The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- S is for Scream Queens

S

is for Scream Queens

It’s said that the term “Scream Queen” was coined in reference to Jamie Lee Curtis, whose run of 70s-80s horror movies (Halloween, Prom Night, The Fog, Terror Train, Road Games, and Halloween II) more then earned her the nickname. Since then, though, the term has been co-opted to apply to any attractive actress who has spent a significant portion of her career running away from masked maniacs baring lethally sharp instruments of bloody impalement.

The one difference between the original SC and her future descendents is that Curtis famously made her way through horror movie stardom without once giving up the goods (she saved that for her big time Hollywood debut, Trading Places), while a modern SC generally spends more time naked than otherwise. In fact, their open attitude regarding their bodies is generally responsible for the ubiquity that will eventually earn them SC status.

Take for example, Michelle Bauer. Never a particularly talented or convincing actress, she still managed to work a lot throughout the late 80s and up to the mid-90s (and even now makes the occasionally appearance here and there), largely because she was a trooper who low budget filmmakers understood was a guaranteed commodity. Casting her meant not having to worry about the sudden cold feet that sometimes affected less experienced actresses just before the film was about to roll on the nude scene for which they were specifically hired. Michelle would drop her top anywhere, anytime, for as long as you wanted and she looked great doing it. So what if she wasn’t that great at delivering her lines?

Throughout the 21^st century the role of the SC has declined significantly from its 90s peak. By the turn of the century many SCs had either aged out of the roles previously available to them or had ended their careers prematurely by refusing to do the only thing people previously hired them to do (see Jewel Shepard for the best example of this).

But the biggest factor in their fall from prominence is the diminished presence of low-budget independent genre films in popular culture. A present day SC like Tiffany Shepis, for example, may have almost 100 credits to her name, but even the most dedicated genre fan is unlikely to get the chance to see more than a handful of them. This stands in contrast to an 80/90s equivalent SC such as Linnea Quigley, whose most obscure films could still be found in the majority of video stores of the period. It was easy to be a SC fan back then. It takes a lot of work to admire them now.

Still it is worth the effort.

S

is for Scream Queens

and

Scream Queens

are

Sensational

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- R is for Roger Corman

R

is for Roger Corman

We'll keep this one simple.

If you don't know who Roger Corman is,

You're

on

the

wrong

fucking

blog.

R

is for Roger Corman

and

Roger Corman

is

God

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- Q is for Q

Q

is for Q

 

Since he first burst upon the scene, Q has had his detractors. They’ve accused him of being derivative (at best) and a plagiarist (at worst). They’ve made fun of his absurd acting ambitions and gleefully produced handwritten notes that suggested one of Hollywood’s most respected writers is actually illiterate.

All of this fair and probably true. It is also completely irrelevant.

Like a master DJ who is able to sample a beat or melody from someone else’s song and turn it into something exciting, thrilling and new, Q eagerly ripped off his vast array of influences and created works that transcended their unoriginal origins and became something entirely unique and unmistakably his own. For this alone he must be ranked amongst the best of the best, but that’s not the reason he made this particular list.

No, this honour is due to one glorious fact: Every single B-Movie fanboy has dreamed of turning their obsessions into art, cataloguing vast archives of character and plot for the sole purpose of someday creating their own piece of genius. Virtually none of us will ever see these dreamplays inside our minds come to life, but we are able to take solace in the fact that one of us did. Q succeeded where 99.999% of us failed, and the only possible reason anyone could resent him for this is a lack of generosity in their heart.

Jealousy is an ugly thing. Especially when it only makes you look silly and stupid.

Q

is for Q

and

Q

is for

Quentin

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- P is for Poster

P

is for Poster

I suppose it is possible to be a fan of B-Movies and care not one whit about how they were marketed, but I truly do not understand how. For me, B-Movie advertising is such an essential part of what I love about the field that if I actually had to choose between it and the films themselves, I would have to think about it.

And then I’d pick the marketing.

If you’ve searched around Vanity Fear, you’ve probably come across my bio, in which I describe how my obsessions came to be. The truth is that I became a fan of B-Movies as an idea long before I’d seen enough of them to appreciate them on their own merits. And the reason for this is because of how ably producers and distributors were able to excite my imagination with their advertising.

In a world where the product was so often lacking, a good poster often meant the difference between success and failure. To my mind the best of their kind aren’t actually selling a movie, but a dream. The fact that the films almost never live up to them is irrelevant, as the art of the poster is just as satisfying, if only for inspiring the movie you got to see play in your own imagination.

When I was a kid, video stores were my favourite places in the world. There were literally dream emporiums, filled with shelf after shelf of video covers specifically designed to demand my attention. Today I relive that sensation by visiting a site like Wrong Side of the Art, and collecting posters myself. At this point my collection far outnumbers my ability to display it, but I am helpless to the pursuit. The movies can never be anything but what they actually are, but the posters will always be whatever we want them to be.

P

is for Poster

and

Poster

is

Perfection

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- O is for Out of Print

O

is for Out of Print

There was a time where being a serious movie buff required true dedication and hard work. There were no such things as VCRs or Laserdiscs or DVDs or Blu-rays or Netflix streaming or iTunes or YouTube or Bittorrent. If there was a movie you always wanted to see, you had to hope that someday a local revival house or TV station decided to show it. Problem was that the first option tended to focus more on well-respected critically acclaimed junk and the second guaranteed you’d see an edited version with all of the good stuff cut out of it.

Thankfully, those days are long past, but not all is golden in movie buff land. For all of our options, we’ve grown accustomed to certain levels of presentational quality and access. We want to watch what we want to watch now and we want it to look better than it did when it was actually released.

And the world simply doesn’t work like that.

Out of Print means being denied. It means wanting. It means desire.

It also means having a reason to go on. In a land of plenty where all is available purely by whim, there is no joy of anticipation or satisfaction of achievement. Searching for the Out of Print keeps your love of movies alive. It forces you to appreciate films that you might have once dismissed out of hand as terrible. It make you think of the ways the world has changed so that what was once considered a marketable product, is now an unviable property, unworthy of release.

Out of Print makes the IMDb the most fascinating website in the world, allowing you to discover previously unheard of projects whose worth you can only estimate until you finally get the chance to see them for yourself.

Perhaps someday soon Out of Print will cease to be and we will all have access to every single thing ever recorded by a camera. It’ll be cool at first, but soon the novelty will fade, taking our passion along with it. It’s just so much easier to love that which you cannot have.

O

is for Out of Print

and

Out of Print

is

Our Blessing and Burden

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- N is for Nudity

N

is for Nudity

 

There are some who tell us that the purpose of art is to hold a mirror to society and expose us to the truths we cannot see in the workaday world. They are wrong. Art is about naked ladies. Anyone with a working brain can tell you that.

Show me a time and place and I’ll show you a bunch of artists depicting the glory of the unclad bod. From the Venus of Willendorf to Marilyn Monroe’s famous calendar, the truly wise have always known where true art lies.

People forget that pre-Hayes Code it was possible to spot nude bodies in mainstream films like Ecstasy and Tarzan and His Mate, but once studio self-censorship took over it was up to the independents to give audiences the art they craved.

How badly did people want to see the naked parts of a lady? Bad enough to willingly pay admission to see Mom & Dad, a film that showed a woman’s vagina in close-up detail—all you had to do was ignore the baby coming out of it, which many members of the all-male audience (the sexes were strictly segregated during screenings) were only too happy to do.

Fortunately for pervs art aficionados everywhere a new breed of “educational” films arrived in the form of the “nudie cutie”, which exploited the popularity of naturalist colonies for the enjoyment of all. Eventually filmmakers tired of the fake documentary format and decided to add comedic plots to their collections of artfully composed T&A. Most prominent of these innovators was former battlefield photographer Russ Meyer, whose The Immoral Mr. Teas and Eve and the Handyman proved to be the true classics of the genre.

When the Hayes Office reluctantly allowed a bare breast to appear in Sidney Lumet’s 1964 drama The Pawnbroker, it was only a matter of time before the floodgates opened and the art began to freely flow. By the end of the decade, nudity was a regular part of the mainstream film going experience. In the seventies it almost became de rigueur.

Never ones to be left behind, low budget B-Movie filmmakers rededicated their efforts in providing audiences with the art they craved. Meyer flourished and rose to the level of offbeat auteur with such efforts as Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and SuperVixens. Entire subgenres arose based on the promise of female flesh, including those devoted to the adventures of cheerleaders, nurses, teachers and female prisoners.

In an age where the image of a naked lady is only ever a single mouse click away, Nudity has never gone out of style. Whole websites exist only to document the history of unclad cinematic flesh and softcore “art” is frequently the only lucrative market available to the filmmakers who first made their names in the 80s and 90s B-Movie marketplace.

It just goes to show you that our need for art is constant and eternal and if there is a potential point of over-saturation, we’re far, far away from reaching it.

N

is for Nudity

and

Nudity

Is

Nuthin’ But Art

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- M is for Music

M

is for Music 

Yes, I know, M is for Monster. It doesn’t get more obvious than that, but Vanity Fear isn’t about the obvious. We’re all about the mofoin’ oblique bitches!

Sorry.

As important as Monsters are to B-Movies, I would argue that Music is just as important. Not only can Music turn a good B-Movie into a GREAT B-Movie (see my go-to-favourite example Halloween), but in many cases great B-Movies ONLY EXIST because of the Music they contained.

Y’see kids, there once was a time when people bought things called records. Records were collections of songs assembled together with the intention that they be listened to in the same order, each and every time! In most cases, records featured the work of ust one band or artist, which could often be boring and repetitive. It didn’t take long for smart folks to figure out that money could be made assembling records made out of random songs by different artists, but such are the rational, gotta-have-a-reason ways of this world, these folks had to think of ways to justify these random assemblages beyond the fact that they made shitloads of money.

So they made movies out of them!

Sure, they’d tell folks that they made the movies first and the records just sorta happened by accident, but we’re all grown ups.

We know the truth.

Ever seen a terrible B-Movie where the song licensing obviously cost more than the actual production (The Last American Virgin)? Ever seen a terrible B-Movie based on a dance craze that was forgotten before its first screening ended (Thank God It’s Friday)? Ever seen the greatest movie ever made that some assholes think is stupid because they’re retarded morons (The Apple)? Then you know what I’m talking about.

In some cases having too awesome a soundtrack could prove to be a double-edged sword. It is widely speculated that the reason Patrick Swayze’s “lost” classic Skatetown U.S.A. has never been officially released in ANY home video format is due to the fact that the cost to relicense songs by Earth, Wind & Fire, The Rolling Stones and The Jacksons simply makes it more expensive than the investment is worht. Of course this could be total bullshit (it’s not like other movies haven’t simply replaced expensive songs with cheaper alternatives for home video releases), but it feels true and Vanity Fear is all about the feeling, not the reality.

M

is for Music

and

Music

means

Monsters can suck it

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- L is for Lost Worlds

L

is for Lost Worlds

There are two kinds of Lost Worlds when it comes to B-Movies. There are the far-off fantasy lands whose existences have been kept secret by their remote inaccessibility, such as those found in King Kong, The Lost Continent, Valley of the Gwangi, and pretty much every movie Doug McClure made in the 70s. And then there are the darker, more disturbing worlds that have risen following the loss of civilization as we know it. In Escape from New York, Mad Max, and their many, many low budget Italian duplicates, the Lost World is the one we’re lucky to have now.

Interestingly, neither seem like places anyone would want to live in. Both are inevitably treacherous and barbaric places where the strong feed on the weak. In the fantasy worlds of At the Earth’s Core and The People That Time Forgot, a wrong turn could lead to your being eaten by a dinosaur. In 1990: Bronx Warriors, Steel Dawn or Warriors of the Lost World you had to worry about mutants. In both you could easily end up enslaved by your fellow man.

I’ve always felt that beyond mere escapism the appeal of the Lost World film comes from the revelation that despite all of our apparent problems, things could be so much worse. Your job may suck and people may be ruder and more inconsiderate than you would prefer, but at least you don’t have to kill someone for a drink of water or worry about becoming a Tyrannosaurus’ latest meal. It also helps that these films tend to have women like Caroline Munro and Dana Gillespie in them, which admittedly downplays the potential misery, but still makes them heckuva lot of fun to watch.

L

is for Lost Worlds

and

Lost Worlds

are

Lots of Fun

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- K is for Kicking

K

is for Kicking

Kung Fu, Karate, Thai Kick-Boxing, Ninjitsu, Jeet Kune Do, Gymkata.

Experts (that is to say people who proudly display their collections of throwing stars and nunchucks) could easily spend hours discussing the many differences that make each of the many different fighting styles unique, but we all know this is mere wankery. In each case it’s all about kicking, even those that don’t actually allow you to use your legs, because the kicking I’m referring to is ass-kicking and ass-kicking is easily the most popular B-Movie genre of all time.

An encyclopedia’s worth of books could be written on the different subgenres alone. You’ve got martial arts movies, rape/revenge movies, vigilante movies, angry Vietnam vet movies, gang movies, female gang movies, biker movies, big tough Southern sheriff movies, prison movies, boxing movies, incorruptible cop movies, corrupt cop movies, kickboxing movies, secret tournament movies, redneck movies, big city folks forced to fight redneck movies, I could go one forever.

Fact is most people will go through their entire life without kicking any ass, or worse they’ll only know what it’s like to get their ass kicked. Ass­-kicking movies give them the catharsis they need to get through the day, knowing that out there somewhere the people who truly need their asses kicked might actually get their asses kicked as soon as they mess with the wrong motherfucker.

Every B-Movie fan has their favourite ­ass-kicking subgenre. Mine is the  rape/revenge movie, as exemplified by Day of the Woman (both the original and remake), Kill Bill 1&2, Ms. 45, Lipstick, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, and Savage Streets. For reasons I make clear in this recent Bookgasm review, I’ve always identified more with female protagonists than their male counterparts and thus always feel more satisfaction watching a hot chick some righteous ass.

What’s your favourite ass-kicking movie genre?

K

is for Kicking

and

Kicking

is

Kool

The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- J is for Japanese

J

is for Japanese

There’s so much to talk about when it comes to Japanese B-Movie cinema. You’ve got your samurai films (which are essentially westerns where the guys carry swords instead of six shooters), bizarre supernatural horror tales, their infamous “pink” softcore porn films, bloody gangster films, as well as their unique brand of adult-themed animation, but the truth is that we here at Vanity Fear (and by “we”, we, of course, mean me, but I’m trying to keep it all professional and shit) only really care about one kind of Japanese B-Movie:

BIG RUBBER MONSTER WRECKS SHIT!

Serious movie buffs will tell you all about how the original B&W Gojira was a serious metaphor for Hiroshima and how the never-ending flood of sequels bastardized the concept and turned it into a laughably inane children’s series.

This is why serious movie buffs are assholes.

As works of pure unfettered juvenile imagination the Godzilla series (along with such adored imitators as the giant nuclear turtle Gamera) are pretty much unmatched in the annals of world cinema. Few are good, most are terrible, but taken together they’re nothing short of brilliant. From such pretentious beginnings true B-Movie Bullsh*t bloomed, resulting in the creation of that astonishing 1962 culmination of Japanese and American culture—Kingu Kongu tai Gojira.

Though there’s no truth to the rumor that separate endings were filmed in order to allow both combatants to win in their home countries (it actually ends in a much more disappointing tie), it is true that in the sequel Kingu Kongu no gyakushû our giant ape-y hero fights a robot version of himself.

Awesome doesn’t get more awesome than that.

J

is for Japanese

and

Japanese

is

Just Insane