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| Nancy |
 Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:18 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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lady wakasa wrote: How about Motel Hell? Not sure what it's exploiting;
Meat? " It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent fritters." |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:22 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Norman, OK
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Marc wrote: PSYCHO had an exploitive promotional campaign: NO ONE ADMITTED AFTER THE START OF THE FILM. William Castle made a career out of similar gimmicks. Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER also had an exploitive element: 3D. Many exploitation films had a gimmick.
I remember the ones with the ads that stated that they had taken out an insurance policy on you that would pay your family if you died of fright while watching the film. How obliging of them. |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
Isaacism, 2009 |
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| Kate |
| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:07 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Pacific Northwest
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Nancy wrote: lady wakasa wrote: How about Motel Hell? Not sure what it's exploiting;
Meat? " It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent fritters."
Motel Hell really gave me the creeps, really. I know, makes me a weeney, but yikes. That and Last House on the Left, both made me feel sick to my stomach. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:08 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| I'm a complete weeny, I can't watch those kind of movies. No matter how many times I tell myself they're only movies, I still allow them to creep me the fuck out. |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| tirebiter |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:19 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: not far away
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Great discussion!
So what is exploitation film? All opinions expressed are part of the puzzle, and I don't have some magic answer. To me (and this is just me speaking) exploitation film is always low-budget, sells sensation in its trailers and posters, and exploits the audiences interest in the taboo, the vulgar, and the passing fad. It also usually targets a niche demographic (though that can be fairly broad): Corman aiming at teenagers and drive-in audiences, Meyer aiming at the 60s raincoat crowd, HGLewis aiming at gorehounds, Kroger Babb aiming at rural road-show yokels who want to see the LIVE BIRTH OF A BABY! Many of these movies fairly scream cheap but deliver the goods that we viewers expect: "forbidden" content and baaad behavior. The exploiters know their audience. "Kitsch" may be vulgarity that doesn't KNOW it's vulgar, but exploitation film-makers know exactly who they're targeting.
Soft-core director Jim "Ladies, Please Remove Your Shirts" Winorski once said that "Naked boobs are the cheapest special effect." Low-budget means getting people into the seats without fancy production values or big casts, so cagy promoters, who knew kids needed to spend their money on money something, gave them cheap rock'n'roll, cheap monsters, cheap beaches, cheap motorcycles and drag-racers, cheap cautionary tales about drugs/sex... we're talking CHEAP!
WasPsycho an exploitation film? I'd say yeah: Hitchcock shot it real cheap with his TV crew in B&W and marketed it in a gimmicky way: as Marc, said, "No one will be admitted to the theatre after the first 15 minutes!" This was completely unheard of in those days when audiences wandered in and out at any time. (BTW, Psycho inspired one of the great rip-offs of all time from the King of gimmick cinema, William Castle: HOMICIDAL! See it! Tonight!)
What is and isn't exploitation? I think I know, but look forward to hearing others' thoughts. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:59 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Quote: The phrase "exploitation film" reeks of a caste system, promilgated by critics and studios. Some try, in Marc's fashion, to claim it and reverse its emphasis in the punk fashion, and it becomes an emblem of anti-social cool. It's a phrase we like to attach to the low-budget, the sleazy, the films that try to sell themselves by their promises of dirty thrills of sex and violence.
But personally, I prefer to use the phrase in its original meaning, as an insult, describing films where what they're being sold as is at odds with their supposed worth and claimed intention; but the original intention of the phrase, a kind of budgetary apartheit, is bullshit; a lot exploitation films these days are big budget, from the manipulative war porn of The Patriot and Pearl Harbor, to almost all contemporary action flicks, to the tawdry arcs of real-life telemovies like Lethal Lolita and Murder in New Hampshire.
rod, you are way too young to be this humorless. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:15 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Quote: a lot exploitation films these days are big budget, from the manipulative war porn of The Patriot and Pearl Harbor, to almost all contemporary action flicks, to the tawdry arcs of real-life telemovies like Lethal Lolita and Murder in New Hampshire.
so in Rod's world exploitation really has no meaning other than movies that are made to make money. Bullshit. Exploitation flicks are made on the cheap with "shocking" subject matter that are intended to make a quick buck. Bay's PEARL HARBOR is not an explitation film. To think otherwise is to really miss the boat on the cheezy thrills of low-budget shock cinema. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:21 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| tirebiter |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:25 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: not far away
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Just looked up Homicidal on IMDb and discovered that lead actress Jean Arless later married Hal Ashby and that her life experiences were the basis of Ashby's Shampoo!
Believe it... or not! Tho I'm not one to promulgate fibs.... |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:39 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Quote: Some try, in Marc's fashion, to claim it and reverse its emphasis in the punk fashion
there is a solid reason that exploitation films and punk rock have a connection. They are products of the D.I.Y. (do it yourself) movement. Punk music and exploitation films initially existed outside of the mainstream film and music production system. Punk bands discovered they could make records on their own without the support or approval of major record labels.
Exploitation film makers realized that they didn't need Hollywood to make their movies. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:46 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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and I gotta tell you Rod, reading your novel in the writer's forum tells me you wouldn't know punk rock if it bit you in the scrotum sack. Your punk hooker is
the antithesis of punk, she's the misogynistic fantasy of a young man who has almost zero experience of women. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:55 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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Location: Lithgow, Australia
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| And I see you're an absolutely full of shit bastard who is incapable of keeping his word, you rotten, sleazy, self-important, phony rich boy cunt whose teeth I would shove so far down his throat you'd have to chew with your asshole. |
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:59 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Quote: And I see you're an absolutely full of shit bastard who is incapable of keeping his word, you rotten, sleazy, self-important, phony rich boy cunt whose teeth I would shove so far down his throat you'd have to chew with your asshole.
now you're talkin'! Punk rock is alive and well in the backwoods of Australia. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:01 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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Location: Lithgow, Australia
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| Thank you. |
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:03 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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Quote: phony rich boy cunt
I left home when I was 16 years old.
Made my modest success with vision and hard work. Hope you can do the same. |
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