August 19, 2017 • 48 mins
In today's SYSK Select episode, we learn about exploitation films. During the 1930s-80s, the work of directors operating in the shadows of Hollywood led to explorations in sexuality and violence that mainstream cinema wouldn't touch. Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the seedy underbelly of grindhouse flicks.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, This is Chuck and welcome to this week's
edition of the Stuff You Should Know Saturday Curated selects.
This week, I decided to go with How Exploitation Films
Work from April fourteenth, twenty eleven. And this one was
an easy pick because I like all of our movie
episodes and I think Josh might have put this one
(00:22):
together way back in the day when we recorded it,
and it was just a really cool one. Not only
do we get to talk a lot about just some
of the great exploitation films, but just a little bit
about the history and how they came about. So I
just remember really enjoying recording this one and got great
feedback on it. So give it a shot, and if
you've already listened to it, give it another shot. That
(00:43):
is what I suggest enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should
Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff you Should Know,
the podcast and kind of a special edition. Frankly, I
am a little excited, Chuck, I'm a little giddy.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Shut your mouth.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That's yeah, okay, sure, all right, this is our first
ever movie centric podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Right, movie centric for sure. Yeah, we've mentioned movies of
course all the time, but this one is like, this
is all about movies.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So this is by popular request to an extent. People
want to see like, uh, they want to hear us
talk about movies and just do a movie podcast. So
we decided to focus on exploitation films.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
This is also probably the first podcast that we're going
to say, if you are a teacher of children in
eighth grade or younger, and you're using this as a
teaching tool, you might want to go to the one
before this or the one after. Yeah, we don't generally
try to alienate. Add it says, we're not attempting to now,
it's just a natural byproduct of the exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Can't talk about exploitation films without talking about some lurid
subject matter.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, you can't say exploitation without ploit.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, they weren't exploiting, just people being nice, right, nice ploitation.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So, Chuck, I went and saw a movie the other
day called I Saw the Devil. It's a Korean movie.
It's by the guy who did the Tale of Two Sisters.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I think Oh, he said more violent than Old Boy.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, the Old Boy is one of the main characters.
And I've seen Old Boy. I've seen what's the other
one he did, the vampire movie, Yeah, Thirst, So I
think it's pretty good. It was okay, this one is
it's the most violent thing I've ever seen in my life.
It's the most graphically violent movie I've ever seen in
(02:52):
my life. The only the only reason, like I was
able to complete is because I'm like, this is it's
a movie, but I walked out of it like it's
so over the top, it's so gory. It's clearly an
exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, But the problem is is, like, really, if you
start to look around, John Hughes, films technically are exploitation films.
The Breakfast Club is technically an exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, there's a big wave of teen exploitation films, and
we'll get to that, but yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So one of the broader definitions of exploitation films is
basically anything that's really like over the top, that is
beyond reality, or that maybe focuses on people's fears, their
sexuality and basically just kind of serves it up in
a larger than life manner. That's one way of looking
(03:44):
at exploitation films.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, you're basically they're exploiting some of the seedier aspects
of humanity most times.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Sure, like murder or sex, like weird sex, that kind
of thing, sex, weird.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Sex, teenage rebelling against parents.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Sure, like weird science. Have you ever been to a
party where a couch shot out of the chimney and
into the pond? I mean it's a pretty nice party.
I don't think it's ever really happened, you know. So
that's the vast definition of exploitation. But you and I
are kind of qualified to teach a cinema class at
(04:21):
like maybe a low level community college at this point,
after the amount of research we've done in this sure,
and we found that academically there's a there's a much
more distinct definition for exploitation, and it's seemingly interchangeable term grindhouse.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Right, Yeah, what's the Is there a definition definition?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's more like a timeframe. Okay, so from like nineteen
nineteen when they really first started making movies to I
think nineteen sixty nineteen fifty nine, when the Hayes Act
went away, that was exploitation and then after that it
became Grindhouse. Gotcha, it's my understanding. Okay, so let's do
(05:03):
this all.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Right, Well, that's the old joke.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
In the awesome documentary American Grindhouse, which documents this era
of filmmaking. Yeah, the old joke, one of the guys says,
is that exploitation films began five minutes after the camera
was invented, the motion picture camera.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Because the guy was like the directors like to his girlfriend, hey,
would you mind taking your clothes off.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Or the camera exactly? So it says something about the
human condition that you invent the film camera, and the
first moving images were often Lurid Edison's film that showed
clips of like decapitations and violence and guys fighting, yeah,
and nit naked women as film tests. So it's just
that says a lot about people like, all right, now
we know how to capture things, so let's capture sex
(05:45):
and violence right first.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Right, And although that really kind of jibed with public tastes,
or at least public fascination, it didn't jibe with the
prevailing standards. They agreed upon standards, right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Right, I think he said nineteen nineteen. But the first
exploitation film was nineteen thirteen, Oh, okay, Trafficking Souls or
While New York Sleeps, right, and that, like you said,
exploitation often plays into fears. That played into the fear
at the time of the white slave trade. Budget of
fifty seven grand and gross four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
(06:24):
which nineteen thirteen is a lot of dough.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
That is a ton of though, and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
That was Universal Pictures and they went, hey, going on
to something here.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Right after that was released the Hayes Code. Will Hayes
was the Postmaster General and the Presbyterian elder and he
was making one hundred grand a year during the depression.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Unbelievable, right.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
He basically said, like, look, we need we need to
apply some moral standards to filmmaking. There's decapitation, there's naked breast,
there's white white slavery, Like we need to we need
to fure this right.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, actually there wasn't nudity yet like those early test films.
There were, but nudity we'll get to that later, okay,
But yes, that's what Hayes tried to do. And like
prohibition didn't exactly quell drinking, the Hayes code actually sort
of gave rise to the exploitation movement.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, it's just like just like prohibition, just like marijuana prohibition,
just like well any drug prohibition. Anytime you say you
can't do this, you can't have something that you want,
somebody else is going to operate in a black market.
A black market's going to spring up, simple economics. Yeah,
and that's exactly what happened, and that's where exploitation cinema
(07:37):
came up. It's like, you can't get this from Hollywood
because Hollywood has to play by the rules. But my
production studio is my model t and let's go make
this movie. Give me some money. I'm going to film
a child being born close up and put it in
the movies.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yes, and you can do that. You can make your
movies all day long. But if they're never exhibited, than
what good are you doing or not? Like they were
trying to do some good, but you're not making any scratch.
So the forty thieves they talk about in the documentary
were these filmmakers and exhibitors basically that traveled around like carnies,
setting up these sort of gorilla film screenings and some
(08:19):
places sort of out of the way where they can't
get caught. And that was for the first time, you know,
they were taking films outside of the mainstream.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Different. Sometimes they weren't even theaters. They would show them
like VFW halls if you want to go see Birth
of a Baby films. Apparently they were popular.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, that was a whole genre, early genre of exploitation.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Well, and so was early on a lot of the
film centered around like how to wear a condom and
the sex hygiene films.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, because there was no information about that out there,
and so exploitation filmmakers, whether disingenuously or genuinely, were presenting
their stuff like this is a public service. People need
to know this, right and making movies about it. But
also and people were going on that excuse as well,
like well, I need to know about this, but at
(09:09):
the same time, it's like I want to see this
the craziest thing I'll ever see in my life exactly,
you know, on screen.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Or they argued a lot of times that they were
cautionary tales. If they were about drugs or violence, they
would say, hey, this could happen to you, so you
should educate yourself. But what they really want to do
is get the.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Movie scene and make some money exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Paramount Decision of nineteen forty eight. This is pretty big.
This Supreme Court voted that movie studios could no longer
own their own movie theaters. At the time, you know,
there would be like the Paramount Theater in Hollywood from
the Paramount film production company. It would show their movies.
Supreme Court said no more, and all of a sudden,
(09:49):
exploitation films became a little bit more legit because the
Hayes Code kind of fell apart. Yeah, and this is
post World War two, so people.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Had seen a lot of death recently out.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Of death, and then a little more they thought ladies
in suggestive roles were good for morale, and there was
a little bit of loosening on the sex thing a
little bit post World War two.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And that led to another subgenre of exploitation film, the
newdest colony films, which were pawned off as documentaries. A
lot well most of these were pawned off as document documentaries,
which legitimized them, but really it was maybe maybe it
actually was film that a news camp. Probably not. Mostly
(10:33):
there were actors and actresses just engaged in archery naked
or long walks naked.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
There could be no sex. Still that was still no taboo.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
But it was just like naked pretty people right at
a newdist colony, which is interesting because you're not a nudist,
so come learn about them exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, after that, through the history, we had things like
the teen like you said, the teen Rebellion of the
fifties with that rebel thought, a car in Blackboard Jungle,
and movies like that. All of a sudden, we're targeted
specifically at teens, which was new. And then drive in
theaters were built so teenagers could see movies where their
parents weren't going to be. Apparently the adults didn't go
(11:13):
to drive ins a lot at first.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh yeah, it's all kids. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So they showed exploitation films, and then later the beach films,
which were marketed as it's silly, it's Frankie avalon, but
they were decidedly weird and overtly sexual sometimes.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And then chuck, if you'll notice, we're kind of progressing
along in this chronological order, and each thing is kind
of being built on the last.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It was very much a step process.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Right, And apparently that was kind of the form that
exploitation filmmaking followed. Until nineteen sixty it was just it
was centered around drugs, violence, sex, and in a lot
of ways they were presented as documentaries. They might not
have a plot. Basically, it was one person would make
(12:03):
some film and it would just break all the rules,
and then then a bunch of other people would make
similar films, and that was the way it went. And
then in the nineteen sixties things just started to go
every which way, all sorts of directions. Right, So nudity
nudy films were a long standing thread of exploitation films
(12:26):
and then they probably reached their pinnacle with Russ Myers, right,
King of the Nudies is what he's called.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, he was the first guy to He's significant because
he was the first director to have films featuring nudity
that actually were dramatic narratives and had plots and characters,
and they weren't classified as documentaries anymore. And then the
Roughies came along and they offered up violence for the
not first time, but big time for the first time, right,
(12:57):
And that has a lot to do with the fact
that it was the sixties and Kennedy was shot and
the United States was just becoming increasingly violent.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
America lost its innocence. Yeah, and the other thing that
really happened in the nineteen sixties was the Hayes Coote
officially won away, was replaced by the MPAA and the
the I guess the long standing prohibition on Hollywood producing
exploitation films was it was lessened, decreased, and so studios
(13:27):
were like, oh, we can make money over here too, Well,
let's start making exploitation films right, And this is where
grindhouse was born. So my cinema professor definition of grindhouse
is big budget, studio backed exploitation films. Okay, okay, yeah,
that's that's mine.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's gonna be a quiz question later.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, I'll go with that. Actually, back up one second.
We got to mention Herschel Gordon Lewis. He was a
director who had a co director. I can't remember the
other guy's named you. Anyway, he was a co director
and he was one of these exploitation guys that was
getting frustrated because there weren't a lot of places to
show your movie. So it was a pretty crowded marketplace.
So he said, what's the one taboo that like people
(14:11):
will pay to see that you're allowed to show in theaters,
but that studios won't make. And it was Gore.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
He was the first guy to start showing really disgusting
bloody scenes in his movie, uh, blood Feast, Blood Feast, yeah,
which actually was three years after Psycho, and Psycho also
did a lot for the mainstream ushering in of sure,
a little bit of Gore in that, but there was a.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Shot of blood following Janet Lee's murder, you know, which
is I imagine it's pretty graphic for Hollywood, right, and
that's what you think of your like, oh, those stupid sixties,
but that's you know, they were so naive, like that
was controversial, not really though, Like if you stepped just
slightly outside of Hollywood, you ran into things like Blood Feast, right,
or you know Last House on the Left, Yes, well
(15:00):
that's nineteen seventy two, I think.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, Wes Craven. So that was important because all of
a sudden, a drugs started, well three things. Political themes
started popping up, right, sexual freedom, the youth generation. Drugs
started popping up in movies for the first time drug use.
Well not for the first time. We'll talk about reefer madness. Yeah,
but teenagers were depicted as victims of violence for the
(15:24):
first time. Like Last House on the Left, I believe
is kind of regarded as the first teen slasher film.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, Wes Craven, it was almost a snuff film. It
was almost regarded like that.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It's pretty hardcore, but yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Definitely blood Feasts definitely allowed Last House on the Left
to come around, but it also probably more directly formed
the foundation for slasher exploitation, like Friday the thirteenth, Third
Nightmare on Elm Street. Absolutely, My Bloody Valentine's another big one.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, The Crazy Oh yeah, that was in a digital right,
there's a remake now, I think, yeah, yeah, remakes. So
(16:30):
that brings us We're in the seventies, politically charged movies
brought race to the mix, and all of a sudden
we had black exploitation or black exploitation movement starting exploiting
the civil rights movement basically. But the cool thing about
black exploitation films is for the first time you had
African Americans as heroes.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, and not heroes in a typical sense, not even
anti heroes, but heroes that were like, they didn't ride
into town on on a white horse or wearing a
white hat, right, They very clearly wore black hats if
need be, Like they would engage in crime, they would
murder people if nippy they were. They were basically like
(17:13):
the face of black America coming out of the Civil
Rights are like, we're ticked off.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, you know, and we're gonna stick it to the
white man, stick it to the man, and we're gonna
do it in these movies.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Chuck, I know the movie you're about to to mention.
Let's this is it?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You keep the fath of me.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
You my man, You're my favorite man, can you.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
So?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yes? That was a landmark film for a lot of reasons.
One because it grows four million bucks and it made
the major studio say, hey, you know what the black
hero is marketable?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, well, you haven't said the title yet.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Oh I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Okay, you gotta say it right too.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Melvin Van Peebles film Sweet Sweetbacks, Badass.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Song, Nice That was well done. That was nineteen seventy one.
Melvin Van Peebles, whose last name may sound familiar. He's
the father of Mario Van Peebles for you younger cats
listening to this.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
One cats our age actually younger cats, because he's kind of.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Like, okay, so cats are Yeah, that's Mario van Peebles's dad,
you know, New Jack City.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
So Melvin Van Peebles made this movie. He produced it,
he raised the money for it, he wrote it, he
directed it, he starred in it. And it was the
beginning of the blaxploitation subgenre, which is one of the
most important genres of any American.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Cinema absolutely ever, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And so considering how important that subgenre is, this quote
from Time Magazine's film critic Richard Corliss should really hit home.
Sweet Sweet Back is quote, without question or competition, the
most influential movie by a black filmmaker. So this is
a really big deal, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And it was just quickly on the plot. It was
about a black man who was a jiggielow who.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Had which is a male prostitute for you, young.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Cat, and he had a deal worked out with the
cops where he said, you know, you can arrest me
as much as you want, release me right afterward, fill
your quota. It's all good. And then one day, while
the arrest is going down, the cops attack a black panther,
and Sweet Sweet Back kills one of the cops and
then just says he just goes on a rampage against
(19:36):
the white man after that.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So you've got prostitution, tons and tons of nudity and sex,
lots of violence, and other crimes all wrapped up into
a black power theme.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And then to top it all off, you have what
is arguably a child sex scene starring Mario Van Peebles
Melvivan People's son at I think age six, He's a
kid having sex as Sweet Sweet Pack. It's his first
sexual encounter with an older person. And in the cult podcast,
if he became a cult leader, he would have taken
(20:15):
any younger bride, remember I am. It's right. So if
you're interested in that movie and you can't get enough
of Sweet Sweetbacks bad Ass Song, you could also check
out Bad Ass exclamation Point, which is Mario Van Peebles's
biopic about his father making that movie.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
That's right, And I have not seen that, but I
wanted to at the time, and it just sort of
supped tough the cracks.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
There's always Netflix, Baby, that's right.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And what happened with Sweet Sweetback was that, like I said,
that told the studios, hey, that we can market this,
and so they got a little more mainstream with movies
like Superfly, which were a little safer Shaft Shaft movies
at wide audiences would enjoy as well.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, the ones that didn't scare the man exactly like
Shaft's a good guy. He doesn't take any guff from them.
But the people he's not taking gup from or the cops,
who's really on the same side as That's right. So
chuck exploitation obviously huge. It affected everything from you know,
Menace to society to Blackula. All of that came from
(21:16):
Sweet Sweet Back. And we mentioned the guy who directed
this next movie, Russ Myers. This is probably a seminal work.
Let's listen to this clip from the trailer.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
You ladies and gentlemen gold go for a wild wild
ride with the Watusi cuts, but beware the sweetest kittens
have the sharpest claw or your own safety. See faster
pussy cuts, kill kill wild weather, wild wheels. Race the
fastest pussy cuts and they'll be jill so far woman sulpit.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
Placing your stuff on this kid then hanging. It's a
nothing by nothing.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
He's got nothing to do with the Moneys, the money.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Jack and Jill.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
They make a mafia look like brownie They.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Make the mafia look like Browniees.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
That's right. That says quite a bit about them. So
that was faster pussy Cat Kill Kill. In nineteen sixty
five russ Meyer's basically women exploitation film nudy film. Remember
russ Meyers was King of the nudies. He made twenty
six movies, but this is probably at the very least
(22:32):
is his best known, if not like his masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, and he hatched a slew of I mean not
that he wasn't legit. He was, but what mainstream people
would call legit filmmakers were came up through the russ
Meyer film camp basically. Yeah, So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, and russ Meyer also a little known fact. Another
movie that's mentioned in this article. There's an article on
the site, by the way, called ten noteworthy exploitation Films
that this is based on, Yeah, written by you, Yeah,
which I showingly recommend going to read because it has
a lot of extra stuff we're not going to cover
in this one. Yeah, or at least extra movies. But
(23:09):
russ Meyer directed a movie called Beyond the Valley of
the Dolls two, right, which was the bastard son of
the legitimate film that Beyond Valley of Dolls is a
jiggle fest written by none other than Roger Ebert's right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
The movie Roger Ebert ever wrote.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, he had a Yeah, it was a very brief career.
But that's it. That's an illustrious one. Really.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah. So if you're going to talk about the plot,
a faster pussy cat kill kill And I say that
because there's three exclamation points and a comma.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Exclamation point kill it three exclamation points.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, Okay, I thought it was a comment then too.
All right, either way, that's a lot of punctuation for
a film title, right, And it was about three bisexual
go go dancers. They go on a crime spree out
in the desert and what do they do. They end
up killing a man or no, they kill the man
and a couple keep girl.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
They basically empower her, yeah, come on with by murdering
her boyfriend and she ends up on the crimes free
with them.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And they basically end up going to an isolated house
with a wheelchair bound old man and his sons.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Who's a leech. They're all leeches.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
They want these women, Yeah, but they don't know that
these women are tough, tough ladies.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
And the men and his son, the man and his
sons apparently are allegedly have a large amount of cash
stashed in this house. So it's kind of like a
standoff of gall see who will come out on top?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Well, and you know who comes out on top. And
this film was noteworthy for one big reason was that
there's a lot of duelism towards gender. So on one hand,
he's exploiting these women and apparently got women in their
first trimester of pregnancy, so they were more voluptuous.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, not in this film, but in his other films
he would hire I can't remember the lady's name, but
the star of Festor pussy Cat Kill Kill is in
other Russ Meyers films, gotcha, and he made sure that
she was like well in to her third first trimester
to enhance her natural bustiness.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
That's right, yeah, her bosom if you will. But the script,
like I said, it was dualism because while he did that,
it also empowered women because the women in his films
bowed to no man. No, they were the champs. They
were they were heroines really for the first time.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
But they were objectified very clearly. But at the same time,
if you follow the script and really look at their characters,
then yeah, they're powerful women.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And this kind of kicked off a big slew of
women exploitation films, exploitation films, the women in Prison movies.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yes, which we Lead's sisters very big.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
At the time. Women were lead actors for the first time,
they were aggressors for the first time, still nude often
while they were doing this stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Spawn the television show The Facts of Life.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
But the interesting thing is they found that these movies
appealed to men and women because men would go see
it for obvious reasons. Yeah, women would go see it
because it was empowering and they didn't mind, you know,
looking at the naked ladies because women are much more
grown up, sure than men are. But Josh, the seventies
also got a little schlocky, which in a sense was
(26:15):
true to the exploitation model. They like, they really went
over the top. No more political statements, no more advancing
of women's gender or African merin Americans. It just got
really shlocky and outrageous at that point.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Well, what happened starting in the sixth really took hold
in the seventies, and then from that point on was
exploitation cinema, early on showing a live birth, nudest camps,
these are all geared toward adults in the sixties, and
then later on big time in the seventies, the audience
became almost exclusively teenagers, like those driving teenagers or well
(26:51):
teenagers anywhere, who cares, but the audience was teenagers, and
the cast started to become teenage, so it had a
little more of a bent on what teenagers we're having
to deal with, like bullying, like the kid in this
next clip right, which is I have to say, one
of my favorite movies from way way back.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Here we go with Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, meet little Melvin.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
He's a ninety pound weekly. Everyone hated Melbourne.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, I'm going to take this mop and shove it
down your throat.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
They teased him.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I want to do it with you, PoCA. They taunted him.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
They tormented him until he had a horrifying accident and
fell into a vat of nuclear waste, transforming Little Melbourne
into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
Movement became the Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So Josh. The Toxic Avenger movie was unique in that
its film production company, Trauma mm HM, is very popular
in their own right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Have you ever seen surf Nazis Must Die?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I haven't, but I know about Trump. I mean, they
are master self promoters and marketiers.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
They were one of the first production companies to have
a website, like a really comprehensive website. You should go
on their website, their whole catalog. It's really just well done.
It's schlocky, but it's well done, right.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
And Toxic Avenger follows the story of a ninety eight
pound weekling who was picked on released the same year's Ghostbusters.
Do you notice that nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Right, Yeah, so it was it occurred at zero year.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
It's year zero. Yeah, we'll just put the null set
represent that. And this kid gets pushed out of a
window into a that of toxic sludge.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Which that's beyond bullying.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Really yeah, I mean, this is basically it's a more
twisted version of modern problems. The Chevy Chase film from
a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Okay, I have seen that one.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Oh you never saw a modern problem. No, it's very silly,
but he got toxic sledge dumped on him and had
special powers.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
From years earlier, prior or after.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
What when was the movie, Yeah, it was two years
before Toxic Avenger. But Toxic Avenger took it into are
special effects way that modern Problems never did.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
So the janitor Melvin I believe his name is, becomes toxified,
it becomes toxic. The Toxic Avenger who beats the tar
out of people at the health club where he was
abused and mutated and has tons of sex as the
Toxic Avenger because his newfound manhood is just irresistible to women.
(29:40):
And one of the things that's noteworthy about the Toxic
Avenger is that they actually tried to make decent effects. Yeah,
it wasn't just it wasn't horrible. I guess you could.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Say, well for the time, you know, it wasn't bad.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
No, they remained bad, and they probably were kind of
bad even back then, but for for grindhouse films, yeah
they were, they were great, right. And it was also
noteworthy because it came out of Trauma Productions or Trouma
Studios and it led to a whole line of Toxic
Avenger movies and schlock in general, which is basically like
(30:17):
some crazy, horrible thing has happened, but we're not going
to dwell too much on that. Let's see what let's
let's see where the action takes us. Yeah, exactly, So
like Bad Taste, the Peter Peter Jackson's first film, right
is a great example of schlock that came out of
Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And he had the film that followed, Peter Jackson Dead Alive,
which was at one point supposedly the gorriest film ever made. Really,
although it sounds like your new Korean movie has surpassed that.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, I think it probably has. I haven't seen that
Alive's seen Bad Taste and Bad Taste it was horribly gory,
but I think this has it beat.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, but I bet you if anything. I mean, I
haven't seen the one you're talking about. But is it
more realistic gore?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, with bad just like these are aliens that are
having their heads blown off. So it definitely takes you
at least a a degree away from caring this is
happening to human beings. And I saw the Devil, so
it definitely is driven home a little more well.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And the violence that even the gore back then it
was so over the top, right out of Fangora magazine.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It's like, you know, dude, Fangoria is still around, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
I figured it was.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I'm glad it is. We follow it on our Twitter feed.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Oh we do. Yeah, Like Ahead'll explode in scanners and
you know, it's not disturbing because it's so clearly over
the top. But these new movies are much more disturbing.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
If you ask me, I agree wholeheartedly because they're more realistic.
So carrying on with Chucks and my Ciscal and eber Act.
This is the second to last movie in our little
list today, and this one's from way back from the thirties.
So let's talk about reefer madness.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
Lee's high school boys and girls are having a hot
at the local soda fountain. Innocently they dance innocent of
you and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors. May wanna
the burning weed with its roots in hell or watchcase
(32:13):
if you want to, you will meet Bill, who once
took pride in his strong will, as he takes the
first step toward enslavement. Here he.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Softly so, so that was the excellent reefer Madness, which
was an exploitation drug exploitation film and very much a
cautionary tale. It even shaped the drug culture and how
(33:02):
people looked at drugs. Is you know marijuana at the time,
Is this really evil thing that can make you crazy
and kill people?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah? And actually, in very much the vein of early
exploitation films, it was produced and distributed as a public service,
like the alternate title for it was Tell Your Children,
And the whole thing set in a pta meeting where
this guy is relating the story, and it's a story
(33:31):
about lost lives, about murder, about guilt and paranoia, and
all of it is fed and based on rampant drug use,
which is really just a lot of pot smoking which
can turn you into a fiend. And it's apparently the
director his name is Dwayne Esper. He did other exploitation
(33:52):
films from the thirties like Sex Madness, Psychotic Connections, and
he made a name for himself basically taking these things
that may have originally been written as a public service
right and making them so outlandish that he exploited the
people who were making these movies right and created this
(34:13):
legacy of like just insanely over the top exploitation films
from the thirties.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Well, and ironically, refor Madness years later would become not
so much an anti drug propaganda film, how should I
say this, but a film that college students would sit
around and watch while partaking and laughing at this whole thing. Yeah,
and a cult film.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah, because it puts drugs so far out there that
if you, despite all the warnings, take drugs anyway and
you realize that you don't turn into a fiend and
murder somebody, you refor Madness basically dares you to go further.
So it's kind of an it's the opposite. It has
the opposite effect of what I think its original intent
(34:55):
was before Duayne Asberg got its hands on it. And
as a side note, I had trouble deciding between Reefer
Madness and another nineteen thirties film by a guy named
Todd Browning called Freaks.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Oh yeah, well that was that was huge because it
was the first big exploitation film pre Hayes Code and Last.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, first and last, and it was it was an
MGM film. Yeah, and it's widely considered a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, mean, it looks great. It's it's not it was
well done.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
It's a huge it's a it's a revenge movie, which
is a very common theme in exploitation films. Yeah, especially
violent ones. But it's it featured Browning dared to have
real freaks.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I guess if you yes, Circus side show freaks, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Star in this and they basically exact their revenge on
people who've mistreated them. And I have not seen it.
Oh really yeah, yeah, I wanted to. I hear it's
just awesome. I can't win.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
It ended his career though, unfortunately. Really yeah, and he
was a popular filmmaker at the time.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Well, hats off to him for first staying true to
his art. Chuck just took his hat off on the
old cap. All right, Chuck, here's the last one that
we've got a clip for which I think everybody will
notice or recognize without even a word. There's not even
a word in this clip, and you will understand what's
going on.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So, Josh, those are the unmistakable sounds of fist of
fury of mister one.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Mister Bruce Ley, Bruce Lee kicking bottom. This first movie, Yeah,
which was originally titled well, it's still title I think
in Asia the Big and in America it is its
titled Fists of Fury.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, it was on the other night. Okay, Well I
saw part of it. Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't realize
it was his first one, though I would have tuned in.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, And it was first of what five five major films, right,
And basically it's the story of a martial arts student
who's investigating the murder of his teacher. And it began
the martial arts exploitation sub genre.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Which later would become just martial arts films. Right or
was it still considered exploitation.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
It's all the same, Okay, they're one and the same.
Anything that even remotely resembles a Bruce Lee movie, specifically
The Big Boss or any of them, is martial arts
exploitation technically, because again we arrive at that one definition.
It's over the top, like Bruce Ley's taking on scores
of anonymous thugs for two hours, one after the other,
(37:52):
for two hours, just beating the tar out of all
these people without tiring. Really, everybody's kind of waiting their
turn politely in a circle around him, and he has
to beat everybody right, and then he works his way
up and it's over the top, so it is exploitation.
But it led to other films like Samurai exploitation. Remember
American Ninja. Remember the whole ninja film thing that came
(38:13):
out in the mid eighties. Uh huh, that's from Bruce
Lee's that's Bruce Lee's doing well.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, and you go to these at the time when
I was first going to New York many years ago,
that would be uh, you know, you go to Times
Square and this was still when Time Square was kind
of gross, and that would be just the the Martial
Arts movie store where it was all that stuff. Man,
like thousands of movies about ninja's and samuraiz and martial
artists and very big.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I was inspired by American Ninja to become a ninja.
Remember I entered a ninja training with Tommy Roper, who
had like more throwing stars than any kid.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I ever, what did you have? Like one throwing star?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I borrowed his. Okay, I was not allowed to have
throwing stars on my own.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Oh I wasn't either.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Baptist, No, that was very violent. No, nunbchucks.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Not even that transcends like religious back. It's like, if
you're a good parent, you shouldn't let your kid have
throwing star.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It's a good point. And as you point in the article,
this actually led to another subgenre, which was Bruce Lee
lookalike movies. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
So he made five movies and then died at age
thirty two. Yeah, and nineteen seventy three. So Big Boss
released in nineteen seventy one, he dies two years later.
Everybody's like, no, so let's find some guys that look
like him, which is really kind of stereotypical and racist
for the West. But Bruce Lee l I or Lee
(39:33):
or l E or just l E. Well, Bruce l
I or Bruce ell Ee. I don't think there was
ever like Bruce l e I g H. I don't
think it ever got that far. But I mean they
released dozens of Bruce Lee and I just made air
quote films.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
So Bruce Lee created the martial arts exploitation genre and subgenre,
and he inadvertently created the Bruce Lee exploitation subgenre of
the martial arts exploitation subgenre.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
By dying young, Yeah and being very popular. Yeah, And
which one was the one he had? Kareem Antal Jabbarian
Enter the Dragon.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, if you've never seen a like seven foot plus
guy to martial arts, you should check that out.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And if you can't get enough Bruce Lee and you
have a good sense of humor, check out Kentucky Fried
movie made by one Jerry's Rucker, Jerry who we met
in Los Angeles recently and who used an exploitive to me.
He did it was one of the high points of
my life, it is. But yeah, Kentucky Fry movie awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Actually, when we met Jerry Zucker, we told him that
our little speech we were given that night was one
of the highlights of our career thus far. And he says, well,
it doesn't say much about your career, does it. Like
the first thing to do does is something.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Funny and we just like kind of fawned over the man.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
We should mention briefly and it's in the article, but
just as a teaser. The late seventies we got Nazi
exploitation movies, not exploitation as a subgenre. Yeah, And one
of the major players there movie was ilsa she Wolf
of the.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
S S Yeah, which led to ilsa Siberian Tigris and
ilsa harm Keeper of the oil sheeks. Really, there's a
whole sex violence franchise, Dominatrix franchise that was based out
of the Nazis' floitation film.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
You know, one could argue that q T mister Tarantino
has made nothing but exploitation films since pulp fiction, because
the kill bills were definitely martial arts exploitation. The Jackie
Brown was a riff on on black exploitation. Sure, death
Proof obviously that was what they were trying to do there.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Death Proof is Carsploitation, which follows in the tradition of
Vanishing Point, which was released the same year as basically
its rival to the founder, the founding movie of Carsploitation
Two Lane Blacktop right, whichat movie. Yeah, if you want
to start an argument with an exploitation film, buff tell him.
Vanishing Point was the beginning of copl They'll get mad
(42:02):
at you.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
And then finally Tarantino with The Inglorious Bastards, which was
clearly a riff on the Nazi exploitation films. Yeah, beaten
Nazis to death with the baseball bat, yes, about as
over the top and lurid as it gets awesome.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, so, and then Machete I hated it, but Robert
it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
And of course he was the other half of the
Rodriguez was the other half with his Planet Terror of
the Grindhouse double feature. Yeah, okay, and Machete was born
from one of the little fake trailers they made in
that movie.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Oh is that right?
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, it was one of the fake movie previews.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
It is even as far as like a purposefully B
movie not good.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
No, well, death Proof was okay, but I didn't like
Planet Tear that much.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, and then Chuck. Well, first of all, before we
get to today, we also have to give a shout
out to Porno's. Porno came out of the exploitation film genre.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
And it arguably had a lot to do with killing
the X or pushing it into the mainstream, because once
you had the movie Deep Throat and all of a sudden,
pornography was on the screen, it's like, you can't do
an exploitation film about it anymore. If there's the real
deal going on, it loses all its power. And then
a little movie called Jaws came along and all of
(43:12):
a sudden, a quote unquote B movie style movie made
gobs and gobs of money, and that put a little
bit of mainstream respectability on the map all of a sudden,
And so one might argue, Josh that movies like Jaws
and Pornography kind of shoved exploitation films even though they
still exist. They're sort of mainstream movies now.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yeah, well, yeah, I guess another word for grindhouse these
days is blockbuster. Jaws was the first blockbuster movie, summer blockbuster,
and now you have to have summer blockbusters, and they're
always over the top and exploitive of viewers' tastes.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And not only Tarantino, those other filmmakers out that are
trying to capture that seventies vibe with overt exploitation films again,
shot that way, shot on thirty five or I'm sorry,
sixteen millimeter film, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, so, Chuck, I say, our message to everybody is
number one, go on to the site, read ten noteworthy
exploitation films. Number two if that interests you. Like, even
the ten noteworthy exploitation films I chose don't cover even
(44:22):
I think a third of the exploitation subgenres. So there'll
probably be another article forthcoming at some point. If there is,
we'll let you know and then go watch some exploitation
movies and enjoy them.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, watch the documentary American Grindhouse too, if you're into that.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, that's a great one. It's free on Hulu. Actually
there's ads, but Hulu dot com has American Grindhouse for free.
It is not safe for work now, in no way,
shape or form. I was watching it at work and
I was like, WHOA, Okay, really, yeah, if you are
watching it at work, tab browsing is what you want
to be doing, right, and keep your finger over the
mouse and keep the cursor over the other tab.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Right and say or in our case, you can just
say it's research. But you can't do that. If you're
an accountant at JP Morgan.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
You're just a cicco, a weirdo, that weird guy in accounting.
So look up ten noteworthy exploitation films. You can type
that into the handy search bar HowStuffWorks dot Com. And now,
at long last, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Joshua's I'm gonna call this it's a small world after all.
Dear guys, I'm a longtime fan from Minnesota and enjoy
spreading stuff. You should know. Goodness, wherever I go, my
coworkers at a local coffee shop know me for the
trivia and information I abound in. But after giving you
what that he says he abounds in, I guess he's
proficient in. Okay, did he misuse that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (45:46):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
It sounds hilarious.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
It does after giving credit where credit is due, which
means us several of them decided to subscribe your podcast.
Listening to the podcast is also given me an advantage
at work for thinking of the coffee shop's daily trivia question,
which saves people ten cents on their drink if you
know it. After relistening to how legos work, I set
the trivia question for which company produces the most tires
(46:12):
on a yearly basis? Abridge stone be goodyear see Lego Bricks.
You know the answer, John. Most people were surprised and
pleased to find out it was Lego Bricks, reminding me
about the little playsets that their kids enjoy. This is
where it gets weird. One of the customers read the
trivia question, looked at me and said, it's a puntsy scheme.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Nice, that's awesome, and.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
The best Italian accent he could muster. Everyone else gave
him an odd look. I started laughing. He apologized and
then say and said he just heard it on a
podcast he had just listened to Legos followed by Ponzi Schemes.
Long story short, we were both pleased to find out
that we were both fans. We are now on a
first name basis, eager to discuss the most recent episodes.
So these dudes of Minneapolis. Daniel, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Thanks Daniel and his friend now new friend. This is
his unnamed friend. Hedn't name him, you wouldn't know him.
He met him at camp.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
That's right, band camp.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Thanks Daniel, that's really awesome. Wow, that's really cool. Let
me let us know if you tweet those daily facts
for your coffeehouse, because we will start following you. Indeed,
that'd be very cool if you want to follow us.
We have our own Twitter feed. Seriously, it's called s
Y s K Podcast one word, ten thousand strong plus Yeah.
(47:30):
We're on uh no, we're up to like eleven and change.
That's plus ten. That's true. We're also on Facebook, Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff. You should know. We have a
Kiva team, right, we're trying to get the half a
million dollars right, that's Kiva dot org, slash Team slash
stuff you should know, And then you can always send
(47:50):
us a good old fashioned email. We want to know
what your favorite exploitation film of all time is. You
can send that in an email to Stuff Podcast at
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
Hey everybody, This is Chuck and welcome to this week's
edition of the Stuff You Should Know Saturday Curated selects.
This week, I decided to go with How Exploitation Films
Work from April fourteenth, twenty eleven. And this one was
an easy pick because I like all of our movie
episodes and I think Josh might have put this one
(00:22):
together way back in the day when we recorded it,
and it was just a really cool one. Not only
do we get to talk a lot about just some
of the great exploitation films, but just a little bit
about the history and how they came about. So I
just remember really enjoying recording this one and got great
feedback on it. So give it a shot, and if
you've already listened to it, give it another shot. That
(00:43):
is what I suggest enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you Should
Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff you Should Know,
the podcast and kind of a special edition. Frankly, I
am a little excited, Chuck, I'm a little giddy.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Shut your mouth.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
That's yeah, okay, sure, all right, this is our first
ever movie centric podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Right, movie centric for sure. Yeah, we've mentioned movies of
course all the time, but this one is like, this
is all about movies.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So this is by popular request to an extent. People
want to see like, uh, they want to hear us
talk about movies and just do a movie podcast. So
we decided to focus on exploitation films.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
This is also probably the first podcast that we're going
to say, if you are a teacher of children in
eighth grade or younger, and you're using this as a
teaching tool, you might want to go to the one
before this or the one after. Yeah, we don't generally
try to alienate. Add it says, we're not attempting to now,
it's just a natural byproduct of the exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Can't talk about exploitation films without talking about some lurid
subject matter.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, you can't say exploitation without ploit.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, they weren't exploiting, just people being nice, right, nice ploitation.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
So, Chuck, I went and saw a movie the other
day called I Saw the Devil. It's a Korean movie.
It's by the guy who did the Tale of Two Sisters.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I think Oh, he said more violent than Old Boy.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, the Old Boy is one of the main characters.
And I've seen Old Boy. I've seen what's the other
one he did, the vampire movie, Yeah, Thirst, So I
think it's pretty good. It was okay, this one is
it's the most violent thing I've ever seen in my life.
It's the most graphically violent movie I've ever seen in
(02:52):
my life. The only the only reason, like I was
able to complete is because I'm like, this is it's
a movie, but I walked out of it like it's
so over the top, it's so gory. It's clearly an
exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yeah, But the problem is is, like, really, if you
start to look around, John Hughes, films technically are exploitation films.
The Breakfast Club is technically an exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, there's a big wave of teen exploitation films, and
we'll get to that, but yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So one of the broader definitions of exploitation films is
basically anything that's really like over the top, that is
beyond reality, or that maybe focuses on people's fears, their
sexuality and basically just kind of serves it up in
a larger than life manner. That's one way of looking
(03:44):
at exploitation films.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, you're basically they're exploiting some of the seedier aspects
of humanity most times.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Sure, like murder or sex, like weird sex, that kind
of thing, sex, weird.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Sex, teenage rebelling against parents.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Sure, like weird science. Have you ever been to a
party where a couch shot out of the chimney and
into the pond? I mean it's a pretty nice party.
I don't think it's ever really happened, you know. So
that's the vast definition of exploitation. But you and I
are kind of qualified to teach a cinema class at
(04:21):
like maybe a low level community college at this point,
after the amount of research we've done in this sure,
and we found that academically there's a there's a much
more distinct definition for exploitation, and it's seemingly interchangeable term grindhouse.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Right, Yeah, what's the Is there a definition definition?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's more like a timeframe. Okay, so from like nineteen
nineteen when they really first started making movies to I
think nineteen sixty nineteen fifty nine, when the Hayes Act
went away, that was exploitation and then after that it
became Grindhouse. Gotcha, it's my understanding. Okay, so let's do
(05:03):
this all.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Right, Well, that's the old joke.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
In the awesome documentary American Grindhouse, which documents this era
of filmmaking. Yeah, the old joke, one of the guys says,
is that exploitation films began five minutes after the camera
was invented, the motion picture camera.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Because the guy was like the directors like to his girlfriend, hey,
would you mind taking your clothes off.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Or the camera exactly? So it says something about the
human condition that you invent the film camera, and the
first moving images were often Lurid Edison's film that showed
clips of like decapitations and violence and guys fighting, yeah,
and nit naked women as film tests. So it's just
that says a lot about people like, all right, now
we know how to capture things, so let's capture sex
(05:45):
and violence right first.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Right, And although that really kind of jibed with public tastes,
or at least public fascination, it didn't jibe with the
prevailing standards. They agreed upon standards, right.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Right, I think he said nineteen nineteen. But the first
exploitation film was nineteen thirteen, Oh, okay, Trafficking Souls or
While New York Sleeps, right, and that, like you said,
exploitation often plays into fears. That played into the fear
at the time of the white slave trade. Budget of
fifty seven grand and gross four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
(06:24):
which nineteen thirteen is a lot of dough.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
That is a ton of though, and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
That was Universal Pictures and they went, hey, going on
to something here.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Right after that was released the Hayes Code. Will Hayes
was the Postmaster General and the Presbyterian elder and he
was making one hundred grand a year during the depression.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Unbelievable, right.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
He basically said, like, look, we need we need to
apply some moral standards to filmmaking. There's decapitation, there's naked breast,
there's white white slavery, Like we need to we need
to fure this right.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, actually there wasn't nudity yet like those early test films.
There were, but nudity we'll get to that later, okay,
But yes, that's what Hayes tried to do. And like
prohibition didn't exactly quell drinking, the Hayes code actually sort
of gave rise to the exploitation movement.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, it's just like just like prohibition, just like marijuana prohibition,
just like well any drug prohibition. Anytime you say you
can't do this, you can't have something that you want,
somebody else is going to operate in a black market.
A black market's going to spring up, simple economics. Yeah,
and that's exactly what happened, and that's where exploitation cinema
(07:37):
came up. It's like, you can't get this from Hollywood
because Hollywood has to play by the rules. But my
production studio is my model t and let's go make
this movie. Give me some money. I'm going to film
a child being born close up and put it in
the movies.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yes, and you can do that. You can make your
movies all day long. But if they're never exhibited, than
what good are you doing or not? Like they were
trying to do some good, but you're not making any scratch.
So the forty thieves they talk about in the documentary
were these filmmakers and exhibitors basically that traveled around like carnies,
setting up these sort of gorilla film screenings and some
(08:19):
places sort of out of the way where they can't
get caught. And that was for the first time, you know,
they were taking films outside of the mainstream.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Different. Sometimes they weren't even theaters. They would show them
like VFW halls if you want to go see Birth
of a Baby films. Apparently they were popular.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, that was a whole genre, early genre of exploitation.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Well, and so was early on a lot of the
film centered around like how to wear a condom and
the sex hygiene films.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, because there was no information about that out there,
and so exploitation filmmakers, whether disingenuously or genuinely, were presenting
their stuff like this is a public service. People need
to know this, right and making movies about it. But
also and people were going on that excuse as well,
like well, I need to know about this, but at
(09:09):
the same time, it's like I want to see this
the craziest thing I'll ever see in my life exactly,
you know, on screen.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Or they argued a lot of times that they were
cautionary tales. If they were about drugs or violence, they
would say, hey, this could happen to you, so you
should educate yourself. But what they really want to do
is get the.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Movie scene and make some money exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Paramount Decision of nineteen forty eight. This is pretty big.
This Supreme Court voted that movie studios could no longer
own their own movie theaters. At the time, you know,
there would be like the Paramount Theater in Hollywood from
the Paramount film production company. It would show their movies.
Supreme Court said no more, and all of a sudden,
(09:49):
exploitation films became a little bit more legit because the
Hayes Code kind of fell apart. Yeah, and this is
post World War two, so people.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Had seen a lot of death recently out.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Of death, and then a little more they thought ladies
in suggestive roles were good for morale, and there was
a little bit of loosening on the sex thing a
little bit post World War two.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And that led to another subgenre of exploitation film, the
newdest colony films, which were pawned off as documentaries. A
lot well most of these were pawned off as document documentaries,
which legitimized them, but really it was maybe maybe it
actually was film that a news camp. Probably not. Mostly
(10:33):
there were actors and actresses just engaged in archery naked
or long walks naked.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
There could be no sex. Still that was still no taboo.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
But it was just like naked pretty people right at
a newdist colony, which is interesting because you're not a nudist,
so come learn about them exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, after that, through the history, we had things like
the teen like you said, the teen Rebellion of the
fifties with that rebel thought, a car in Blackboard Jungle,
and movies like that. All of a sudden, we're targeted
specifically at teens, which was new. And then drive in
theaters were built so teenagers could see movies where their
parents weren't going to be. Apparently the adults didn't go
(11:13):
to drive ins a lot at first.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Oh yeah, it's all kids. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
So they showed exploitation films, and then later the beach films,
which were marketed as it's silly, it's Frankie avalon, but
they were decidedly weird and overtly sexual sometimes.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And then chuck, if you'll notice, we're kind of progressing
along in this chronological order, and each thing is kind
of being built on the last.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It was very much a step process.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Right, And apparently that was kind of the form that
exploitation filmmaking followed. Until nineteen sixty it was just it
was centered around drugs, violence, sex, and in a lot
of ways they were presented as documentaries. They might not
have a plot. Basically, it was one person would make
(12:03):
some film and it would just break all the rules,
and then then a bunch of other people would make
similar films, and that was the way it went. And
then in the nineteen sixties things just started to go
every which way, all sorts of directions. Right, So nudity
nudy films were a long standing thread of exploitation films
(12:26):
and then they probably reached their pinnacle with Russ Myers, right,
King of the Nudies is what he's called.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, he was the first guy to He's significant because
he was the first director to have films featuring nudity
that actually were dramatic narratives and had plots and characters,
and they weren't classified as documentaries anymore. And then the
Roughies came along and they offered up violence for the
not first time, but big time for the first time, right,
(12:57):
And that has a lot to do with the fact
that it was the sixties and Kennedy was shot and
the United States was just becoming increasingly violent.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
America lost its innocence. Yeah, and the other thing that
really happened in the nineteen sixties was the Hayes Coote
officially won away, was replaced by the MPAA and the
the I guess the long standing prohibition on Hollywood producing
exploitation films was it was lessened, decreased, and so studios
(13:27):
were like, oh, we can make money over here too, Well,
let's start making exploitation films right, And this is where
grindhouse was born. So my cinema professor definition of grindhouse
is big budget, studio backed exploitation films. Okay, okay, yeah,
that's that's mine.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's gonna be a quiz question later.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, I'll go with that. Actually, back up one second.
We got to mention Herschel Gordon Lewis. He was a
director who had a co director. I can't remember the
other guy's named you. Anyway, he was a co director
and he was one of these exploitation guys that was
getting frustrated because there weren't a lot of places to
show your movie. So it was a pretty crowded marketplace.
So he said, what's the one taboo that like people
(14:11):
will pay to see that you're allowed to show in theaters,
but that studios won't make. And it was Gore.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
He was the first guy to start showing really disgusting
bloody scenes in his movie, uh, blood Feast, Blood Feast, yeah,
which actually was three years after Psycho, and Psycho also
did a lot for the mainstream ushering in of sure,
a little bit of Gore in that, but there was a.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Shot of blood following Janet Lee's murder, you know, which
is I imagine it's pretty graphic for Hollywood, right, and
that's what you think of your like, oh, those stupid sixties,
but that's you know, they were so naive, like that
was controversial, not really though, Like if you stepped just
slightly outside of Hollywood, you ran into things like Blood Feast, right,
or you know Last House on the Left, Yes, well
(15:00):
that's nineteen seventy two, I think.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, Wes Craven. So that was important because all of
a sudden, a drugs started, well three things. Political themes
started popping up, right, sexual freedom, the youth generation. Drugs
started popping up in movies for the first time drug use.
Well not for the first time. We'll talk about reefer madness. Yeah,
but teenagers were depicted as victims of violence for the
(15:24):
first time. Like Last House on the Left, I believe
is kind of regarded as the first teen slasher film.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, Wes Craven, it was almost a snuff film. It
was almost regarded like that.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
It's pretty hardcore, but yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Definitely blood Feasts definitely allowed Last House on the Left
to come around, but it also probably more directly formed
the foundation for slasher exploitation, like Friday the thirteenth, Third
Nightmare on Elm Street. Absolutely, My Bloody Valentine's another big one.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, The Crazy Oh yeah, that was in a digital right,
there's a remake now, I think, yeah, yeah, remakes. So
(16:30):
that brings us We're in the seventies, politically charged movies
brought race to the mix, and all of a sudden
we had black exploitation or black exploitation movement starting exploiting
the civil rights movement basically. But the cool thing about
black exploitation films is for the first time you had
African Americans as heroes.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, and not heroes in a typical sense, not even
anti heroes, but heroes that were like, they didn't ride
into town on on a white horse or wearing a
white hat, right, They very clearly wore black hats if
need be, Like they would engage in crime, they would
murder people if nippy they were. They were basically like
(17:13):
the face of black America coming out of the Civil
Rights are like, we're ticked off.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Yeah, you know, and we're gonna stick it to the
white man, stick it to the man, and we're gonna
do it in these movies.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Chuck, I know the movie you're about to to mention.
Let's this is it?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You keep the fath of me.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
You my man, You're my favorite man, can you.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
So?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yes? That was a landmark film for a lot of reasons.
One because it grows four million bucks and it made
the major studio say, hey, you know what the black
hero is marketable?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, well, you haven't said the title yet.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Oh I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Okay, you gotta say it right too.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Melvin Van Peebles film Sweet Sweetbacks, Badass.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Song, Nice That was well done. That was nineteen seventy one.
Melvin Van Peebles, whose last name may sound familiar. He's
the father of Mario Van Peebles for you younger cats
listening to this.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
One cats our age actually younger cats, because he's kind of.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Like, okay, so cats are Yeah, that's Mario van Peebles's dad,
you know, New Jack City.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
So Melvin Van Peebles made this movie. He produced it,
he raised the money for it, he wrote it, he
directed it, he starred in it. And it was the
beginning of the blaxploitation subgenre, which is one of the
most important genres of any American.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Cinema absolutely ever, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And so considering how important that subgenre is, this quote
from Time Magazine's film critic Richard Corliss should really hit home.
Sweet Sweet Back is quote, without question or competition, the
most influential movie by a black filmmaker. So this is
a really big deal, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And it was just quickly on the plot. It was
about a black man who was a jiggielow who.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Had which is a male prostitute for you, young.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Cat, and he had a deal worked out with the
cops where he said, you know, you can arrest me
as much as you want, release me right afterward, fill
your quota. It's all good. And then one day, while
the arrest is going down, the cops attack a black panther,
and Sweet Sweet Back kills one of the cops and
then just says he just goes on a rampage against
(19:36):
the white man after that.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So you've got prostitution, tons and tons of nudity and sex,
lots of violence, and other crimes all wrapped up into
a black power theme.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And then to top it all off, you have what
is arguably a child sex scene starring Mario Van Peebles
Melvivan People's son at I think age six, He's a
kid having sex as Sweet Sweet Pack. It's his first
sexual encounter with an older person. And in the cult podcast,
if he became a cult leader, he would have taken
(20:15):
any younger bride, remember I am. It's right. So if
you're interested in that movie and you can't get enough
of Sweet Sweetbacks bad Ass Song, you could also check
out Bad Ass exclamation Point, which is Mario Van Peebles's
biopic about his father making that movie.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
That's right, And I have not seen that, but I
wanted to at the time, and it just sort of
supped tough the cracks.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
There's always Netflix, Baby, that's right.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And what happened with Sweet Sweetback was that, like I said,
that told the studios, hey, that we can market this,
and so they got a little more mainstream with movies
like Superfly, which were a little safer Shaft Shaft movies
at wide audiences would enjoy as well.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, the ones that didn't scare the man exactly like
Shaft's a good guy. He doesn't take any guff from them.
But the people he's not taking gup from or the cops,
who's really on the same side as That's right. So
chuck exploitation obviously huge. It affected everything from you know,
Menace to society to Blackula. All of that came from
(21:16):
Sweet Sweet Back. And we mentioned the guy who directed
this next movie, Russ Myers. This is probably a seminal work.
Let's listen to this clip from the trailer.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
You ladies and gentlemen gold go for a wild wild
ride with the Watusi cuts, but beware the sweetest kittens
have the sharpest claw or your own safety. See faster
pussy cuts, kill kill wild weather, wild wheels. Race the
fastest pussy cuts and they'll be jill so far woman sulpit.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
Placing your stuff on this kid then hanging. It's a
nothing by nothing.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
He's got nothing to do with the Moneys, the money.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Jack and Jill.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
They make a mafia look like brownie They.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Make the mafia look like Browniees.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
That's right. That says quite a bit about them. So
that was faster pussy Cat Kill Kill. In nineteen sixty
five russ Meyer's basically women exploitation film nudy film. Remember
russ Meyers was King of the nudies. He made twenty
six movies, but this is probably at the very least
(22:32):
is his best known, if not like his masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, and he hatched a slew of I mean not
that he wasn't legit. He was, but what mainstream people
would call legit filmmakers were came up through the russ
Meyer film camp basically. Yeah, So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, and russ Meyer also a little known fact. Another
movie that's mentioned in this article. There's an article on
the site, by the way, called ten noteworthy exploitation Films
that this is based on, Yeah, written by you, Yeah,
which I showingly recommend going to read because it has
a lot of extra stuff we're not going to cover
in this one. Yeah, or at least extra movies. But
(23:09):
russ Meyer directed a movie called Beyond the Valley of
the Dolls two, right, which was the bastard son of
the legitimate film that Beyond Valley of Dolls is a
jiggle fest written by none other than Roger Ebert's right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
The movie Roger Ebert ever wrote.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, he had a Yeah, it was a very brief career.
But that's it. That's an illustrious one. Really.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah. So if you're going to talk about the plot,
a faster pussy cat kill kill And I say that
because there's three exclamation points and a comma.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Exclamation point kill it three exclamation points.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, Okay, I thought it was a comment then too.
All right, either way, that's a lot of punctuation for
a film title, right, And it was about three bisexual
go go dancers. They go on a crime spree out
in the desert and what do they do. They end
up killing a man or no, they kill the man
and a couple keep girl.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
They basically empower her, yeah, come on with by murdering
her boyfriend and she ends up on the crimes free
with them.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And they basically end up going to an isolated house
with a wheelchair bound old man and his sons.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Who's a leech. They're all leeches.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
They want these women, Yeah, but they don't know that
these women are tough, tough ladies.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
And the men and his son, the man and his
sons apparently are allegedly have a large amount of cash
stashed in this house. So it's kind of like a
standoff of gall see who will come out on top?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Well, and you know who comes out on top. And
this film was noteworthy for one big reason was that
there's a lot of duelism towards gender. So on one hand,
he's exploiting these women and apparently got women in their
first trimester of pregnancy, so they were more voluptuous.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, not in this film, but in his other films
he would hire I can't remember the lady's name, but
the star of Festor pussy Cat Kill Kill is in
other Russ Meyers films, gotcha, and he made sure that
she was like well in to her third first trimester
to enhance her natural bustiness.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
That's right, yeah, her bosom if you will. But the script,
like I said, it was dualism because while he did that,
it also empowered women because the women in his films
bowed to no man. No, they were the champs. They
were they were heroines really for the first time.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
But they were objectified very clearly. But at the same time,
if you follow the script and really look at their characters,
then yeah, they're powerful women.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And this kind of kicked off a big slew of
women exploitation films, exploitation films, the women in Prison movies.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yes, which we Lead's sisters very big.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
At the time. Women were lead actors for the first time,
they were aggressors for the first time, still nude often
while they were doing this stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Spawn the television show The Facts of Life.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
But the interesting thing is they found that these movies
appealed to men and women because men would go see
it for obvious reasons. Yeah, women would go see it
because it was empowering and they didn't mind, you know,
looking at the naked ladies because women are much more
grown up, sure than men are. But Josh, the seventies
also got a little schlocky, which in a sense was
(26:15):
true to the exploitation model. They like, they really went
over the top. No more political statements, no more advancing
of women's gender or African merin Americans. It just got
really shlocky and outrageous at that point.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Well, what happened starting in the sixth really took hold
in the seventies, and then from that point on was
exploitation cinema, early on showing a live birth, nudest camps,
these are all geared toward adults in the sixties, and
then later on big time in the seventies, the audience
became almost exclusively teenagers, like those driving teenagers or well
(26:51):
teenagers anywhere, who cares, but the audience was teenagers, and
the cast started to become teenage, so it had a
little more of a bent on what teenagers we're having
to deal with, like bullying, like the kid in this
next clip right, which is I have to say, one
of my favorite movies from way way back.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Here we go with Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, meet little Melvin.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
He's a ninety pound weekly. Everyone hated Melbourne.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, I'm going to take this mop and shove it
down your throat.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
They teased him.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
I want to do it with you, PoCA. They taunted him.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
They tormented him until he had a horrifying accident and
fell into a vat of nuclear waste, transforming Little Melbourne
into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength.
Speaker 5 (27:45):
Movement became the Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So Josh. The Toxic Avenger movie was unique in that
its film production company, Trauma mm HM, is very popular
in their own right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Have you ever seen surf Nazis Must Die?
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I haven't, but I know about Trump. I mean, they
are master self promoters and marketiers.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
They were one of the first production companies to have
a website, like a really comprehensive website. You should go
on their website, their whole catalog. It's really just well done.
It's schlocky, but it's well done, right.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
And Toxic Avenger follows the story of a ninety eight
pound weekling who was picked on released the same year's Ghostbusters.
Do you notice that nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Right, Yeah, so it was it occurred at zero year.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
It's year zero. Yeah, we'll just put the null set
represent that. And this kid gets pushed out of a
window into a that of toxic sludge.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Which that's beyond bullying.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Really yeah, I mean, this is basically it's a more
twisted version of modern problems. The Chevy Chase film from
a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Okay, I have seen that one.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Oh you never saw a modern problem. No, it's very silly,
but he got toxic sledge dumped on him and had
special powers.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
From years earlier, prior or after.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
What when was the movie, Yeah, it was two years
before Toxic Avenger. But Toxic Avenger took it into are
special effects way that modern Problems never did.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
So the janitor Melvin I believe his name is, becomes toxified,
it becomes toxic. The Toxic Avenger who beats the tar
out of people at the health club where he was
abused and mutated and has tons of sex as the
Toxic Avenger because his newfound manhood is just irresistible to women.
(29:40):
And one of the things that's noteworthy about the Toxic
Avenger is that they actually tried to make decent effects. Yeah,
it wasn't just it wasn't horrible. I guess you could.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Say, well for the time, you know, it wasn't bad.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
No, they remained bad, and they probably were kind of
bad even back then, but for for grindhouse films, yeah
they were, they were great, right. And it was also
noteworthy because it came out of Trauma Productions or Trouma
Studios and it led to a whole line of Toxic
Avenger movies and schlock in general, which is basically like
(30:17):
some crazy, horrible thing has happened, but we're not going
to dwell too much on that. Let's see what let's
let's see where the action takes us. Yeah, exactly, So
like Bad Taste, the Peter Peter Jackson's first film, right
is a great example of schlock that came out of
Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
And he had the film that followed, Peter Jackson Dead Alive,
which was at one point supposedly the gorriest film ever made. Really,
although it sounds like your new Korean movie has surpassed that.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, I think it probably has. I haven't seen that
Alive's seen Bad Taste and Bad Taste it was horribly gory,
but I think this has it beat.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, but I bet you if anything. I mean, I
haven't seen the one you're talking about. But is it
more realistic gore?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, with bad just like these are aliens that are
having their heads blown off. So it definitely takes you
at least a a degree away from caring this is
happening to human beings. And I saw the Devil, so
it definitely is driven home a little more well.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
And the violence that even the gore back then it
was so over the top, right out of Fangora magazine.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
It's like, you know, dude, Fangoria is still around, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
I figured it was.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
I'm glad it is. We follow it on our Twitter feed.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Oh we do. Yeah, Like Ahead'll explode in scanners and
you know, it's not disturbing because it's so clearly over
the top. But these new movies are much more disturbing.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
If you ask me, I agree wholeheartedly because they're more realistic.
So carrying on with Chucks and my Ciscal and eber Act.
This is the second to last movie in our little
list today, and this one's from way back from the thirties.
So let's talk about reefer madness.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
Lee's high school boys and girls are having a hot
at the local soda fountain. Innocently they dance innocent of
you and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors. May wanna
the burning weed with its roots in hell or watchcase
(32:13):
if you want to, you will meet Bill, who once
took pride in his strong will, as he takes the
first step toward enslavement. Here he.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Softly so, so that was the excellent reefer Madness, which
was an exploitation drug exploitation film and very much a
cautionary tale. It even shaped the drug culture and how
(33:02):
people looked at drugs. Is you know marijuana at the time,
Is this really evil thing that can make you crazy
and kill people?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah? And actually, in very much the vein of early
exploitation films, it was produced and distributed as a public service,
like the alternate title for it was Tell Your Children,
And the whole thing set in a pta meeting where
this guy is relating the story, and it's a story
(33:31):
about lost lives, about murder, about guilt and paranoia, and
all of it is fed and based on rampant drug use,
which is really just a lot of pot smoking which
can turn you into a fiend. And it's apparently the
director his name is Dwayne Esper. He did other exploitation
(33:52):
films from the thirties like Sex Madness, Psychotic Connections, and
he made a name for himself basically taking these things
that may have originally been written as a public service
right and making them so outlandish that he exploited the
people who were making these movies right and created this
(34:13):
legacy of like just insanely over the top exploitation films
from the thirties.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Well, and ironically, refor Madness years later would become not
so much an anti drug propaganda film, how should I
say this, but a film that college students would sit
around and watch while partaking and laughing at this whole thing. Yeah,
and a cult film.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah, because it puts drugs so far out there that
if you, despite all the warnings, take drugs anyway and
you realize that you don't turn into a fiend and
murder somebody, you refor Madness basically dares you to go further.
So it's kind of an it's the opposite. It has
the opposite effect of what I think its original intent
(34:55):
was before Duayne Asberg got its hands on it. And
as a side note, I had trouble deciding between Reefer
Madness and another nineteen thirties film by a guy named
Todd Browning called Freaks.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Oh yeah, well that was that was huge because it
was the first big exploitation film pre Hayes Code and Last.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, first and last, and it was it was an
MGM film. Yeah, and it's widely considered a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, mean, it looks great. It's it's not it was
well done.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
It's a huge it's a it's a revenge movie, which
is a very common theme in exploitation films. Yeah, especially
violent ones. But it's it featured Browning dared to have
real freaks.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I guess if you yes, Circus side show freaks, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Star in this and they basically exact their revenge on
people who've mistreated them. And I have not seen it.
Oh really yeah, yeah, I wanted to. I hear it's
just awesome. I can't win.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
It ended his career though, unfortunately. Really yeah, and he
was a popular filmmaker at the time.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Well, hats off to him for first staying true to
his art. Chuck just took his hat off on the
old cap. All right, Chuck, here's the last one that
we've got a clip for which I think everybody will
notice or recognize without even a word. There's not even
a word in this clip, and you will understand what's
going on.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So, Josh, those are the unmistakable sounds of fist of
fury of mister one.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Mister Bruce Ley, Bruce Lee kicking bottom. This first movie, Yeah,
which was originally titled well, it's still title I think
in Asia the Big and in America it is its
titled Fists of Fury.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, it was on the other night. Okay, Well I
saw part of it. Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't realize
it was his first one, though I would have tuned in.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, And it was first of what five five major films, right,
And basically it's the story of a martial arts student
who's investigating the murder of his teacher. And it began
the martial arts exploitation sub genre.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Which later would become just martial arts films. Right or
was it still considered exploitation.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
It's all the same, Okay, they're one and the same.
Anything that even remotely resembles a Bruce Lee movie, specifically
The Big Boss or any of them, is martial arts
exploitation technically, because again we arrive at that one definition.
It's over the top, like Bruce Ley's taking on scores
of anonymous thugs for two hours, one after the other,
(37:52):
for two hours, just beating the tar out of all
these people without tiring. Really, everybody's kind of waiting their
turn politely in a circle around him, and he has
to beat everybody right, and then he works his way
up and it's over the top, so it is exploitation.
But it led to other films like Samurai exploitation. Remember
American Ninja. Remember the whole ninja film thing that came
(38:13):
out in the mid eighties. Uh huh, that's from Bruce
Lee's that's Bruce Lee's doing well.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Yeah, and you go to these at the time when
I was first going to New York many years ago,
that would be uh, you know, you go to Times
Square and this was still when Time Square was kind
of gross, and that would be just the the Martial
Arts movie store where it was all that stuff. Man,
like thousands of movies about ninja's and samuraiz and martial
artists and very big.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I was inspired by American Ninja to become a ninja.
Remember I entered a ninja training with Tommy Roper, who
had like more throwing stars than any kid.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I ever, what did you have? Like one throwing star?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I borrowed his. Okay, I was not allowed to have
throwing stars on my own.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Oh I wasn't either.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Baptist, No, that was very violent. No, nunbchucks.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Not even that transcends like religious back. It's like, if
you're a good parent, you shouldn't let your kid have
throwing star.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
It's a good point. And as you point in the article,
this actually led to another subgenre, which was Bruce Lee
lookalike movies. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
So he made five movies and then died at age
thirty two. Yeah, and nineteen seventy three. So Big Boss
released in nineteen seventy one, he dies two years later.
Everybody's like, no, so let's find some guys that look
like him, which is really kind of stereotypical and racist
for the West. But Bruce Lee l I or Lee
(39:33):
or l E or just l E. Well, Bruce l
I or Bruce ell Ee. I don't think there was
ever like Bruce l e I g H. I don't
think it ever got that far. But I mean they
released dozens of Bruce Lee and I just made air
quote films.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
So Bruce Lee created the martial arts exploitation genre and subgenre,
and he inadvertently created the Bruce Lee exploitation subgenre of
the martial arts exploitation subgenre.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
By dying young, Yeah and being very popular. Yeah, And
which one was the one he had? Kareem Antal Jabbarian
Enter the Dragon.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, if you've never seen a like seven foot plus
guy to martial arts, you should check that out.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
And if you can't get enough Bruce Lee and you
have a good sense of humor, check out Kentucky Fried
movie made by one Jerry's Rucker, Jerry who we met
in Los Angeles recently and who used an exploitive to me.
He did it was one of the high points of
my life, it is. But yeah, Kentucky Fry movie awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Actually, when we met Jerry Zucker, we told him that
our little speech we were given that night was one
of the highlights of our career thus far. And he says, well,
it doesn't say much about your career, does it. Like
the first thing to do does is something.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Funny and we just like kind of fawned over the man.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
We should mention briefly and it's in the article, but
just as a teaser. The late seventies we got Nazi
exploitation movies, not exploitation as a subgenre. Yeah, And one
of the major players there movie was ilsa she Wolf
of the.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
S S Yeah, which led to ilsa Siberian Tigris and
ilsa harm Keeper of the oil sheeks. Really, there's a
whole sex violence franchise, Dominatrix franchise that was based out
of the Nazis' floitation film.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
You know, one could argue that q T mister Tarantino
has made nothing but exploitation films since pulp fiction, because
the kill bills were definitely martial arts exploitation. The Jackie
Brown was a riff on on black exploitation. Sure, death
Proof obviously that was what they were trying to do there.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Death Proof is Carsploitation, which follows in the tradition of
Vanishing Point, which was released the same year as basically
its rival to the founder, the founding movie of Carsploitation
Two Lane Blacktop right, whichat movie. Yeah, if you want
to start an argument with an exploitation film, buff tell him.
Vanishing Point was the beginning of copl They'll get mad
(42:02):
at you.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
And then finally Tarantino with The Inglorious Bastards, which was
clearly a riff on the Nazi exploitation films. Yeah, beaten
Nazis to death with the baseball bat, yes, about as
over the top and lurid as it gets awesome.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, so, and then Machete I hated it, but Robert
it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
And of course he was the other half of the
Rodriguez was the other half with his Planet Terror of
the Grindhouse double feature. Yeah, okay, and Machete was born
from one of the little fake trailers they made in
that movie.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Oh is that right?
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, it was one of the fake movie previews.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
It is even as far as like a purposefully B
movie not good.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
No, well, death Proof was okay, but I didn't like
Planet Tear that much.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, and then Chuck. Well, first of all, before we
get to today, we also have to give a shout
out to Porno's. Porno came out of the exploitation film genre.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
And it arguably had a lot to do with killing
the X or pushing it into the mainstream, because once
you had the movie Deep Throat and all of a sudden,
pornography was on the screen, it's like, you can't do
an exploitation film about it anymore. If there's the real
deal going on, it loses all its power. And then
a little movie called Jaws came along and all of
(43:12):
a sudden, a quote unquote B movie style movie made
gobs and gobs of money, and that put a little
bit of mainstream respectability on the map all of a sudden,
And so one might argue, Josh that movies like Jaws
and Pornography kind of shoved exploitation films even though they
still exist. They're sort of mainstream movies now.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yeah, well, yeah, I guess another word for grindhouse these
days is blockbuster. Jaws was the first blockbuster movie, summer blockbuster,
and now you have to have summer blockbusters, and they're
always over the top and exploitive of viewers' tastes.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And not only Tarantino, those other filmmakers out that are
trying to capture that seventies vibe with overt exploitation films again,
shot that way, shot on thirty five or I'm sorry,
sixteen millimeter film, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, so, Chuck, I say, our message to everybody is
number one, go on to the site, read ten noteworthy
exploitation films. Number two if that interests you. Like, even
the ten noteworthy exploitation films I chose don't cover even
(44:22):
I think a third of the exploitation subgenres. So there'll
probably be another article forthcoming at some point. If there is,
we'll let you know and then go watch some exploitation
movies and enjoy them.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, watch the documentary American Grindhouse too, if you're into that.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, that's a great one. It's free on Hulu. Actually
there's ads, but Hulu dot com has American Grindhouse for free.
It is not safe for work now, in no way,
shape or form. I was watching it at work and
I was like, WHOA, Okay, really, yeah, if you are
watching it at work, tab browsing is what you want
to be doing, right, and keep your finger over the
mouse and keep the cursor over the other tab.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Right and say or in our case, you can just
say it's research. But you can't do that. If you're
an accountant at JP Morgan.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
You're just a cicco, a weirdo, that weird guy in accounting.
So look up ten noteworthy exploitation films. You can type
that into the handy search bar HowStuffWorks dot Com. And now,
at long last, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Joshua's I'm gonna call this it's a small world after all.
Dear guys, I'm a longtime fan from Minnesota and enjoy
spreading stuff. You should know. Goodness, wherever I go, my
coworkers at a local coffee shop know me for the
trivia and information I abound in. But after giving you
what that he says he abounds in, I guess he's
proficient in. Okay, did he misuse that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (45:46):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
It sounds hilarious.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
It does after giving credit where credit is due, which
means us several of them decided to subscribe your podcast.
Listening to the podcast is also given me an advantage
at work for thinking of the coffee shop's daily trivia question,
which saves people ten cents on their drink if you
know it. After relistening to how legos work, I set
the trivia question for which company produces the most tires
(46:12):
on a yearly basis? Abridge stone be goodyear see Lego Bricks.
You know the answer, John. Most people were surprised and
pleased to find out it was Lego Bricks, reminding me
about the little playsets that their kids enjoy. This is
where it gets weird. One of the customers read the
trivia question, looked at me and said, it's a puntsy scheme.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Nice, that's awesome, and.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
The best Italian accent he could muster. Everyone else gave
him an odd look. I started laughing. He apologized and
then say and said he just heard it on a
podcast he had just listened to Legos followed by Ponzi Schemes.
Long story short, we were both pleased to find out
that we were both fans. We are now on a
first name basis, eager to discuss the most recent episodes.
So these dudes of Minneapolis. Daniel, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Thanks Daniel and his friend now new friend. This is
his unnamed friend. Hedn't name him, you wouldn't know him.
He met him at camp.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
That's right, band camp.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Thanks Daniel, that's really awesome. Wow, that's really cool. Let
me let us know if you tweet those daily facts
for your coffeehouse, because we will start following you. Indeed,
that'd be very cool if you want to follow us.
We have our own Twitter feed. Seriously, it's called s
Y s K Podcast one word, ten thousand strong plus Yeah.
(47:30):
We're on uh no, we're up to like eleven and change.
That's plus ten. That's true. We're also on Facebook, Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff. You should know. We have a
Kiva team, right, we're trying to get the half a
million dollars right, that's Kiva dot org, slash Team slash
stuff you should know, And then you can always send
(47:50):
us a good old fashioned email. We want to know
what your favorite exploitation film of all time is. You
can send that in an email to Stuff Podcast at
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
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