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lshap
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:11 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 4246 Location: Montreal
Can your MIND stand the PSYCHOTRONIC SHOCK of… EXPLOITATION FILM???

THRILL to film-making so cheesy that suspension of disbelief becomes an unholy act of faith!! GASP as untamed women bare their tawdry souls—and luscious bodies-- in an uncontrollable Orgy of Lust!!! SCREAM as souped-up werewolf hot-rods from Hell itself thunder down a kill-crazed quarter-mile of UNCHAINED SPEED never before seen on any screen before!!! WONDER at the Seven Mighty Sword-wielding Warriors whose brawny chests, bulging biceps, and dubbed battle-cries are Rome’s only protection from 10,000 blood-maddened Carthaginians bent on vengeance in the name of the wicked goddess ISHTAR, Queen of an army of buxom Rock’n’Roll Surf-Kooky Teen-aged Amazons!

Plus exciting co-feature!

Ahem. This is a forum discussing “exploitation film.” The quotation marks are there to let you know that it’s a fairly flexible concept, encompassing SENSATIONAL movies of all sorts (mostly low-budget sorts, though only this week a hack-em-up gorefest leads the box-office with $20 million taken in over the last three days): Mondo! Blaxploitation! Horror! SF! Cannibal! Cheerleader! Roller-Boogie! Hillbilly! (Non-porno) Sex! Sword-and-Sandal! Spaghetti! Giallo! Grindhouse! And the Live Birth of a BABY! ONSCREEN, BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES!! Is it just nostalgia or does it still exist?? Is it art or just crapola?? Do you have to be 16 to enter?? Do you need to wear special glasses?? Find out for yourself: See EXexPLOIploiTAtaTIONtion FFFIIIIIIILLLLMMMMMMMMMM!!!!! (Rated R)


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Syd
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:19 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Will I have to read the Exploitation forum in Nosebleed?

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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament
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bocce
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 3:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 2428
personally, i never pass up an oppotunity to do a 60's beach movie...

while i wouldn't have been caught dead at one when in original release, they do so capture the mindless vivacity of a generation teetering on the edge of the socio/political abyss of radical consciousness which would later engulf them.

the carryover guilelessness from the suburban late 50's epitomised by frankie and annette's tentative probes at maturity delivered via sexual innuendo find their adult counterparts in rock and doris' quasi sophisticated bedroom comedies.

popular films are indeed a chronicle of popular taste and, thus, conventional mores. they are a window back at a time perhaps not universally shared but common enough to be relatively definitive.

i can admit to once and a while looking back with some nostalgia on a period where every thought or decision did not carry some existential weight or immediate import.

life since HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI has taken on tones i could easily have lived without...
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Marc
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 3:22 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 8424
THIS IS GONNA BE FUN.
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tirebiter
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 3:45 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4011 Location: not far away
Well, I hope so. I love exploitation film-- gimmicks, fads, sensation, vulgarity, mercenary and deceptive advertising: That's Entertainment!

Since I'm 7 or 8 or 9 hours ahead of most of you (intellectually, I mean), this may be a bit complicated. My natural maternal and nurturing instincts may not come into play while I sleep and others post. But I will soldier on.

I'll be willing (tho reluctant) to set up some sub-topics a bit later, but let's begin anarchically, please (pretty please). Any thoughts on what constitutes exploitation film? Examples?

Check your posts for spelling and grammar before submitting, or Billy will hock a lunger on you-- The Mgmt
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Syd
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 3:46 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
It'll be great to have an excuse to see Satan's Cheerleaders again.

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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament
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Joe Vitus
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:02 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston
I like the dialogue at the end of that one:

"Well, I'll be damned."

"Most likeley."

There was a group called Satan's Cheerleaders in Austin (or were they groupies for a band?). The only bar in San Marcos where you could drink at 9 in the morning used to advertise them.

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lshap
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 5:03 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 4246 Location: Montreal
Can a film be considered exploitative if it only affects an individual, or does "Exploitation" only occur when it applies to groups?
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Kate
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 7:24 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 1397 Location: Pacific Northwest
This sounds like a blast! Do we come up with our own films or is there a list...I can't remember what the details are.....
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Nancy
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 7:43 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4607 Location: Norman, OK
I've always enjoyed the subgenre of "warning" exploitation films, like Reefer Madness, Sex Madness, and Marihuana, Weed with Roots in Hell. You find out exactly what the fun things to do are.

And then, of course, there are the classics of '50's lingerie, like Ed Wood's Jail Bait.

I could start listing blaxsploitation films, but that's practically a genre in itself.

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mo_flixx
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 8:13 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 12533
OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY.

This is gonna be something.

I have to read the other posts to see what direction this forum will take.

I know this will be one of my favorites. Not just because I enjoy exploitation films...but because I worked on at least 3 of them - all Roger Corman (or Gene Corman) productions.
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Nancy
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 8:17 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4607 Location: Norman, OK
mo_flixx wrote:
I know this will be one of my favorites. Not just because I enjoy exploitation films...but because I worked on at least 3 of them - all Roger Corman (or Gene Corman) productions.


Which ones, mo?

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Rod
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2006 8:32 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia
mo_flixx wrote:
I worked on at least 3 of them - all Roger Corman (or Gene Corman) productions.


Cooooooooooolllllllll!

Which ones?

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tirebiter
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 12:48 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4011 Location: not far away
"Can a film be considered exploitative if it only affects an individual, or does "Exploitation" only occur when it applies to groups?"

Lorne: Our good friends at Wikipedia say that they "are recognized as a genre by the fact that they typically sacrifice traditional notions of artistic merit for the sensational display of some topic about which the audience may be curious, or have some prurient interest."

I guess what they're exploiting is something sensational enough to make us want to go to the theatre and see it. (I look forward to a discussion of exploitation film as something that was or as something that still is.) Exploitation masters like Roger Corman or Kroger Babb or Russ Meyer or Jack Hill thought first of some lurid topic and the lurid poster to sell it, then wrote the script and cast and shot the movie. When I went to the drive-in for a triple-feature of Beach Blanket Bingo, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and Drag-Strip Riot, I knew exactly what I was getting: Eros and Thanatos, love and death, sex and violence. And when I took my girlfriend downtown to see Twitch of the Death Nerve and Fists of Fury, I knew she'd be grabbing me at regular intervals during the first as Mario Bava did his death and dismemberment thing, and that we'd be pumped up for some serious making out after watching Bruce Lee kick butt. Everybody gets exploited! It's the American Way!

So I'd say exploitation refers to groups you're trying to get into the theatre by exploiting their interest in motorcycle cretins, teenage vampires (frequently nude), the Lambada, suburban wife-swapping (the best kind), rock'n'roll, sadistic blood-sucking freaks, and mostly BOOBS. Lots of BOOBS. At the very least, lots of CLEAVAGE.
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Marc
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 12:59 am Reply with quote
Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 8424
I just watched two of the most deliriously cheesy Turkish films:

THE DEATHLESS DEVIL
Colour, 1973, 84m. / Directed by Yilmez Atadeniz / Starring Kunt Tulgar, Mine Mutlu, Muzaffer Tema

TARKAN VERSUS THE VIKINGS
Colour, 1971, 87m. / Directed by Mehmet Aslan / Starring Kartal Tibet, Eva Bender, Seher Seniz

MONDO MACABRO has done a decent job of remastering these turkeys (pun intended) on DVD. If you enjoy clumsy fight scenes, costumes made from shag carpeting and monsters that look like badly deformed inflatable plastic fuck dolls, you'll love these cinematic fever dreams. Turkish pop cinema is wonderfully entertaining - full of overweight naked chicks, vikings with bad wigs, polyester James Bonds, tin foil robots, atrocious post dubbing and action scenes on moving trains that aren't moving. Unfortunately, most Turkish movies of the 1960s (the heyday of Turkish exploitation flicks) have been destroyed. What a shame.
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