June 27, 2025 • 49 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
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, Chuck here. If you're wondering why you have
suddenly ten new episodes in your feed, this is because
we thought we might group things together and try a
little playlist here for the summer and see how it went.
And in this case, we're covering some of our movies
or movies in general. And I am setting up our
semi recent episode from Oh, I guess it's not that recent.
(00:22):
It's from April twenty eleven on exploitation films and how
they work. It was a really fun one to do.
And if you love cinema and you love movies, and
if you love exploitation movies especially, you're gonna love this episode.
So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hang on there, fella, Oh yes, I know what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Go ahead, get us going here.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, Chuck, the other night you may have noticed. I
know you did, because I watched you watch this just
kind of creepy but not really. You and I were
on TV, Yeah, on the Science Channel.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, we did the little shorts and we're actually proud
of how these turned out, which is a rarity for
us when there's a camera.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
It is, so we have more shorts coming up on
Science Channel. They're running Saturdays and Sundays until I think
the first week of May or something, right.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, and now that they're all running between ten and
ten thirty now supposedly during the shows I think on Saturdays,
this is Oddities, which is an awesome and weird show
it is, and then Sundays, which is Firefly, which is
everyone loves Firefly.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, I mean, I actually consider it an honor to
be played during Firefly. Yeah, me too, even though the
cast of Firefly has no idea that this is going
on because it's pre recorded.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Exactly, Josh, So this what'sa day Thursday obviously, yeah, Saturday
and Sunday night this weekend. Yeah, on the Science Channel.
That is the Science Channel, it's part of the Discovery
Networks between ten and ten already, set your little DVR
and then look, they run during the commercial breaks, or.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
If you're not so fancy that you have a DVR,
you can actually watch it as it happens.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's right. And we are able to run a few
of these online. Now I'm not the ones that are
on TV, but there are three funny ones if you
know how to navigate to the video page of HowStuffWorks
dot Com. Do that, or you can just type in
how stuff Works video and to Google and it'll take
you straight to the video page.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You could also search stuff you should know, Colon large
hadron collider, stuff you should know, Colon body farms and
stuff you should know, Colon mirror, neurons on a search
engine and it should take you right there.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And if it doesn't, you tell us and we will
talk to those search engines.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And if you just get to the video page, you
can search stuff you should know in search videos and
it'll bring up that in a couple of other little
funny things we've done.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, so that's it. We just take like ten minutes
onto this episode.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I know. We appreciate your support. Who mine, No, oh,
everyone that wants to watch these okay.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Okay, so are you ready? Okay, 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 (03:16):
Shut your mouth.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's yeah, okay, sure, all right, this is this is
our first ever movie centric podcast, right.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Movie centric for sure. Yeah, we've mentioned movies of course
all the time, but this one is like, this.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Is all about movies. So this is by popular request
to an extent. People want to see, like, they want
to hear us talk about movies and just do a
movie podcast. So we decided to focus on exploitation films. Right.
This is also probably the first podcast that we're going
to say, if you are a teacher of children in
(03:53):
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. We don't generally try
to alienate audiences. We're not attempting to now. It's just
a natural byproduct of the exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Can't talk about exploitation films without talking about some lurid
subject matter.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, you can't say exploitation without ploit.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, they weren't exploiting, just people being nice, right, niceploitation.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
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 (04:32):
I think Oh, he said more violent than Old Boy.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, the guy 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
(04:55):
my life. The only the only reason, like I was
able to complete is because I'm like, this is it's
a movie, I know, 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 (05:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
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 (05:21):
Yeah, there's a big wave of teen exploitation films, and
we'll get to that, but yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
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
(05:47):
at exploitation films.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, you're basically they're exploiting some of the seedier aspects
of humanity most times.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Sure, like murder or sex, like weird sex, that kind
of thing, sexed.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Sex, teenagers rebelling against parents.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Sure, like a 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
(06:24):
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 (06:42):
Right, Yeah, what's the Is there a definition definition?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
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. Okay, gotcha, it's my understanding. Okay, so let's
(07:06):
do this all right.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, that's the old joke. Was that in the awesome
documentary American Grindhouse, which documents this 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 (07:22):
Because the guy was like the directors like to his girlfriend, hey,
would you mind taking your clothes off or the camera exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
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. It showed clips of like decapitations
and violence and guys fighting, yeah, and knit 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 and violence right first.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
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 (08:05):
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,
(08:27):
which nineteen thirteen. It's a lot of dough.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
That is a ton of though, And.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That was Universal Pictures and they went, hey, going on
to something here.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Right after that was released the Hayes Code. Will Hayes
was the Postmaster General and Presbyterian elder and he was
making one hundred grand a year during the depression.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Unbelievable, right.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
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 slavery, Like we need to pure this up, right.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
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 (09:20):
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,
the somebody else is going to operate in a black market.
A black market's going to bring up simple economics. Yeah,
and that's exactly what happened, and that's where exploitation cinema
(09:40):
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 (09:58):
Yes, you can do that. You can make your movies
all day long, but if they're never exhibited, then 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
(10:22):
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 main stream.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
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 (10:39):
Yeah, that was a whole genre, early genre of exploitation.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Well, and so was early on a lot of the
film centered around like how to wear a condom in
these sex hygiene films.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, because there was no information about that out there,
and so exploitation filmmakers, whether disingenuously or genuinely, were ending
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
(11:12):
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 (11:18):
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. Yeah, so
you should educate yourself. But what they really want to
do is get.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Their movie scene and make some money exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
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. They would show their movies.
Supreme Court said no more, and all of a sudden,
(11:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
People had seen a lot of death recently, well a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Of death, and then 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 (12:16):
Enough that led to another subgenre of exploitation film, the
nwdest colony film, 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 it actually
was film that a news camp. Probably not. Mostly there
(12:36):
were actors and actresses just engaged in archery naked or
long walks naked.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
There could be no sex.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Still that was still no taboo, 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. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
After that, through the history we had things like the
teen like you said, the teen Rebellion of the fifties
with the rebel thought of Cause and Blackboard Jungle and
movies like that all of a sudden were 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 to
(13:16):
drive ins a lot at first. Oh yeah, it's all kids.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
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 (13:31):
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 (13:42):
It was very much a step process, right.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
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, and basically it was one person would make
(14:05):
some film and it would just break all the rules,
and then a bunch of other people would make similar films,
right and the same. 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
(14:29):
films and then they probably reached their pinnacle with Russ Myers, right,
King of the Nudies is what he's called.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
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,
(15:00):
And that has a lot to do with the fact
that there was the sixties and Kennedy was shot and
the United States was just becoming increasingly violent.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
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
I guess the long standing prohibition on Hollywood producing exploitation
films was it was lessened decreased, and so studios were like, oh,
(15:31):
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 1 (15:49):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
That's gonna be a quiz question later.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
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 Codre. I can't remember the other
guys 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 will
(16:14):
pay to see that you're allowed to show in theaters,
but that studios won't make. And it was Gore. Oh yeah,
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
(16:35):
did a lot for the mainstream ushering in of sure,
a little bit of Gore in that, but well there's
like a.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Shot of blood following Janet Lee's murder, you know, which
is I imagine it's pretty graphic for Hollywood, and that's what
you think of You're like, oh, those stupid sixties, but
that's you know, there 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
(17:03):
that's nineteen seventy two, I think.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
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
(17:27):
first time, like Last House on the Left I believe
is kind of regarded as the first teen slasher film.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, Wes Craven, it was almost a snuff film. It
was almost regarded like that.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's pretty hardcore.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
But yeah, it 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 or Nightmare on Elm Street. Absolutely, My Bloody
Valentine's another big one. Crazy great, yeah, crazy. Oh yeah,
(18:02):
that was an original, right, there's a remake now.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I think, Yeah, yeah, remakes. So that brings us We're
in the seventies, politically charged movies brought race into the
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
(18:25):
films is for the first time you had African Americans
as heroes.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, and not heroes in a typical sense, not even
anti heroes, but heroes that were like They didn't ride
into town on a white horse or wearing a white hat.
They very clearly wore black hats. If need be, like
they would engage in crime, they would murder people, if
nimbi they were. They were basically like the face of
(18:53):
black America coming out of the Civil Rights are like,
we're ticked off.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, you know, and we're gonna stick it to the
white man to get to the man, and we're gonna
do it in these movies.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Chuck, I know the movie you're about to mention. Let's
this is it.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
You keep the faith in me, You my man, You're
my favorite man.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Can so 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
(19:35):
what the black hero is marketable?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, well you haven't said the title yet.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Oh I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Okay, you gotta say it right too.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Melvin Van Peebles film Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Nice, That was well done. That was nineteen seventy one.
Men Van Peebles, whose last name may sound familiar. He's
the father of Mario van Peebles. For your younger cats
listening to this one.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Cats all right, age actually younger cats because he's kind
of like, okay, so cats A, yeah, that's Mario Van
Peebles's dad, you know, New Jack City. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
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 cinema absolutely ever, absolutely,
and so considering how important that subgenre is, this quote
(20:31):
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 (20:45):
And it was. It was just quickly on the plot.
It was about a black man who was a jiggielow.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Who, which is a male prostitute for you younger cats.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
And he had a deal worked out with the cops
where he was he said, you know, you can arrest
me as much as you want, release me right after
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 the white man after that.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
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 (21:29):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And then to top it all off, you have what
is arguably a child sex scene starring Mario van People's
melvivv People's son at I think age six, having sex
as Sweet Sweetback. It's his first sexual encounter with an
older person. And in the cult podcast, if he became
(21:51):
a cult leader, he would have taken a younger bride. Remember,
Oh yeah, that'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. That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
And I have not seen that, but I wanted to
at the time, and it just sort of subp at
the cracks.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
There's always Netflix, baby, that's right.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
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 (22:31):
Yeah, the ones that didn't scare the man exactly like
Scheft's a good guy. He doesn't take any guff from
the man, but the people he's not taking guff from,
or the cops, who he's really on the same side.
Ass that's right. So chuck exploitation obviously huge. It affected
everything from you know, Menace to Society to Black Ela.
(22:52):
All of that came from Sweet Sweet Back. And we
mentioned the guy who directed this next movie, Russ Myers.
This is pro probably a seminole work. Let's listen to
this clip from the trailer.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
You walk, Ladies and gentlemen, Gold Gold for a wild,
wild ride with the Watusi cats. But beware, the sweetest
kittens have the sharpest claw. By your own safety.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
See faster pussy.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Cats kill, kill, wild women, wild wheels. Race the fastest
pussy cats and they'll be Jill to sober woman Fulton,
wild and cooked.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
You're placing yourself on this kid, then hanging itself for
nothing by.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Nothing, got nothing to do with the money.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Jis the money.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Jack and Jill. They make a mafia look like Brownie.
They make the mafia look like Brownie.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
That's right. That says quite a bit about them. So
this that was faster pussy Cat Kill Kill in nineteen
sixty five Russ Meers basically women exploitation film NUDI film.
Remember Russ Meyers was King of the nudies. He made
twenty six movies. But this is probably at the very
(24:09):
least is his best known, if not like his masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
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 (24:25):
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 showly 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
(24:46):
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,
the movie Roger Ebert ever wrote, Yeah, he had a Yeah,
it was a very brief career. But that's it. That's
(25:06):
an illustrious one. Really.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Points and a comma exclamation point kill.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Is it three exclamation points?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Okay, I thought it was a common 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
and or no, they kill the man and a couple
keep the girl.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
They basically empower herme on with it by murdering her boyfriend,
and she ends up on the crime spree with them.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
And they basically end up going to an isolated house
with a wheelchair bound old man and his son's.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Who's a lech? They're all leches, these women.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, but they don't know that these women are tough,
no tough ladies.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And the men and his son. The man and his
sons apparently or allegedly have a large amount of cash
stashed in this house. So it's kind of like a
standoff of gall to see who will come out on top.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Well, and you know who comes out on top. Yeah,
And this film was noteworthy for one big reason was
that there's a lot of dualism 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 (26:25):
Yeah, not in this film, but in his other folks
he would hire. I can't remember the lady's name, but
the star of Festor pussy Cat Kill Kill was in
other Russ Meyers films, gotcha, and he made sure that
she was like well into her third first trimester to
enhance her natural bustiness.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
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 (26:56):
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 (27:06):
And this kind of kicked off a big slew of
women exploitation films, exploitation films, the women in prison.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Movies, yes, which we lads sisters very.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Big 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 (27:26):
Spawned the television show The Facts of Life.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
But the interesting thing is they found that these movies
appealed to men and women because men would go see
it for obvious reasons. 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. Yeah, but josh, the seventies also
got a little schlocky, which in a sense was true
(27:52):
to the exploitation model, Like they really went over the top.
No more political statements, no more advancing of women's gender
or African marins Americans. It just got really shlocky and
outrageous at that point.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
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
(28:28):
teenagers anywhere, who cares, but the audience was teenagers, and
the cast started to become teenagers, so it had a
little more of a bent on what teenagers were 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 (28:49):
Here we go with Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Yeah, meet little Melvin. He's a ninety pound weekly. Everyone
hated Melvin. Yeah, I'm gonna take this mop and shove
it down your throat, me teased him.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I want to do it with you, podkay.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
They taunted him. They tormented him until he had a
horrifying accident and fell into a bat of nuclear waste,
transforming little Melting into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman
size and strength. The movement became the Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So Josh. The Toxic Avenger movie was unique in that
its film production company, Trauma, is very popular in their
own right.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Have you ever seen surf Nazis Must Die?
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I haven't, but I know about you Trauma. I mean,
they are master self promoters and marketeers.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
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 (29:58):
And Toxic Avenger follows a 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 4 (30:08):
Right?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, so it was it occurred at zero year.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
It's the year zero. Yeah, we'll just put the null
set represent that. And this kid gets pushed out of
a window into a vat of toxic sludge.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Which that's beyond bullying.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
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 (30:29):
Okay, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
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 (30:38):
From years earlier, prior after.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
What Win was the movie? Yeah, it was two years
before Toxic Avenger, But Toxic Avenger took it into a
gore special effects way that modern Problems never did.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
So the janitor Melvin I believe his name is, becomes toxified,
it becomes toxic, the tox 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.
(31:16):
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 say.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Well for the time, you know, it wasn't bad.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
No, there, they remained bad, and they probably were kind
of bad even back then. But for for for Grindhouse films,
yeah they were, they were great, right, And uh, it's
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
(31:54):
like 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 exactly. So
like Bad Taste, Peter Jackson's first film Right is a
great example of schlock that came out of Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
And he had the film that followed, Peter Jackson Dead Alive,
which was at one point supposedly the gorrist film ever made. Really,
although it sounds like your new Korean movie has surpassed that, Yeah,
I think it probably has.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
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 (32:25):
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 (32:29):
Yeah, with bad it's like these are aliens that are
having their heads blown off. So it definitely takes you
at least a degree away from caring this is happening
to human beings. In I saw The Devil, so it
definitely is driven home a little more well.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And the violence that even the gore back then, it
was so over the top, right out of Fangor magazine.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
It's like, you know, dude, Fangory is still around, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I figured it was.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I'm glad it is. We follow it on our Twitter feed.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Oh we do. Yep, like a head'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 (33:07):
If you ask me, I agree wholeheartedly because they're more realistic. Yeah. So,
carrying on with Chucks and my Cisco 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 4 (33:28):
These high school boys and girls are having a hop
at the local soda fountain. Innocently they dance, innocent of
a new and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors. Matrijuana
the Burning Weed when it's roots in Hell or watchcase
(33:50):
if you want to be you will meet Bill, who
wants to pride and his strong will as he takes
the first step toward and slave undre.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
So that was the excellent reafer Madness, which was an
exploitation drug exploitation film and very much a cautionary tale.
It even shaped the drug culture and how 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 (34:22):
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
(34:45):
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
(35:06):
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
and making them so outlandish that he exploited the people
who were making these movies and created this legacy of
(35:27):
like just insanely over the top exploitation films from the thirties.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Well, and ironically, Reefer 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 (35:48):
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 uh, refer 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
(36:09):
original intent was before Duanne Osberg 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 (36:21):
Oh yeah, well that was that was huge because it
was the first big exploitation film pre Hayes Code and.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Last, Yeah and last, and it was it was an
MGM film. Yeah, and it's widely considered a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, I mean it looks great. It's it's not it
was well done.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
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. I guess if you're yes, circus side show freaks,
yeah star in this. Uh, and they basically exact their
revenge on people who've misstreat them. And I have not
(37:02):
seen it really Yeah, yeah, I want to. I hear
it's just awesome. I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
It ended his career though, unfortunately. Yeah, and he was
a popular filmmaker at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Well, hats off to him for staying true to his art.
Chuck just took his hat off.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Don the old cap.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
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.
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
So, Josh, those are the unmistakable sounds of fist of
fury of mister one, mister Bruce.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Lee, Bruce Lee kicking bottom. This first movie, Yeah, which
was originally titled, well, it's still title I think in
Asia The Big Boss, and in America it is it's
titled Fists of Fury.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
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 (38:24):
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, which.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Later would become just martial arts films. Right or was
it still considered exploitation.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
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. Bruce Lee's taking on scores of
anonymous thugs for two hours, one after the other, for
(39:06):
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 out in
(39:27):
the mid eighties. Uh uh, that's from Bruce Lee's that's
Bruce Lee's doing well.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, and you go to these at the time when
I was first going to New York many years ago,
that would be you know, you got a Times Square
and this is still when Time Square was kind of gross,
and that would be just the martial Arts movie store
where it was all that stuff, mane, like thousands of
movies about ninja's and samuraiz and martial artists and very big. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
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 I've ever known.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
What did you have? Like one throwing star?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I borrowed his. Okay, I was not allowed to have
throwing stars on my own.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Oh I wasn't either, Yeah, Baptist, No, No, that was
very violent.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
No numb chuck, not even thought that transcends like religious background.
It's like, you're a good parent, you shouldn't let your
kid have a throwing star.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
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 (40:25):
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 Leeve l I or le
(40:47):
ee or l E or just l E. Well, Bruce
l I or Bruce el E. I don't think there
was ever like Bruce l e I.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
G H.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
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 4 (41:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
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 (41:16):
By dying young, Yeah and being very popular. Yeah, And
which one was the one he had Kareem Mental Jabbarian
Enter the Dragon. Yeah. Yeah, if you've never seen a
like seven foot plus guy to martial arts, you should
check that out.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
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, 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 (41:49):
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?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah? Something funny and we just like kind of fawned
over the man.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
We should mention briefly and it's in the article, but
just as a teaser. The late seventies we got Nazi
exploitation movies, Nazi exploitation as a subgenre, yeah, And one
of the major players there movie wise was Ilsa she
Wolf of the SS.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
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
Nazi exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
You know, one could argue that qt mister Tarantino has
made nothing but exploitation films. Yeah, since pulp fiction, because
the kill bills were definitely martial arts exploitation. The Jackie
Brown was a riff on black exploitation. Sure, death Proof
(42:51):
obviously that was what they were trying to do there.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Death Proof is Carsploitation, which follows in the tradition of
Vanishing Point, which was released the same year, is basically
it's rival to the the founder, the founding movie of carsploitation,
Two Lane Black Top, right, which movie. Yeah, if you
want to start an argument with an exploitation film, buff
tell him Vanishing Point was the beginning of carsploitation. They'll
(43:15):
get mad at you.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
And then finally Tarantina with The Inglorious Bastards, which is
clearly a riff on the Nazi exploitation films.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Beaten nazis the Death of the Baseball Bat.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yeah, about as over the top and lurt as it's awesome. Yeah. So,
and then Machete. I hated it. But Robert Rodriguez it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
And of course he was the other half of the
Rodriguez was the other half with his Planet Terra of
the Grindhouse double feature.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Yeah, okay, and.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Machete was born from one of the little fake trailers
they made in that movie.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Oh is that right?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah, it was one of the fake movie previews.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
It is even as far as like a purposefully B
movie not good. No, well, Death Proof was okay, but
I didn't like Planetear that much. 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 (44:05):
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
(44:26):
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 (44:48):
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 (45:02):
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, yeah,
sixteen millimeter film, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
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 they chose don't cover even
(45:36):
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 (45:47):
Yeah, watch the documentary American Grindhouse too, if you're into that.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, it'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 your finger over
the mouse and keep the cursor over the other tab
(46:13):
right and stay sharp.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Or in our case, you can just say it's research.
But you can't do that. If you're an accountant in
JP Morgan.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
You're just a cicico, a weirdo, that weird guy in accounting.
So look up ten noteworthy exploitation films. You can type
that into the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com.
And now, at long last, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
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
co workers at a local coffee shop know me for
the trivia and information I abound in. But if forget
tell you what that he says he abounds in, I
guess he's proficient in. Okay, did he misuse that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (47:01):
I don't know. It sounds hilarious.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
It does after giving credit where credit is due, which
means us several of them decided to subscribe your podcast.
Listening to the podcast has 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 I
know it. After relstening to how legos work, I set
the trivia question for which company produces the most tires
(47:27):
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
of 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
(47:47):
Puonsi scheme.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Nice, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
And 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 follow up
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 in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Daniel, that's awesome, thanks Daniel.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And his friend now his new friend.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
His unnamed friend.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, he didn't name him.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
You wouldn't know him. He made him at camp.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
That's right, band camp.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Thanks Daniel, that's really awesome. Wow, that's really cool. 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, we're on
(48:45):
uh no, we're up to like eleven and change.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
That's plus ten.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
That's true. We're also on Facebook, Facebook, dot com, slash stuff.
You should know. Yep, we have a Kiva team, right,
we're trying to get to half a million dollars. That's right,
that's Kiva dot org, slash team slash stuff you should know,
And then you can always send us a good old
fashioned email. We want to know what your favorite exploitation
(49:10):
film of all time is. You can send that in
an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
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Speaker 2 (49:34):
Download it today on iTunes
Hey, everyone, Chuck here. If you're wondering why you have
suddenly ten new episodes in your feed, this is because
we thought we might group things together and try a
little playlist here for the summer and see how it went.
And in this case, we're covering some of our movies
or movies in general. And I am setting up our
semi recent episode from Oh, I guess it's not that recent.
(00:22):
It's from April twenty eleven on exploitation films and how
they work. It was a really fun one to do.
And if you love cinema and you love movies, and
if you love exploitation movies especially, you're gonna love this episode.
So please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hang on there, fella, Oh yes, I know what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Go ahead, get us going here.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, Chuck, the other night you may have noticed. I
know you did, because I watched you watch this just
kind of creepy but not really. You and I were
on TV, Yeah, on the Science Channel.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, we did the little shorts and we're actually proud
of how these turned out, which is a rarity for
us when there's a camera.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
It is, so we have more shorts coming up on
Science Channel. They're running Saturdays and Sundays until I think
the first week of May or something, right.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, and now that they're all running between ten and
ten thirty now supposedly during the shows I think on Saturdays,
this is Oddities, which is an awesome and weird show
it is, and then Sundays, which is Firefly, which is
everyone loves Firefly.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, I mean, I actually consider it an honor to
be played during Firefly. Yeah, me too, even though the
cast of Firefly has no idea that this is going
on because it's pre recorded.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Exactly, Josh, So this what'sa day Thursday obviously, yeah, Saturday
and Sunday night this weekend. Yeah, on the Science Channel.
That is the Science Channel, it's part of the Discovery
Networks between ten and ten already, set your little DVR
and then look, they run during the commercial breaks, or.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
If you're not so fancy that you have a DVR,
you can actually watch it as it happens.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's right. And we are able to run a few
of these online. Now I'm not the ones that are
on TV, but there are three funny ones if you
know how to navigate to the video page of HowStuffWorks
dot Com. Do that, or you can just type in
how stuff Works video and to Google and it'll take
you straight to the video page.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You could also search stuff you should know, Colon large
hadron collider, stuff you should know, Colon body farms and
stuff you should know, Colon mirror, neurons on a search
engine and it should take you right there.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And if it doesn't, you tell us and we will
talk to those search engines.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And if you just get to the video page, you
can search stuff you should know in search videos and
it'll bring up that in a couple of other little
funny things we've done.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, so that's it. We just take like ten minutes
onto this episode.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I know. We appreciate your support. Who mine, No, oh,
everyone that wants to watch these okay.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Okay, so are you ready? Okay, 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 (03:16):
Shut your mouth.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
That's yeah, okay, sure, all right, this is this is
our first ever movie centric podcast, right.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Movie centric for sure. Yeah, we've mentioned movies of course
all the time, but this one is like, this.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Is all about movies. So this is by popular request
to an extent. People want to see, like, they want
to hear us talk about movies and just do a
movie podcast. So we decided to focus on exploitation films. Right.
This is also probably the first podcast that we're going
to say, if you are a teacher of children in
(03:53):
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. We don't generally try
to alienate audiences. We're not attempting to now. It's just
a natural byproduct of the exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Can't talk about exploitation films without talking about some lurid
subject matter.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, you can't say exploitation without ploit.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, they weren't exploiting, just people being nice, right, niceploitation.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
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 (04:32):
I think Oh, he said more violent than Old Boy.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Yeah, the guy 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
(04:55):
my life. The only the only reason, like I was
able to complete is because I'm like, this is it's
a movie, I know, 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 (05:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
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 (05:21):
Yeah, there's a big wave of teen exploitation films, and
we'll get to that, but yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
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
(05:47):
at exploitation films.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, you're basically they're exploiting some of the seedier aspects
of humanity most times.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Sure, like murder or sex, like weird sex, that kind
of thing, sexed.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Sex, teenagers rebelling against parents.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Sure, like a 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
(06:24):
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 (06:42):
Right, Yeah, what's the Is there a definition definition?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
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. Okay, gotcha, it's my understanding. Okay, so let's
(07:06):
do this all right.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Well, that's the old joke. Was that in the awesome
documentary American Grindhouse, which documents this 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 (07:22):
Because the guy was like the directors like to his girlfriend, hey,
would you mind taking your clothes off or the camera exactly?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
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. It showed clips of like decapitations
and violence and guys fighting, yeah, and knit 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 and violence right first.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
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 (08:05):
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,
(08:27):
which nineteen thirteen. It's a lot of dough.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
That is a ton of though, And.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That was Universal Pictures and they went, hey, going on
to something here.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Right after that was released the Hayes Code. Will Hayes
was the Postmaster General and Presbyterian elder and he was
making one hundred grand a year during the depression.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Unbelievable, right.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
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 slavery, Like we need to pure this up, right.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
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 (09:20):
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,
the somebody else is going to operate in a black market.
A black market's going to bring up simple economics. Yeah,
and that's exactly what happened, and that's where exploitation cinema
(09:40):
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 (09:58):
Yes, you can do that. You can make your movies
all day long, but if they're never exhibited, then 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
(10:22):
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 main stream.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
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 (10:39):
Yeah, that was a whole genre, early genre of exploitation.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Well, and so was early on a lot of the
film centered around like how to wear a condom in
these sex hygiene films.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, because there was no information about that out there,
and so exploitation filmmakers, whether disingenuously or genuinely, were ending
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
(11:12):
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 (11:18):
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. Yeah, so
you should educate yourself. But what they really want to
do is get.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Their movie scene and make some money exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
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. They would show their movies.
Supreme Court said no more, and all of a sudden,
(11:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
People had seen a lot of death recently, well a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Of death, and then 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 (12:16):
Enough that led to another subgenre of exploitation film, the
nwdest colony film, 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 it actually
was film that a news camp. Probably not. Mostly there
(12:36):
were actors and actresses just engaged in archery naked or
long walks naked.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
There could be no sex.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Still that was still no taboo, 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. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
After that, through the history we had things like the
teen like you said, the teen Rebellion of the fifties
with the rebel thought of Cause and Blackboard Jungle and
movies like that all of a sudden were 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 to
(13:16):
drive ins a lot at first. Oh yeah, it's all kids.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
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 (13:31):
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 (13:42):
It was very much a step process, right.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
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, and basically it was one person would make
(14:05):
some film and it would just break all the rules,
and then a bunch of other people would make similar films,
right and the same. 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
(14:29):
films and then they probably reached their pinnacle with Russ Myers, right,
King of the Nudies is what he's called.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
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,
(15:00):
And that has a lot to do with the fact
that there was the sixties and Kennedy was shot and
the United States was just becoming increasingly violent.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
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
I guess the long standing prohibition on Hollywood producing exploitation
films was it was lessened decreased, and so studios were like, oh,
(15:31):
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 1 (15:49):
I like it.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
That's gonna be a quiz question later.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
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 Codre. I can't remember the other
guys 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 will
(16:14):
pay to see that you're allowed to show in theaters,
but that studios won't make. And it was Gore. Oh yeah,
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
(16:35):
did a lot for the mainstream ushering in of sure,
a little bit of Gore in that, but well there's
like a.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Shot of blood following Janet Lee's murder, you know, which
is I imagine it's pretty graphic for Hollywood, and that's what
you think of You're like, oh, those stupid sixties, but
that's you know, there 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
(17:03):
that's nineteen seventy two, I think.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
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
(17:27):
first time, like Last House on the Left I believe
is kind of regarded as the first teen slasher film.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, Wes Craven, it was almost a snuff film. It
was almost regarded like that.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's pretty hardcore.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
But yeah, it 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 or Nightmare on Elm Street. Absolutely, My Bloody
Valentine's another big one. Crazy great, yeah, crazy. Oh yeah,
(18:02):
that was an original, right, there's a remake now.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I think, Yeah, yeah, remakes. So that brings us We're
in the seventies, politically charged movies brought race into the
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
(18:25):
films is for the first time you had African Americans
as heroes.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, and not heroes in a typical sense, not even
anti heroes, but heroes that were like They didn't ride
into town on a white horse or wearing a white hat.
They very clearly wore black hats. If need be, like
they would engage in crime, they would murder people, if
nimbi they were. They were basically like the face of
(18:53):
black America coming out of the Civil Rights are like,
we're ticked off.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah, you know, and we're gonna stick it to the
white man to get to the man, and we're gonna
do it in these movies.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Chuck, I know the movie you're about to mention. Let's
this is it.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
You keep the faith in me, You my man, You're
my favorite man.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Can so 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
(19:35):
what the black hero is marketable?
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, well you haven't said the title yet.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Oh I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Okay, you gotta say it right too.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Melvin Van Peebles film Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Nice, That was well done. That was nineteen seventy one.
Men Van Peebles, whose last name may sound familiar. He's
the father of Mario van Peebles. For your younger cats
listening to this one.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Cats all right, age actually younger cats because he's kind
of like, okay, so cats A, yeah, that's Mario Van
Peebles's dad, you know, New Jack City. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
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 cinema absolutely ever, absolutely,
and so considering how important that subgenre is, this quote
(20:31):
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 (20:45):
And it was. It was just quickly on the plot.
It was about a black man who was a jiggielow.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Who, which is a male prostitute for you younger cats.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
And he had a deal worked out with the cops
where he was he said, you know, you can arrest
me as much as you want, release me right after
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 the white man after that.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
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 (21:29):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And then to top it all off, you have what
is arguably a child sex scene starring Mario van People's
melvivv People's son at I think age six, having sex
as Sweet Sweetback. It's his first sexual encounter with an
older person. And in the cult podcast, if he became
(21:51):
a cult leader, he would have taken a younger bride. Remember,
Oh yeah, that'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. That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
And I have not seen that, but I wanted to
at the time, and it just sort of subp at
the cracks.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
There's always Netflix, baby, that's right.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
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 (22:31):
Yeah, the ones that didn't scare the man exactly like
Scheft's a good guy. He doesn't take any guff from
the man, but the people he's not taking guff from,
or the cops, who he's really on the same side.
Ass that's right. So chuck exploitation obviously huge. It affected
everything from you know, Menace to Society to Black Ela.
(22:52):
All of that came from Sweet Sweet Back. And we
mentioned the guy who directed this next movie, Russ Myers.
This is pro probably a seminole work. Let's listen to
this clip from the trailer.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
You walk, Ladies and gentlemen, Gold Gold for a wild,
wild ride with the Watusi cats. But beware, the sweetest
kittens have the sharpest claw. By your own safety.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
See faster pussy.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Cats kill, kill, wild women, wild wheels. Race the fastest
pussy cats and they'll be Jill to sober woman Fulton,
wild and cooked.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
You're placing yourself on this kid, then hanging itself for
nothing by.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Nothing, got nothing to do with the money.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Jis the money.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Jack and Jill. They make a mafia look like Brownie.
They make the mafia look like Brownie.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
That's right. That says quite a bit about them. So
this that was faster pussy Cat Kill Kill in nineteen
sixty five Russ Meers basically women exploitation film NUDI film.
Remember Russ Meyers was King of the nudies. He made
twenty six movies. But this is probably at the very
(24:09):
least is his best known, if not like his masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
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 (24:25):
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 showly 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
(24:46):
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,
the movie Roger Ebert ever wrote, Yeah, he had a Yeah,
it was a very brief career. But that's it. That's
(25:06):
an illustrious one. Really.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Points and a comma exclamation point kill.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Is it three exclamation points?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Okay, I thought it was a common 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
and or no, they kill the man and a couple
keep the girl.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
They basically empower herme on with it by murdering her boyfriend,
and she ends up on the crime spree with them.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
And they basically end up going to an isolated house
with a wheelchair bound old man and his son's.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Who's a lech? They're all leches, these women.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, but they don't know that these women are tough,
no tough ladies.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And the men and his son. The man and his
sons apparently or allegedly have a large amount of cash
stashed in this house. So it's kind of like a
standoff of gall to see who will come out on top.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Well, and you know who comes out on top. Yeah,
And this film was noteworthy for one big reason was
that there's a lot of dualism 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 (26:25):
Yeah, not in this film, but in his other folks
he would hire. I can't remember the lady's name, but
the star of Festor pussy Cat Kill Kill was in
other Russ Meyers films, gotcha, and he made sure that
she was like well into her third first trimester to
enhance her natural bustiness.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
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 (26:56):
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 (27:06):
And this kind of kicked off a big slew of
women exploitation films, exploitation films, the women in prison.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Movies, yes, which we lads sisters very.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Big 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 (27:26):
Spawned the television show The Facts of Life.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
But the interesting thing is they found that these movies
appealed to men and women because men would go see
it for obvious reasons. 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. Yeah, but josh, the seventies also
got a little schlocky, which in a sense was true
(27:52):
to the exploitation model, Like they really went over the top.
No more political statements, no more advancing of women's gender
or African marins Americans. It just got really shlocky and
outrageous at that point.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
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
(28:28):
teenagers anywhere, who cares, but the audience was teenagers, and
the cast started to become teenagers, so it had a
little more of a bent on what teenagers were 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 (28:49):
Here we go with Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
Yeah, meet little Melvin. He's a ninety pound weekly. Everyone
hated Melvin. Yeah, I'm gonna take this mop and shove
it down your throat, me teased him.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I want to do it with you, podkay.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
They taunted him. They tormented him until he had a
horrifying accident and fell into a bat of nuclear waste,
transforming little Melting into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman
size and strength. The movement became the Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So Josh. The Toxic Avenger movie was unique in that
its film production company, Trauma, is very popular in their
own right.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Have you ever seen surf Nazis Must Die?
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I haven't, but I know about you Trauma. I mean,
they are master self promoters and marketeers.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
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 (29:58):
And Toxic Avenger follows a 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 4 (30:08):
Right?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, so it was it occurred at zero year.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
It's the year zero. Yeah, we'll just put the null
set represent that. And this kid gets pushed out of
a window into a vat of toxic sludge.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Which that's beyond bullying.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
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 (30:29):
Okay, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
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 (30:38):
From years earlier, prior after.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
What Win was the movie? Yeah, it was two years
before Toxic Avenger, But Toxic Avenger took it into a
gore special effects way that modern Problems never did.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
So the janitor Melvin I believe his name is, becomes toxified,
it becomes toxic, the tox 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.
(31:16):
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 say.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
Well for the time, you know, it wasn't bad.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
No, there, they remained bad, and they probably were kind
of bad even back then. But for for for Grindhouse films,
yeah they were, they were great, right, And uh, it's
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
(31:54):
like 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 exactly. So
like Bad Taste, Peter Jackson's first film Right is a
great example of schlock that came out of Toxic Avenger.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
And he had the film that followed, Peter Jackson Dead Alive,
which was at one point supposedly the gorrist film ever made. Really,
although it sounds like your new Korean movie has surpassed that, Yeah,
I think it probably has.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
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 (32:25):
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 (32:29):
Yeah, with bad it's like these are aliens that are
having their heads blown off. So it definitely takes you
at least a degree away from caring this is happening
to human beings. In I saw The Devil, so it
definitely is driven home a little more well.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
And the violence that even the gore back then, it
was so over the top, right out of Fangor magazine.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
It's like, you know, dude, Fangory is still around, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I figured it was.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I'm glad it is. We follow it on our Twitter feed.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Oh we do. Yep, like a head'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 (33:07):
If you ask me, I agree wholeheartedly because they're more realistic. Yeah. So,
carrying on with Chucks and my Cisco 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 4 (33:28):
These high school boys and girls are having a hop
at the local soda fountain. Innocently they dance, innocent of
a new and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors. Matrijuana
the Burning Weed when it's roots in Hell or watchcase
(33:50):
if you want to be you will meet Bill, who
wants to pride and his strong will as he takes
the first step toward and slave undre.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
So that was the excellent reafer Madness, which was an
exploitation drug exploitation film and very much a cautionary tale.
It even shaped the drug culture and how 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 (34:22):
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
(34:45):
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
(35:06):
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
and making them so outlandish that he exploited the people
who were making these movies and created this legacy of
(35:27):
like just insanely over the top exploitation films from the thirties.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Well, and ironically, Reefer 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 (35:48):
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 uh, refer 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
(36:09):
original intent was before Duanne Osberg 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 (36:21):
Oh yeah, well that was that was huge because it
was the first big exploitation film pre Hayes Code and.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Last, Yeah and last, and it was it was an
MGM film. Yeah, and it's widely considered a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, I mean it looks great. It's it's not it
was well done.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
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. I guess if you're yes, circus side show freaks,
yeah star in this. Uh, and they basically exact their
revenge on people who've misstreat them. And I have not
(37:02):
seen it really Yeah, yeah, I want to. I hear
it's just awesome. I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
It ended his career though, unfortunately. Yeah, and he was
a popular filmmaker at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Well, hats off to him for staying true to his art.
Chuck just took his hat off.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Don the old cap.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
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.
So here we go.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
So, Josh, those are the unmistakable sounds of fist of
fury of mister one, mister Bruce.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Lee, Bruce Lee kicking bottom. This first movie, Yeah, which
was originally titled, well, it's still title I think in
Asia The Big Boss, and in America it is it's
titled Fists of Fury.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
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 (38:24):
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, which.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Later would become just martial arts films. Right or was
it still considered exploitation.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
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. Bruce Lee's taking on scores of
anonymous thugs for two hours, one after the other, for
(39:06):
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 out in
(39:27):
the mid eighties. Uh uh, that's from Bruce Lee's that's
Bruce Lee's doing well.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, and you go to these at the time when
I was first going to New York many years ago,
that would be you know, you got a Times Square
and this is still when Time Square was kind of gross,
and that would be just the martial Arts movie store
where it was all that stuff, mane, like thousands of
movies about ninja's and samuraiz and martial artists and very big. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
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 I've ever known.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
What did you have? Like one throwing star?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I borrowed his. Okay, I was not allowed to have
throwing stars on my own.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Oh I wasn't either, Yeah, Baptist, No, No, that was
very violent.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
No numb chuck, not even thought that transcends like religious background.
It's like, you're a good parent, you shouldn't let your
kid have a throwing star.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
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 (40:25):
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 Leeve l I or le
(40:47):
ee or l E or just l E. Well, Bruce
l I or Bruce el E. I don't think there
was ever like Bruce l e I.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
G H.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
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 4 (41:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
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 (41:16):
By dying young, Yeah and being very popular. Yeah, And
which one was the one he had Kareem Mental Jabbarian
Enter the Dragon. Yeah. Yeah, if you've never seen a
like seven foot plus guy to martial arts, you should
check that out.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
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, 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 (41:49):
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?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah? Something funny and we just like kind of fawned
over the man.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
We should mention briefly and it's in the article, but
just as a teaser. The late seventies we got Nazi
exploitation movies, Nazi exploitation as a subgenre, yeah, And one
of the major players there movie wise was Ilsa she
Wolf of the SS.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
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
Nazi exploitation film.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
You know, one could argue that qt mister Tarantino has
made nothing but exploitation films. Yeah, since pulp fiction, because
the kill bills were definitely martial arts exploitation. The Jackie
Brown was a riff on black exploitation. Sure, death Proof
(42:51):
obviously that was what they were trying to do there.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Death Proof is Carsploitation, which follows in the tradition of
Vanishing Point, which was released the same year, is basically
it's rival to the the founder, the founding movie of carsploitation,
Two Lane Black Top, right, which movie. Yeah, if you
want to start an argument with an exploitation film, buff
tell him Vanishing Point was the beginning of carsploitation. They'll
(43:15):
get mad at you.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
And then finally Tarantina with The Inglorious Bastards, which is
clearly a riff on the Nazi exploitation films.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Beaten nazis the Death of the Baseball Bat.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yeah, about as over the top and lurt as it's awesome. Yeah. So,
and then Machete. I hated it. But Robert Rodriguez it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
And of course he was the other half of the
Rodriguez was the other half with his Planet Terra of
the Grindhouse double feature.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Yeah, okay, and.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Machete was born from one of the little fake trailers
they made in that movie.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Oh is that right?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah, it was one of the fake movie previews.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
It is even as far as like a purposefully B
movie not good. No, well, Death Proof was okay, but
I didn't like Planetear that much. 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 (44:05):
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
(44:26):
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 (44:48):
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 (45:02):
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, yeah,
sixteen millimeter film, stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
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 they chose don't cover even
(45:36):
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 (45:47):
Yeah, watch the documentary American Grindhouse too, if you're into that.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, it'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 your finger over
the mouse and keep the cursor over the other tab
(46:13):
right and stay sharp.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Or in our case, you can just say it's research.
But you can't do that. If you're an accountant in
JP Morgan.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
You're just a cicico, a weirdo, that weird guy in accounting.
So look up ten noteworthy exploitation films. You can type
that into the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com.
And now, at long last, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
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
co workers at a local coffee shop know me for
the trivia and information I abound in. But if forget
tell you what that he says he abounds in, I
guess he's proficient in. Okay, did he misuse that? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (47:01):
I don't know. It sounds hilarious.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
It does after giving credit where credit is due, which
means us several of them decided to subscribe your podcast.
Listening to the podcast has 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 I
know it. After relstening to how legos work, I set
the trivia question for which company produces the most tires
(47:27):
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
of 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
(47:47):
Puonsi scheme.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Nice, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
And 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 follow up
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 in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Daniel, that's awesome, thanks Daniel.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And his friend now his new friend.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
His unnamed friend.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, he didn't name him.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
You wouldn't know him. He made him at camp.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
That's right, band camp.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Thanks Daniel, that's really awesome. Wow, that's really cool. 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, we're on
(48:45):
uh no, we're up to like eleven and change.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
That's plus ten.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
That's true. We're also on Facebook, Facebook, dot com, slash stuff.
You should know. Yep, we have a Kiva team, right,
we're trying to get to half a million dollars. That's right,
that's Kiva dot org, slash team slash stuff you should know,
And then you can always send us a good old
fashioned email. We want to know what your favorite exploitation
(49:10):
film of all time is. You can send that in
an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
our homepage. The house Stuffworks iPhone app has arrived.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Download it today on iTunes
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