B-Movie
A B-movie is typically a low-budget film that emerged in the 1930s, primarily designed to accompany a feature film in a double feature. Originally created to satisfy audience demand during the Great Depression, these films often adhered to formulaic narratives, particularly within genres like westerns, science fiction, and horror. As the film industry evolved, B-movies became associated with less expensive productions that were completed quickly, usually within one to three weeks, and often ranged in cost from $10,000 to $200,000. The decline of the double feature in the 1950s saw B-movies gain a broader definition, encompassing any low-budget film. Notably, many B-movies became cultural touchstones, influencing later filmmakers and serving as a breeding ground for future stars and directors, including John Wayne and Roger Corman. The legacy of B-movies endures today through cult followings, television programming, and streaming services that showcase both classic and contemporary B-films, reflecting their continued relevance in popular culture.
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B-Movie
The term "B-movie" came into use in the film industry in the 1930s when a second movie was needed to complete double feature billings, and less expensive, often formulaic movies were produced to meet the need. After the double-feature phenomenon ended with the 1950s, the term was used more generally to apply to any low-budget film made within a relative short time. Although B-movies cover a wide range of genres, the term is especially associated with westerns and science fiction and horror films. The poor quality of some B-movies led to the misuse of "B-movie" as a description of any movie with a trite plot or cliché-ridden dialogue. The National Society of Film Critics in their 2008 tribute to B-movies, stipulated a moderate budget, an unorthodox aesthetic, and a tweaking of genre as the criteria for the movies they included on a list that ranged over more than seven decades.
Brief History
The Great Depression struck the movie industry a heavy blow. Movie houses from the most humble to the most luxurious closed, and those that remained open searched for ways of attracting moviegoers. One solution was offering two movies for the price of one, and thus the double feature was born. DePaul University communications professor Blair Davis notes that 85 percent of American movie theaters were screening double features by 1936. Hollywood studios were confronted with the problem of satisfying the increased demand for movies. Movies with first-rate scripts and top stars were expensive and time-consuming. The solution was to film shorter, less expensive movies that relied on a formula. Westerns, detective stories, and horror films were made for a fraction of the cost of an A-movie. According to Davis, the cost of the low-budget movie, usually completed in one to three weeks, ran from $10,000 to $200,000. These B-movies filled the second slot on the double bill.
Major studios such as MGM and Paramount made B-movies in their own facilities, but many more were produced by smaller, independent companies. Because the large studios also owned blocks of theaters, they were assured distribution for their B-movies, which proved surprisingly lucrative. Series proved particularly popular, and each studio had its successes. MGM counted the Tarzan, Dr. Kildare, and Andy Hardy series among its hits. Fox achieved its greatest success with the Charlie Chan series of twenty-seven movies. Universal made some of the most famous horror movies of the era and also produced the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers science fiction serials and the Sherlock Holmes series. The most prolific series may have been Paramount’s Hopalong Cassidy westerns, which totaled forty-one films.
The smaller, independent companies, known for their ability to create scripts and film entire movies quickly, often in a matter of days, and cheaply, typically for under $25,000, were collectively labeled Poverty Row Studios. Three companies, Producers Releasing Company (PRC), Monogram, and Republic, dominated the independents. PRC released mostly westerns, mysteries, and horror films. Monogram found success with westerns, melodramas, and jungle films and with series that had been dropped by major studios. Republic was home to two enormously popular western stars, the singing cowboys, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.
In 1938, the US government filed an antitrust suit against seven studios. When the case finally reached the Supreme Court in February 1948, the ruling came quickly. On May 3, 1948, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in US v. Paramount Pictures, et al., requiring the big studios to end block booking and to dispossess themselves of the theater chains they owned. The decision effectively dismantled the studio system. One change was a new focus by the major film studios on high-budgeted A-films.
At the same time, the number of drive-in theaters was substantially increasing, providing B-movies made by smaller studios with a new venue. Major studios viewed television as competition, but independent producers of B-movies saw the new medium as an opportunity. As early as the end of 1950, several Poverty Row studios had made thousands of their movies available to television. Blair Davis cites a Variety report that alludes to B-movie directors tailoring films for future television consumption by cutting running times to fifty-four minutes. The shorter running times allowed for a six-minute frame for commercials to be added. By the mid-1950s, major studios were also selling films, mostly older B-movies, to television.
B-Movies Today
The television market for B-movies dried up as television series were developed in the same genres in which B-moviemakers had specialized. However, older theaters continued to screen B-movies for another two decades. As Republic and other independents closed or merged with other companies, American International Pictures (AIP) emerged as a primary producer of B-movies. AIP skillfully targeted a teenage audience with the much-imitated beach party movies of the 1960s. Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), the last of the series to star former Disney Mouseketeer Annette Funicello and pre-Beatles pop star Frankie Avalon, is generally considered the best of these films, which featured surf, music, and a plot skimpier than the bikinis worn by the actresses. AIP later repeated its success with biker films, beginning with Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels (1966).
It was with the horror genre that AIP achieved its most enduring influence, perhaps most famously with the films of Roger Corman, who earned a reputation for making movies quickly, cheaply, and lucratively. Corman left AIP in 1969 and switched from director to producer with New World Pictures, the company he formed. The 1970s brought a string of exploitation films from Corman, including Boxcar Bertha (1974), directed by a young Martin Scorsese, and Grand Theft Auto (1977), the first film directed by an even younger Ron Howard. Corman was responsible for four hundred films over seven decades, continuing with the B-movies that made him famous into the era of straight-to-DVD and made-for-cable films. A legend in the industry, he helped train, in addition to Scorsese and Howard, directors such as Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, and Jonathan Demme.
Corman’s contribution reflects the long-lasting influence of the B-movie itself. From their beginning, B-movies served as a school for a new generation of actors and other industry professionals. John Wayne starred in fifty B-movies, mostly westerns and other serials, before becoming a major star. Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas watched science fiction B-movies as boys and drew inspiration from these memories for their own filmmaking. Some scholars link the work of independent filmmakers such as John Cassavetes with the traditions of the B-movie. Meanwhile, the B-movie continues to flourish in the twenty-first century through followings for older, cult films such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and through B-movies for television such as the Corman-produced Sharktopus (2010) and its sequels on the SyFy Channel. Like SyFy, other networks have developed a niche for B-movies, such as holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel. Streaming services, too, have capitalized on such productions. For example, Netflix has an entire subgenre called "B Horror Films."
Bibliography
Davis, Blair. The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema. Rutgers UP, 2012.
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Dixon, Wheeler W. "Flash Gordon and the 1930s and ’40s Science Fiction Serial." Cinema at the Margins. Anthem, 2013, pp. 19–30.
Edwards, Kyle Dawson. "'Monogram Means Business': B-Film Marketing and Series Filmmaking at Monogram Pictures." Film History: An International Journal, vol. 23, no. 4, 2011, pp. 386-400. Project MUSE, dx.doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.23.4.386. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
Falkner, Marshall. “Crash-Course on Netflix B-Movies.” Utah Daily Chronicle, 19 Feb. 2018, dailyutahchronicle.com/2018/02/19/crash-course-netflix-b-movies/. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.
Frick, Caroline. "Don't Fence Me In: Contracts, Copyright, and the Singing Cowboys." Journal of Popular Film & Television, vol. 40, no. 4, 2012, pp. 192–201. doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2011.636396. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
Nashawaty, Chris. Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses: Roger Corman: King of the B Movie. Abrams, 2013.
Phillips, David. “Roger Corman: The King of the B Movie.” Awards Daily, 8 June 2024, www.awardsdaily.com/2024/05/roger-corman-the-king-of-the-b-movie/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2024.
Rhodes, Gray, ed. The Films of Joseph H. Lewis. Wayne UP, 2012.
Sterritt, David, and John C. Anderson, eds. The B List: The National Society of Film Critics on the Low-Budget Beauties, Genre-Bending Mavericks, and Cult Classics We Love. Da Capo, 2008.
Taves, Brian. "The B Film" Hollywood’s Other Half." Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939. Ed. Tino Balio. Scribner, 1993. 313–350.