Why we’ve all got what makes a modern exploitation movie wrong
Despite being outdated terms for over half a century, there’s an argument to be made that grindhouse movies, exploitation films and B-movies in general are more of an industry now than they’ve ever been.
Terrifier 3 made nearly $100 million at the box office off a budget of $2 million in 2023. While the cost of making it might not sound like much, it was eight times what its predecessor was made for, showing grassroots films can still have a cultural imprint. The box office of the Terrifier franchise is much more lucrative than several winners of the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’, while also remaining in touch with the grimy horror underworld.
Or are they? Sure, based on the content alone, it’s difficult not to call the Terrifier movies exploitation movies. These are pictures where the lucky victims get decapitated, bisected and castrated. The unlucky ones get scalped, and salt is poured onto the open wound. They’re films that fly right in the face of good taste. Although, for me personally, they quickly become little more than an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon that stretches on for what feels like several boring weeks.
The Terrifier films aren’t alone here. There are several other movies vying for its gore-soaked crown, some of them are even good, like the arthouse slasher curio In A Violent Nature. Those aren’t the ones that get the most column inches these days, though. That would go to the legions of pictures taking advantage of outdated copyright laws to make so-called dark reimaginings of public domain characters. Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey is the cretinous summit of this braindead mountain, but that’s joined by Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare and Bambi: The Reckoning.
When you’ve seen one of these slogs, you’ve seen them all, so you’ve got to wonder one simple question. Are these actual exploitation films or not?
Just what makes an exploitation film in the 21st century?!
In a way, it depends on your definition of an exploitation film. If you define one as a “lowest common denominator effort thrown out into the world for as little effort as possible to swindle a few bucks from some rubes who want to see some tits and gore”, they are exactly that. I’m also not being quite as cutting as I sound like there, that very much was the way that a number of the leading lights of the whole genre saw their pictures.
Roger Corman was famously not trying to make great art with his films, all he wanted to do was maintain a career as a filmmaker. If they were good, that was just a bonus. Bruno Mattei had a similar attitude. The man behind such masterworks as Rats: Night of Terror, Women’s Prison Massacre and Terminator II (No, not that one), had no intention of making anything passable, let alone good. A couple of flicks a year that had all the thrills his audience asked for was all that was necessary.
Yet, a real exploitation flick doesn’t make a $100 million dollars. One could argue that it doesn’t get a theatrical release or have a studio behind it. It certainly doesn’t have a scene of people all making similar films to them because real exploitation films are subversive and genuinely shocking, even to the people who claim to love them. Take Driller Killer, for example, which singlehandedly created the video nasty in the UK because even horror fans thought it was fucked up.
I’m not even talking about quality here. In fact the idea of making a “good” or even “palatable” exploitation film that gives people exactly what they want goes against the very idea of the genre. A real exploitation film should have people asking whether this is ok to make and watch the way people asked the same thing about Cannibal Holocaust back in 1980. The idea of cosying up in a multiplex with an Art the Clown popcorn bucket and watching Terrifier 4 with a packed-out screen goes against the very point of exploitation cinema.
They’re not meant to be fun. They’re barely meant to be films. They’re meant to be something you take a risk by watching. No fucker’s taking a risk by watching Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble.