 212 et seq.〕 It also typifies the continuing ambiguities of B-picture classification. ''House of Usher'' was clearly an A film by the standards of both director and studio, with the longest shooting schedule and biggest budget Corman had ever enjoyed. But from a latter-day perspective, it is regarded as a B movie—that schedule was a mere fifteen days, the budget just $200,000, one-tenth the industry average.〔Per Corman, quoted in Di Franco (1979), p. 97.〕 Low-budget-movie aficionado John Reid reports once asking a neighborhood theater manager to define "B picture." The response: "Any movie that runs less than 80 minutes."〔Quoted in Reid (2005), p. 5.〕 ''House of Ushers running time is close, 85 minutes. And despite its high status in studio terms, it was not sent out into the world on its own, but screened in tandem with a crime melodrama asking the eternal question ''Why Must I Die?''〔Archer (1960).〕 With the loosening of industry censorship constraints, the 1960s and 1970s saw a major expansion in the production and commercial viability of a variety of B-movie subgenres that have come to be known collectively as ''exploitation films''. The term gained broader application as well: Exploitation-style promotional practices had become standard practice at the lower-budget end of the industry; with the majors having exited traditional B production, ''exploitation'' became a way to refer to the entire field of low-budget genre films. The combination of intensive and gimmick-laden publicity with movies featuring vulgar subject matter (as judged by mainstream standards) along with often outrageous imagery dated back decades—before such milestones as ''The Tingler'' (1959), before ''Women in Bondage'' (1943), before even ''The Terror of Tiny Town'' (1938). ''Exploitation'' had originally defined truly fringe productions with a dose of shocking content, made at the lowest depths of Poverty Row or entirely outside the Hollywood system. Many graphically depicted the wages of sin in the context of promoting prudent lifestyle choices, particularly "sexual hygiene." Audiences might see explicit footage of anything from a live birth to a ritual circumcision in such films.〔Schaefer (1999), pp. 187, 376.〕 They were not generally booked as part of movie theaters' regular schedules but rather presented as special events by traveling roadshow promoters (they might also appear as fodder for "grindhouses," which typically had no regular schedule at all). The most famous of those promoters, Kroger Babb, was in the vanguard of marketing low-budget, sensationalistic films with a "100% saturation campaign," inundating the target audience with ads in almost any imaginable medium.〔Schaefer (1999), p. 118.〕 In the era of the traditional double feature, no one would have characterized these exploitation films as "B movies." As production and exhibition practices changed, so did the terms of definition. In the early 1960s, exploitation movies in the original sense continued to appear: 1961's ''Damaged Goods'', a cautionary tale about a young lady whose boyfriend’s promiscuity leads to venereal disease, comes complete with enormous, grotesque closeups of VD's physical manifestations.〔(''Something Weird Traveling Roadshow Films'' ) review of DVD release with historical analysis by Bill Gibron, July 24, 2003; part of the ''DVD Verdict'' website. Retrieved 11/17/06.〕 At the same time, the concept of fringe exploitation was merging with a closely related and similarly venerable tradition: “nudie" films featuring nudist-camp footage or striptease artists like Bettie Page had simply been the softcore pornography of previous decades. As far back as 1933, ''This Nude World'', which promised an "Authentic Trip Through an American Nudist Colony!", was "Guaranteed the Most Educational Film Ever Produced!"〔Halperin (2006), p. 201.〕 In the late 1950s, as more of the old grindhouse theaters specifically devoted themselves to "adult" product, a few filmmakers began making nudies with some greater semblance of plots. Best known was Russ Meyer, who released his first successful narrative nudie, ''The Immoral Mr. Teas'', in 1959. Five years later, on a sub-$100,000 budget, Meyer came out with ''Lorna'', "a harder-edged film that combined sex with gritty realism and violence."〔 Meyer would build an underground reputation as a talented director with movies such as ''Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'' (1965) and ''Vixen!'' (1968), the sort of films, virtually ignored by the mainstream press, that had become known as sexploitation pictures.〔The earliest usage of "sexploitation" in a cinematic context so far located is in two ''Los Angeles Times'' articles from 1958: Howard Whitman, "Crisis in Morals" (May 26), and movie industry reporter Philip K. Scheuer, "Actor Clears Up Rip Torn Mystery" (June 3). In 1959, Scheuer may have been the first to use the phrase "sexploitation movie" (more precisely, "'sexploitation' movie") in his review "'Blue Denim' Tells of Youths' Plight" (August 20). That same year, the phrase "sexploitation film" appears in the government document ''Juvenile Delinquency: Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate'', pp. 7030, 7099. The term appears to have been in general circulation by 1964, judging from its repeated use that year in the periodical ''Film World''.〕 Another leading director in the genre was Joseph Sarno, who had his first commercial success in 1963 with ''Sin in the Suburbs''. Many of his subsequent films, including the artistically crafted ''Red Roses of Passion'' (1966) and ''Odd Triangle'' (1968), examined the hesitant transformation of sexual mores among the American middle class.〔Grimes (2010).〕 Films such as Meyer's and Sarno's—though not sexually explicit during this period—were largely relegated to the fringe circuit of "adult" theaters, while AIP teen movies with wink-wink titles like ''Beach Blanket Bingo'' (1965) and ''How to Stuff a Wild Bikini'' (1966), starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, played drive-ins and other relatively reputable venues.〔Such movies were usually covered by the major media with great disdain. The anonymous ''New York Times'' reviewer begins: "'HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI'—yep, that's the title that appeared yesterday on a circuit double bill. And anyone who ambles inside expecting the worst won't be disappointed. For here, finally and in color, is the answer to a moron's prayer." These films were often close to the last stop for faded stars; as the nameless reviewer put it, "This time let's pity Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney and good, old, now-departed Buster Keaton." "'Wild Bikini' Appearing in Neighborhoods," ''New York Times'', January 12, 1967 (available (online )).〕 Roger Corman's ''The Trip'' (1967) for American International, written by veteran AIP/Corman actor Jack Nicholson, never shows a fully bared, unpainted breast, but flirts with nudity throughout. The Meyer and Corman lines were drawing closer. One of the most influential films of the era, on B's and beyond, was Paramount's ''Psycho''. Its $8.5 million in earnings against a production cost of $800,000 made it the most profitable movie of 1960.〔Cook (2000), p. 222.〕 Its mainstream distribution without the Production Code seal of approval helped weaken U.S. film censorship. And, as William Paul notes, this move into the horror genre by respected director Alfred Hitchcock was made, "significantly, with the lowest-budgeted film of his American career and the least glamorous stars. () greatest initial impact...was on schlock horror movies (notably those from second-tier director William Castle), each of which tried to bill itself as scarier than ''Psycho''."〔Paul (1994), p. 33.〕 Castle's first film in the ''Psycho'' vein was ''Homicidal'' (1961), an early step in the development of the slasher subgenre that would flourish in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It seemed the less money available for a horror film, the better the chances of being grossed out by it: ''Blood Feast'' (1963), a movie about human dismemberment and culinary preparation made for approximately $24,000 by experienced nudie-maker Herschell Gordon Lewis, established a new, more immediately successful subgenre, the gore or splatter film. Lewis's business partner David F. Friedman drummed up publicity by distributing vomit bags to theatergoers ("You May Need This When You See ''Blood Feast''")—the sort of gimmick Castle had become renowned for in the 1950s—and arranging for an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida—the sort of problem exploitation films had long run up against, except Friedman had planned it.〔Rockoff (2002), pp. 32–33.〕 Lewis and Friedman's efforts typify the emerging sense of "exploitation": the progressive adoption of traditional exploitation and nudie elements into horror, into other classic B genres, and into the low-budget film industry as a whole. Despite ''Psychos impact and the growing popularity of horror, major Hollywood studios largely continued to disdain the genre, at least for their own production lines. Along with the output of "off-Hollywood" U.S. concerns like Lewis and Friedman's, distributors brought in more foreign movies to fill the demands of rural drive-ins, lower-end urban theaters, and outright grindhouses.〔Worland (2007), p. 90.〕 Hammer Films' success with ''The Curse of Frankenstein'' (1957) and its remake of ''Dracula'' (1958) had established the studio as an important supplier of horror movies to the American B market, a positioned it maintained throughout the 1960s. In 1961, American International released a movie clearly influenced by Hammer's characteristically bold visual style and moody pace—''Black Sunday'' was a dubbed horror import from Italy, where it had premiered the previous year as ''La maschera del demonio''. It became the highest grossing film in AIP history.〔Per commentary by Tim Lucas on Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, cited in Kehr (2007).〕 The movie's director was Mario Bava, who would launch the horror subgenre known as giallo with ''La ragazza che sapeva troppo'' (''The Girl Who Knew Too Much''; 1963) and ''Sei Donne per l’assassino'' (''Blood and Black Lace''; 1964). Many gialli, highly stylized films mixing sexploitation and ultraviolence, were picked up for U.S. B-market distribution and would prove influential on American horror films in turn, especially of the slasher type. While in the past, the term ''B movie'' had been applied, both in the United States and abroad, almost exclusively to low- and modest-budget American films, the growing Italian exploitation film industry now also became associated with the label (usually styled in Italy as ''B-movie''). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「B movies (The exploitation boom)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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