WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 Imagine you're just, you know, sitting in a crowded, 00:00:02.799 --> 00:00:05.700 maybe slightly damp movie theater. The lights 00:00:05.700 --> 00:00:09.779 go down, the screen flickers, and suddenly the 00:00:09.779 --> 00:00:12.560 seat beneath you literally starts vibrating. 00:00:12.740 --> 00:00:15.179 Oh, wow. Yeah, like actually buzzing. People 00:00:15.179 --> 00:00:17.780 around you are screaming, half in absolute terror, 00:00:17.879 --> 00:00:20.960 half in sheer delight. Or maybe you're walking 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:23.260 into a totally different theater across town 00:00:23.260 --> 00:00:25.640 and the usher hands you this brightly colored 00:00:25.640 --> 00:00:28.160 paper bag. Let me guess it's not for popcorn. 00:00:28.339 --> 00:00:30.640 No. You think it's for popcorn, but they tell 00:00:30.640 --> 00:00:32.600 you with a completely straight face that it's 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:35.020 a vomit bag, you know, just in case the movie 00:00:35.020 --> 00:00:36.780 gets to be too much for your delicate stomach. 00:00:36.939 --> 00:00:38.939 I mean, that sounds less like a night at the 00:00:38.939 --> 00:00:41.759 cinema and way more like some kind of carnival 00:00:41.759 --> 00:00:44.219 ride mixed with a massive liability nightmare. 00:00:44.460 --> 00:00:46.659 Right. But that was actually just a typical Friday 00:00:46.659 --> 00:00:49.200 night at the movies back in the mid 20th century. 00:00:49.460 --> 00:00:52.600 So welcome to the deep dive. Today, our mission 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:56.359 is to explore the chaotic, totally scrappy and 00:00:56.359 --> 00:00:59.579 surprisingly influential world of the Yeah, it's 00:00:59.579 --> 00:01:02.439 a wild history. It really is. We're gonna use 00:01:02.439 --> 00:01:05.480 our sources today to figure out how the low -budget, 00:01:05.640 --> 00:01:07.959 kind of bottom half of a double future didn't 00:01:07.959 --> 00:01:10.579 just survive on the absolute fringes of Hollywood, 00:01:11.060 --> 00:01:13.799 but actually shaped the modern cinematic landscape 00:01:13.799 --> 00:01:16.019 that you and I consume every single day. I think 00:01:16.019 --> 00:01:17.879 it's so important because, you know, we tend 00:01:17.879 --> 00:01:20.780 to use the term B -movie today as a casual insult. 00:01:20.900 --> 00:01:22.879 Yeah. Like, it's just shorthand for something 00:01:22.879 --> 00:01:26.000 cheap or poorly acted or just frankly... Badly 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:28.540 made. Exactly. Like a knockoff. Right. But the 00:01:28.540 --> 00:01:30.340 reality of cinema history tells a completely 00:01:30.340 --> 00:01:32.739 different story. B -movies are really this pure 00:01:32.739 --> 00:01:35.500 reflection of economic necessity. They're the 00:01:35.500 --> 00:01:38.849 direct result of, uh... shifting distribution 00:01:38.849 --> 00:01:42.090 models, rapid cultural adaptation, and just this 00:01:42.090 --> 00:01:45.349 ruthless unapologetic drive to capture an audience's 00:01:45.349 --> 00:01:47.670 attention by literally any means necessary. Okay, 00:01:47.670 --> 00:01:49.849 let's unpack this from the very beginning, because 00:01:49.849 --> 00:01:51.890 we really need to go back to Hollywood's golden 00:01:51.890 --> 00:01:54.290 age in the 1930s. You can't really understand 00:01:54.290 --> 00:01:56.230 the B -movie without understanding the brutal 00:01:56.230 --> 00:01:58.109 math of the early studio system, right? Yeah, 00:01:58.209 --> 00:02:01.390 exactly. So in the late 1920s and early 30s, 00:02:01.750 --> 00:02:03.829 if you were making an average A -list feature 00:02:03.829 --> 00:02:08.400 at a major studio, like MGM or Fox, you were 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:11.360 spending anywhere between $190 ,000 to maybe 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:15.060 $275 ,000. Which was a fortune back then. An 00:02:15.060 --> 00:02:17.639 absolute fortune. And if it was a massive historical 00:02:17.639 --> 00:02:20.439 spectacle, I mean, that budget could easily push 00:02:20.439 --> 00:02:24.120 a million dollars. But down on the absolute fringes 00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:26.699 of the industry at these tiny independent studios 00:02:26.699 --> 00:02:29.849 that everyone affectionately called Poverty Row. 00:02:30.050 --> 00:02:31.770 Poverty Row, I love that name. Yeah, it's very 00:02:31.770 --> 00:02:34.210 descriptive. They were churning out what they 00:02:34.210 --> 00:02:36.770 called Quickies, and these had micro -budgets, 00:02:37.030 --> 00:02:40.509 sometimes as low as $3 ,000. Wait, a $3 ,000 00:02:40.509 --> 00:02:42.770 movie? I mean, the catering budget on a modern 00:02:42.770 --> 00:02:45.189 set probably burns through that before lunch 00:02:45.189 --> 00:02:47.469 on the first day. Oh, easily. And they weren't 00:02:47.469 --> 00:02:49.789 just cheap. They were incredibly fast. Like, 00:02:49.789 --> 00:02:52.110 some of these Poverty Row films were shot from 00:02:52.110 --> 00:02:54.370 start to finish in four days. Four days. Yeah, 00:02:54.370 --> 00:02:56.530 they were maximizing absolutely every single 00:02:56.530 --> 00:02:59.449 resource. They'd completely reuse sets from bigger 00:02:59.449 --> 00:03:01.349 movies in the middle of the night and just work 00:03:01.349 --> 00:03:03.009 the crews around the clock until they dropped. 00:03:03.270 --> 00:03:05.310 But, you know, cheap and fast doesn't automatically 00:03:05.310 --> 00:03:08.669 mean profitable. So how did this become an actual 00:03:08.669 --> 00:03:11.870 sustainable business model? Well, the real catalyst 00:03:11.870 --> 00:03:14.629 that made the B movie a permanent fixture was 00:03:14.629 --> 00:03:17.930 a massive technological shift right around 1929, 00:03:18.469 --> 00:03:22.400 the widespread adoption of sound film. Ah, right. 00:03:22.699 --> 00:03:25.699 Because sound suddenly made producing live acts, 00:03:25.740 --> 00:03:27.699 which theaters always used to feature before 00:03:27.699 --> 00:03:30.219 the main silent movie, way too complicated. Exactly. 00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:32.979 It was just too expensive. The logistics of miceing 00:03:32.979 --> 00:03:35.580 up a live vaudeville act in a cinema suddenly 00:03:35.580 --> 00:03:37.680 didn't make any financial sense. So the theaters 00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:40.219 have this massive gap to fill. Precisely. To 00:03:40.219 --> 00:03:42.199 fill that gap and keep audiences in their seats 00:03:42.199 --> 00:03:44.699 for the whole evening, theaters developed a brand 00:03:44.699 --> 00:03:47.389 new programming model. You go in and get a newsreel, 00:03:47.550 --> 00:03:49.930 maybe a short or a cartoon, and then the second 00:03:49.930 --> 00:03:52.189 feature. Which is the B movie. Right. This is 00:03:52.189 --> 00:03:54.110 the birth of the double feature. And crucially, 00:03:54.430 --> 00:03:57.550 the B movie, the second feature, actually screened 00:03:57.550 --> 00:04:00.169 before the main event. Right. It was literally 00:04:00.169 --> 00:04:02.849 the warm up act. But here's the thing that really 00:04:02.849 --> 00:04:06.030 trips me up about this era. If these poverty 00:04:06.030 --> 00:04:08.949 row movies were being shot in four days for absolute 00:04:08.949 --> 00:04:11.169 pennies and the quality was, let's be honest, 00:04:11.469 --> 00:04:14.370 highly questionable. What guaranteed that they 00:04:14.370 --> 00:04:16.670 would actually make any money? That's the big 00:04:16.670 --> 00:04:19.089 question. Yeah. Like, why would a theater owner 00:04:19.089 --> 00:04:22.550 willingly choose to play a terrible $3 ,000 Western? 00:04:22.790 --> 00:04:25.129 Because they often just didn't have a choice. 00:04:25.889 --> 00:04:29.449 The major studios control the entire distribution 00:04:29.449 --> 00:04:33.290 pipeline, and they employ two incredibly powerful, 00:04:33.629 --> 00:04:36.579 frankly monopolistic practices. block booking, 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:38.899 and blind bidding. Okay, break those down for 00:04:38.899 --> 00:04:41.100 me. So, if an independent theater owner wanted 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:44.019 access to a studio's glamorous, highly anticipated 00:04:44.019 --> 00:04:46.540 teat, a picture, the one with the big stars that 00:04:46.540 --> 00:04:48.680 would actually draw a crowd, they were legally 00:04:48.680 --> 00:04:51.519 forced to rent that studio's entire output for 00:04:51.519 --> 00:04:54.180 the year. They had to buy the movies in a massive 00:04:54.180 --> 00:04:57.079 block. Wow. And worse, they often had to sign 00:04:57.079 --> 00:04:59.779 the contract site unseen before the movies were 00:04:59.779 --> 00:05:02.300 even shot. That's the blind bidding part. So 00:05:02.300 --> 00:05:04.759 wait, block booking is essentially the 1930s 00:05:04.759 --> 00:05:07.740 equivalent of a modern cable TV bundle. That 00:05:07.740 --> 00:05:09.779 is a perfect way to look at it. Like, you really 00:05:09.779 --> 00:05:12.480 just want the premium sports channel, the A movies, 00:05:12.620 --> 00:05:15.060 so you can show the big game to your customers. 00:05:15.540 --> 00:05:19.040 But the provider forces you to pay for 50 obscure, 00:05:19.240 --> 00:05:21.279 weird channels. You'll never watch the B movies 00:05:21.279 --> 00:05:23.819 just to get access to the one thing you actually 00:05:23.819 --> 00:05:26.839 want. That's exactly it. Because of that forced 00:05:26.839 --> 00:05:29.660 bundle system, B -movies weren't rented out to 00:05:29.660 --> 00:05:31.939 theaters based on how well they actually performed 00:05:31.939 --> 00:05:34.500 at the box office. They were just rented at a 00:05:34.500 --> 00:05:37.600 flat fee. Oh, so the risk is gone. Completely. 00:05:38.259 --> 00:05:40.939 The profitability of almost every B -movie was 00:05:40.939 --> 00:05:43.379 baked into the math before the cameras even started 00:05:43.379 --> 00:05:46.800 rolling. The studios didn't need them to be critical 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:49.720 masterpieces. They just needed them to be exactly 00:05:49.720 --> 00:05:52.439 55 minutes long and delivered on time to fill 00:05:52.439 --> 00:05:54.829 out that block. That creates a really bizarre 00:05:54.829 --> 00:05:57.029 creative environment, doesn't it? If quality 00:05:57.029 --> 00:06:00.069 isn't the primary goal but sheer volume is, you 00:06:00.069 --> 00:06:02.769 essentially have this weird sandbox. Yeah, exactly. 00:06:03.069 --> 00:06:04.750 Because there's no financial pressure for these 00:06:04.750 --> 00:06:07.050 movies to be massive, you know, box office hits, 00:06:07.470 --> 00:06:10.029 they accidentally become this incredible training 00:06:10.029 --> 00:06:12.569 ground for Hollywood. That is the great irony 00:06:12.569 --> 00:06:16.089 of the 1930s B -movie. Young actors, writers, 00:06:16.329 --> 00:06:18.819 directors. They could learn their craft, make 00:06:18.819 --> 00:06:21.379 huge mistakes, and just experiment without the 00:06:21.379 --> 00:06:23.699 crushing weight of a massive A -list budget on 00:06:23.699 --> 00:06:26.079 their shoulders. Right. John Wayne is actually 00:06:26.079 --> 00:06:28.660 the perfect example of this. Before he was an 00:06:28.660 --> 00:06:31.680 American icon, he cut his teeth. making dozens 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:34.660 of low -budget Westerns, which were the absolute 00:06:34.660 --> 00:06:36.519 bread and butter of the poverty row circuit. 00:06:36.819 --> 00:06:39.420 And because they were desperate to stand out 00:06:39.420 --> 00:06:41.860 within that massive bundle of movies, some of 00:06:41.860 --> 00:06:44.319 these independent films just leaned into ideas 00:06:44.319 --> 00:06:47.339 that were completely unhinged in the best possible 00:06:47.339 --> 00:06:49.459 way. Oh, yeah. They got weird. I mean, take a 00:06:49.459 --> 00:06:52.399 1938 movie called The Terror of Tiny Town. It's 00:06:52.399 --> 00:06:54.920 a low -budget Western, completely standard plot, 00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:57.480 but the entire cast was made up of little people. 00:06:57.660 --> 00:07:00.000 Right. It sounds like a pure bizarre novelty. 00:07:00.040 --> 00:07:02.899 but it was so wildly successful in its independent 00:07:02.899 --> 00:07:06.199 theatrical run that Columbia Pictures, an actual 00:07:06.199 --> 00:07:08.639 major studio, stepped in and picked it up for 00:07:08.639 --> 00:07:11.720 wide distribution. Which is amazing. It proved 00:07:11.720 --> 00:07:14.680 that an audacious gimmick, even if it was executed 00:07:14.680 --> 00:07:17.199 cheaply, could actually punch above its weight 00:07:17.199 --> 00:07:19.759 and compete with the major studios if it was 00:07:19.759 --> 00:07:22.259 marketed well. But this golden age model couldn't 00:07:22.259 --> 00:07:24.959 last forever, right? No, it was destined to collapse. 00:07:25.449 --> 00:07:29.410 In 1948, the entire Hollywood ecosystem was hit 00:07:29.410 --> 00:07:32.329 by an existential disruption. The Supreme Court 00:07:32.329 --> 00:07:34.910 handed down the paramount decree, which was this 00:07:34.910 --> 00:07:37.930 massive antitrust ruling against the major studios. 00:07:38.360 --> 00:07:40.740 So the Supreme Court essentially looked at the 00:07:40.740 --> 00:07:43.720 cable bundle of blockbooking, saw that the studios 00:07:43.720 --> 00:07:45.860 owned the production, the distribution, and the 00:07:45.860 --> 00:07:48.459 actual physical theaters, and just declared it 00:07:48.459 --> 00:07:51.079 an illegal monopoly. Exactly. The studios were 00:07:51.079 --> 00:07:54.199 forced to sell off their theater chains and completely 00:07:54.199 --> 00:07:57.050 outlaw blockbooking. So suddenly... Every single 00:07:57.050 --> 00:07:59.689 movie had to compete on its own merits. Oh, wow. 00:07:59.870 --> 00:08:01.990 So a theater owner didn't have to buy a bad B 00:08:01.990 --> 00:08:04.370 movie to get the A movie anymore. Nope. And to 00:08:04.370 --> 00:08:06.430 make matters worse for the studios, right at 00:08:06.430 --> 00:08:09.069 that exact same moment, television started creeping 00:08:09.069 --> 00:08:11.170 into American living rooms. Right. Because if 00:08:11.170 --> 00:08:14.470 you're a family in, say, 1951, why pay money 00:08:14.470 --> 00:08:17.089 to go out and see a cheap, low -budget Western 00:08:17.089 --> 00:08:19.449 in a theater when you could just stay on your 00:08:19.449 --> 00:08:21.930 couch and watch a classic Western on TV for free? 00:08:22.350 --> 00:08:24.629 The traditional double feature was dying overnight. 00:08:24.860 --> 00:08:28.139 Studios panicked. Eagle Lion, a big B studio, 00:08:28.339 --> 00:08:31.139 folded entirely. Monogram had to completely rebrand 00:08:31.139 --> 00:08:33.879 itself as allied artists just to escape the stigma. 00:08:34.679 --> 00:08:36.639 The B movie had to either evolve immediately 00:08:36.639 --> 00:08:39.159 or go completely extinct. Which brings us to 00:08:39.159 --> 00:08:42.539 the 1950s and this fundamental shift in how movies 00:08:42.539 --> 00:08:45.919 were sold. Yes. A new studio emerged called American 00:08:45.919 --> 00:08:49.320 International Pictures or AIP. It was founded 00:08:49.320 --> 00:08:52.649 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. They 00:08:52.649 --> 00:08:54.669 looked at the landscape and realized the traditional 00:08:54.669 --> 00:08:56.809 family audience was staying home with their televisions. 00:08:56.889 --> 00:08:58.830 Right, they lost the parents. But there was a 00:08:58.830 --> 00:09:01.590 new, massive demographic that actively wanted 00:09:01.590 --> 00:09:04.750 to get out of the house. Teenagers. And teenagers 00:09:04.750 --> 00:09:07.429 do not want to watch the polite, sanitized a 00:09:07.429 --> 00:09:09.570 la dramas their parents are watching. They want 00:09:09.570 --> 00:09:11.690 things that are loud, rebellious, and edgy. And 00:09:11.690 --> 00:09:13.389 most importantly, they want to watch them away 00:09:13.389 --> 00:09:15.789 from their parents. Which leads perfectly into 00:09:15.789 --> 00:09:19.279 the massive drive -in theater boom. In 1945, 00:09:19.840 --> 00:09:22.460 there were only 96 drive -ins in the United States. 00:09:23.059 --> 00:09:26.000 A decade later, there are over 3 ,700 of them. 00:09:26.179 --> 00:09:30.919 That growth is staggering. AIP aggressively targeted 00:09:30.919 --> 00:09:33.559 this drive -in demographic, and they changed 00:09:33.559 --> 00:09:36.159 the economic mechanics to do it. Instead of renting 00:09:36.159 --> 00:09:38.299 out their double bills on a flat fee, which, 00:09:38.299 --> 00:09:40.580 remember, capped how much money a B movie could 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:43.029 make, they started offering them on a percentage 00:09:43.029 --> 00:09:45.669 rental basis. Oh, I see. So if the movie bombed, 00:09:45.809 --> 00:09:47.909 the theater didn't lose much. But if the movie 00:09:47.909 --> 00:09:50.889 became a massive hit with the local teens, the 00:09:50.889 --> 00:09:53.210 independent studio took a huge cut of the upside. 00:09:53.490 --> 00:09:55.690 Exactly. It shifted the risk and the reward. 00:09:56.029 --> 00:09:58.090 And the returns were just staggering. Look at 00:09:58.090 --> 00:10:00.870 a film like I Was a Teenage Werewolf from 1957. 00:10:01.210 --> 00:10:04.289 Classic title. It cost roughly $100 ,000 to produce. 00:10:04.700 --> 00:10:07.279 Because it struck an absolute nerve with the 00:10:07.279 --> 00:10:10.299 youth culture, it grossed $2 million. $2 million. 00:10:10.899 --> 00:10:13.000 Yeah. That completely flips the power dynamic 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:15.480 in Hollywood. Suddenly, the scrappy independents 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:17.179 are the ones generating this incredible return 00:10:17.179 --> 00:10:20.559 on investment. And it creates the era of Roger 00:10:20.559 --> 00:10:23.500 Corman, the undisputed king of the bees. I mean, 00:10:23.620 --> 00:10:26.320 the man was a machine of efficiency. He shoots 00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:28.899 a movie called Monster from the Ocean Floor for 00:10:28.899 --> 00:10:31.879 $12 ,000 in six days. He was legendary for that. 00:10:32.059 --> 00:10:33.799 But I have to stop you here and ask about the 00:10:33.799 --> 00:10:36.399 marketing side, specifically William Castle, 00:10:36.720 --> 00:10:39.179 because he's the guy who invented Percepto for 00:10:39.179 --> 00:10:41.240 the movie The Tingler, which is where our buzzing 00:10:41.240 --> 00:10:43.659 seats from the intro come in. Yes, William Castle. 00:10:43.799 --> 00:10:46.480 He literally wired theater seats with military 00:10:46.480 --> 00:10:49.840 surplus buzzers. And for the movie Macabre, he 00:10:49.840 --> 00:10:52.159 offered death by fright life insurance policies 00:10:52.159 --> 00:10:54.759 to the audience. A brilliant marketer. But I 00:10:54.759 --> 00:10:57.340 have to push back a bit. This sounds less like 00:10:57.340 --> 00:10:59.580 filmmaking and more like a desperate carnival 00:10:59.580 --> 00:11:01.799 barker trying to trick people into buying tickets. 00:11:02.200 --> 00:11:04.419 Was the actual filmmaking just so terrible they 00:11:04.419 --> 00:11:07.080 needed these massive distractions? What's fascinating 00:11:07.080 --> 00:11:09.340 here is that it's really easy to look at it as 00:11:09.340 --> 00:11:11.580 a distraction, but it was actually the birth 00:11:11.769 --> 00:11:14.889 of modern event marketing. Event marketing. Yeah. 00:11:15.190 --> 00:11:16.769 You have to consider the viewing environment 00:11:16.769 --> 00:11:20.549 of the 1950s teenager. At a drive -in, you are 00:11:20.549 --> 00:11:23.029 dealing with couples making out in their cars, 00:11:23.629 --> 00:11:25.909 terrible audio coming from a heavy metal speaker 00:11:25.909 --> 00:11:29.350 hanging on a window, and just total atmospheric 00:11:29.350 --> 00:11:31.909 distraction. Oh, right. It's not exactly a quiet 00:11:31.909 --> 00:11:34.779 cinema. Not at all. Castle and Corman realized 00:11:34.779 --> 00:11:37.240 that to compete for attention, the movie couldn't 00:11:37.240 --> 00:11:39.460 just be a passive viewing experience. It had 00:11:39.460 --> 00:11:41.779 to be visceral. It had to be a physical event. 00:11:42.139 --> 00:11:44.059 So the buzzing seats weren't apologizing for 00:11:44.059 --> 00:11:47.259 a bad movie. They were guaranteeing an immersive 00:11:47.259 --> 00:11:49.840 night out that you couldn't possibly get by sitting 00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:52.879 at home watching television. Precisely. And beneath 00:11:52.879 --> 00:11:55.519 those gimmicks, B -movies were actually tackling 00:11:55.519 --> 00:11:58.639 really heavy thematic material. Mainstream A 00:11:58.639 --> 00:12:00.779 -list Hollywood was terrified of making movies 00:12:00.779 --> 00:12:02.940 about the Cold War or the atomic bomb because 00:12:02.940 --> 00:12:05.019 of the political climate and the Hollywood blacklist. 00:12:05.019 --> 00:12:08.220 Your red scare. Right. But B -movies flew completely 00:12:08.220 --> 00:12:10.960 under the radar. Because, I mean... Nobody in 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:12.840 Congress is investigating a movie about giant 00:12:12.840 --> 00:12:16.399 mutant ants. Exactly. Sci -fi and horror B -movies 00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:18.500 became a vital space for cultural processing. 00:12:18.919 --> 00:12:21.000 Take Don Siegel's invasion of the body snatchers. 00:12:21.399 --> 00:12:24.019 On the surface, it's just a cheap thriller about 00:12:24.019 --> 00:12:27.679 alien pods replacing humans. Right. But subtextually, 00:12:27.940 --> 00:12:30.580 it's a deeply haunting allegory. Depending on 00:12:30.580 --> 00:12:32.840 how you read it, it's either about the creeping 00:12:32.840 --> 00:12:35.840 fear of communist infiltration or the suffocating 00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:39.000 pressure of 1950s American societal conformity. 00:12:39.149 --> 00:12:41.990 The B -movie was able to hide deeply subversive 00:12:41.990 --> 00:12:44.830 ideas inside a rubber monster suit. But once 00:12:44.830 --> 00:12:46.929 AIP and these independents proved that teenagers 00:12:46.929 --> 00:12:48.730 were a gold mine and that you can make millions 00:12:48.730 --> 00:12:50.830 by giving them the edgy, thrilling content their 00:12:50.830 --> 00:12:53.210 parents hated, well, the old Hollywood censorship 00:12:53.210 --> 00:12:55.389 rules were basically living on borrowed time. 00:12:55.570 --> 00:12:58.269 That is the crucial transition into the 1960s 00:12:58.269 --> 00:13:01.129 and 70s. The strict moral guidelines of the Hayes 00:13:01.129 --> 00:13:03.970 Production Code finally collapsed in 1968, and 00:13:03.970 --> 00:13:05.730 they were replaced by the modern letter rating 00:13:05.730 --> 00:13:09.419 system we use today. Like R and PG. Right. Filmmakers 00:13:09.419 --> 00:13:11.740 realized that the subtext of the 1950s didn't 00:13:11.740 --> 00:13:14.179 need to be hidden anymore. Shocking the audience 00:13:14.179 --> 00:13:16.259 wasn't just a marketing gimmick, it became an 00:13:16.259 --> 00:13:18.740 entirely new genre. This is the birth of the 00:13:18.740 --> 00:13:21.059 exploitation boom. Here's where it gets really 00:13:21.059 --> 00:13:24.200 interesting. Because strangely enough, the template 00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:27.159 for this new era was actually set by Alfred Hitchcock. 00:13:27.440 --> 00:13:31.879 Yes. Psycho in 1960 was essentially a low budget 00:13:31.879 --> 00:13:34.059 black and white horror movie shot really quickly 00:13:34.059 --> 00:13:37.240 with his television crew. But it was massively 00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:40.080 profitable and culturally dominant. It proved 00:13:40.080 --> 00:13:42.240 that if you push the boundaries of violence and 00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:44.620 taboo, the audience would line up around the 00:13:44.620 --> 00:13:46.620 block. It totally showed independent filmmakers 00:13:46.620 --> 00:13:49.940 that there was an insatiable appetite for explicit. 00:13:50.159 --> 00:13:52.639 boundary -pushing content. You had directors 00:13:52.639 --> 00:13:55.620 like Herschel Gordon Lewis making Blood Feast 00:13:55.620 --> 00:13:59.360 for just $24 ,000. Oh, Blood Feast. He effectively 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:02.139 invented the splatter genre. putting graphic, 00:14:02.559 --> 00:14:04.980 brightly colored gore front and center. It was 00:14:04.980 --> 00:14:07.259 so intense that his producing partner actually 00:14:07.259 --> 00:14:09.820 handed out those vomit bags we talked about to 00:14:09.820 --> 00:14:11.919 drum up publicity. But here's where the narrative 00:14:11.919 --> 00:14:14.019 of the B movie gets really fascinating to me. 00:14:14.159 --> 00:14:16.220 We talk about exploitation movies focusing on 00:14:16.220 --> 00:14:19.919 sex, intense gore, outlaw bikers, and it sounds 00:14:19.919 --> 00:14:23.039 like pure disposable trash. But there's a flip 00:14:23.039 --> 00:14:25.299 side to this. There is? Because nobody in the 00:14:25.299 --> 00:14:27.720 corporate suites at the major studios respected 00:14:27.720 --> 00:14:30.139 or even cared about these cheap drive -in films, 00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:33.179 the directors actually had vastly more artistic 00:14:33.179 --> 00:14:35.759 freedom than the prestige directors working on 00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:38.860 studio lots. That is the great paradox of the 00:14:38.860 --> 00:14:42.799 B movie. Absolute neglect breeds total creative 00:14:42.799 --> 00:14:45.700 freedom. If you bring a movie in on budget, and 00:14:45.700 --> 00:14:48.179 it has the required amount of violence or nudity 00:14:48.179 --> 00:14:50.720 to sell tickets, the financiers don't care what 00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:52.460 else you put in it. They just want the product. 00:14:52.899 --> 00:14:54.860 Right. Look at George A. Romero's Night of the 00:14:54.860 --> 00:14:57.179 Living Dead, produced entirely independently 00:14:57.179 --> 00:15:00.980 in Pittsburgh for $114 ,000. It's a midnight 00:15:00.980 --> 00:15:03.720 movie about flesh -eating ghouls, but Romero 00:15:03.720 --> 00:15:07.000 uses that framework to create a deeply radical, 00:15:07.340 --> 00:15:10.120 subversive allegory about the Vietnam War, racial 00:15:10.120 --> 00:15:11.960 conflict, and the collapse of the American nuclear 00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:14.309 family. And you see the exact same thing happening 00:15:14.309 --> 00:15:16.809 with the blaxploitation genre. Melvin van Peebles 00:15:16.809 --> 00:15:19.309 made Sweet Back Sweet Back's Badass Song funded 00:15:19.309 --> 00:15:22.210 partly by a loan from Bill Cosby. He bypassed 00:15:22.210 --> 00:15:24.230 the traditional studio gatekeepers entirely to 00:15:24.230 --> 00:15:26.970 make a wildly experimental manifesto for African 00:15:26.970 --> 00:15:29.490 -American revolution. And it was a massive commercial 00:15:29.490 --> 00:15:32.309 hit. It proved you didn't need Hollywood's permission, 00:15:32.590 --> 00:15:35.309 their money or their distribution network to 00:15:35.309 --> 00:15:38.149 make a cultural phenomenon. And the ultimate 00:15:38.149 --> 00:15:42.029 proof of that shift was Easy Rider in 1969. Which 00:15:42.029 --> 00:15:44.669 started out as a classic B -movie pitch. I mean, 00:15:44.830 --> 00:15:47.009 it was originally pitched to AIP as a standard 00:15:47.009 --> 00:15:50.769 exploitation movie, just bikers and LSD. It eventually 00:15:50.769 --> 00:15:55.149 moved to Columbia, cost a measly $501 ,000 to 00:15:55.149 --> 00:15:57.929 shoot, and went on to make over $19 million. 00:15:58.279 --> 00:16:01.120 It completely bridged the gap between drive -in 00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:03.419 schlock and mainstream, critically acclaimed 00:16:03.419 --> 00:16:06.120 cinema. Easy Rider was the turning point. It 00:16:06.120 --> 00:16:08.299 proved to the major studios that the counterculture, 00:16:08.460 --> 00:16:10.960 the grit, and the visceral thrill of the Exploitation 00:16:10.960 --> 00:16:13.860 B movie wasn't a niche market anymore. It was 00:16:13.860 --> 00:16:17.129 the mainstream. Yeah. And that realization directly 00:16:17.129 --> 00:16:19.470 set the stage for the blockbuster takeover of 00:16:19.470 --> 00:16:21.950 the 1980s. Because B -movies ultimately became 00:16:21.950 --> 00:16:24.629 a victim of their own massive success, mainstream 00:16:24.629 --> 00:16:26.750 Hollywood looked at the incredible profits being 00:16:26.750 --> 00:16:29.230 generated by sci -fi, horror, and fantasy, and 00:16:29.230 --> 00:16:31.370 they just decided to steal the playbook. They 00:16:31.370 --> 00:16:34.029 adopted the very genres they used to mock. Think 00:16:34.029 --> 00:16:36.950 about the films that defined the late 1970s and 00:16:36.950 --> 00:16:41.090 early 80s. Steven Spielberg's Jaws in 1975, George 00:16:41.090 --> 00:16:44.700 Lucas's Star Wars in 1977. At their core, a movie 00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:47.139 about a giant killer shark and a space opera 00:16:47.139 --> 00:16:51.600 with laser swords are classic pulp 1950s B movie 00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:54.720 concepts. Exactly. But Spielberg and Lucas executed 00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:58.019 them with A -list budgets, top tier talent and 00:16:58.019 --> 00:17:00.539 state of the art special effects. And then Superman 00:17:00.539 --> 00:17:03.480 in 1978 proved you could spend fifty five million 00:17:03.480 --> 00:17:05.640 dollars on a comic book character, something 00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:07.740 that was previously the strict domain of cheap 00:17:07.740 --> 00:17:10.539 Saturday morning cereals and absolutely dominate 00:17:10.539 --> 00:17:12.720 the global box office. It completely changed. 00:17:12.589 --> 00:17:16.089 the math again. It did. By 1990 the average studio 00:17:16.089 --> 00:17:18.630 film cost 25 million dollars to make. So massive 00:17:18.630 --> 00:17:21.130 hits in the late 80s and 90s like Teenage Mutant 00:17:21.130 --> 00:17:23.109 Ninja Turtles or Total Recall would have been 00:17:23.109 --> 00:17:25.549 straight up Poverty Row schlock 40 years earlier. 00:17:25.769 --> 00:17:27.670 It's almost like Hollywood is a wealthy real 00:17:27.670 --> 00:17:30.410 estate developer moving into a gritty cool artsy 00:17:30.410 --> 00:17:32.910 neighborhood knocking down all the grind houses 00:17:32.910 --> 00:17:35.529 and building luxury hundred and fifty million 00:17:35.529 --> 00:17:38.150 dollar sci -fi condos. If we connect this to 00:17:38.150 --> 00:17:41.029 the bigger picture that gentrification analogy 00:17:41.029 --> 00:17:43.559 highlights exactly what happened to the distribution 00:17:43.559 --> 00:17:47.039 model. Hollywood didn't kill the B -movie. It 00:17:47.039 --> 00:17:49.319 just gave it a massive budget and then used its 00:17:49.319 --> 00:17:51.900 corporate weight to squeeze the independents 00:17:51.900 --> 00:17:54.000 out of the multiplex. How did they squeeze them 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:56.519 out? They utilized a strategy called saturation 00:17:56.519 --> 00:17:59.960 booking. Instead of opening a movie in a few 00:17:59.960 --> 00:18:02.619 theaters in New York and slowly rolling it out 00:18:02.619 --> 00:18:05.759 across the country over six months, a major studio 00:18:05.759 --> 00:18:08.059 would open a movie in a thousand theaters on 00:18:08.059 --> 00:18:10.799 the exact same Friday, backed by millions of 00:18:10.799 --> 00:18:13.299 dollars in national television advertising. Which 00:18:13.299 --> 00:18:15.619 takes an incredible amount of upfront capital. 00:18:15.829 --> 00:18:17.869 If you're an independent B studio, you can't 00:18:17.869 --> 00:18:20.349 afford to print a thousand physical film reels 00:18:20.349 --> 00:18:23.390 or buy national TV ads. Right. You physically 00:18:23.390 --> 00:18:25.970 cannot get your movie onto a screen because the 00:18:25.970 --> 00:18:28.190 blockbusters are taking up all the oxygen. So 00:18:28.190 --> 00:18:30.329 what happens to the actual low budget studios 00:18:30.329 --> 00:18:33.430 in the 80s? Well, the landscape fractured. The 00:18:33.430 --> 00:18:36.029 classic B studios that couldn't adapt, they just 00:18:36.029 --> 00:18:39.700 died. Allied artists went bankrupt. AIP dissolved. 00:18:40.339 --> 00:18:42.799 To survive, studios had to find a new distribution 00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:45.400 model that bypassed the gentrified multiplex 00:18:45.400 --> 00:18:48.220 entirely, and they found it in the VHS cassette. 00:18:48.660 --> 00:18:52.160 Ah, the booming 1980s home video market. Exactly. 00:18:52.619 --> 00:18:54.599 Surviving studios like Troma, who are famous 00:18:54.599 --> 00:18:56.619 for movies like The Toxic Avenger and Empire 00:18:56.619 --> 00:18:59.460 Pictures, shifted entirely away from theatrical 00:18:59.460 --> 00:19:02.240 releases. They realized that every new blockbuster 00:19:02.240 --> 00:19:04.559 video and local rental store across the country 00:19:04.559 --> 00:19:06.660 needed thousands of tapes to fill their empty 00:19:06.660 --> 00:19:09.380 shells. Wait, it's the ni - block booking bundle 00:19:09.380 --> 00:19:11.759 all over again. It really is. The video stores 00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:13.799 needed sheer volume to offer their customers, 00:19:14.099 --> 00:19:16.460 so a cheap straight -to -VHS horror movie with 00:19:16.460 --> 00:19:18.940 great box art was almost guaranteed to make its 00:19:18.940 --> 00:19:20.940 money back in rental fees. You've hit the nail 00:19:20.940 --> 00:19:22.960 on the head. The economics of the video store 00:19:22.960 --> 00:19:25.339 saved the B -movie, and that eventually evolved 00:19:25.339 --> 00:19:28.670 into the 2000s digital revolution. With the advent 00:19:28.670 --> 00:19:31.730 of Chief CGI and digital cameras, you get companies 00:19:31.730 --> 00:19:34.529 like the Asylum or the Syfy Channel mass producing 00:19:34.529 --> 00:19:37.349 incredibly cheap creature features like Sharknado. 00:19:37.509 --> 00:19:39.970 Oh, Sharknado. It's a complete return to the 00:19:39.970 --> 00:19:43.309 1950s Roger Corman business model, just replacing 00:19:43.309 --> 00:19:46.339 rubber monster suits with digital sharks. But 00:19:46.339 --> 00:19:49.640 because this gentrification pushed true B -movies 00:19:49.640 --> 00:19:52.200 out of theaters and onto VHS tapes and cable 00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:54.880 networks, the very language we used to describe 00:19:54.880 --> 00:19:57.259 these films had to fracture and evolve, right? 00:19:57.839 --> 00:20:00.259 B -movie didn't quite cover the sheer variety 00:20:00.259 --> 00:20:02.420 of lower -tier entertainment anymore. Right. 00:20:02.599 --> 00:20:04.920 Balexicon expanded to categorize just how far 00:20:04.920 --> 00:20:08.000 down the budget ladder of film sat. In the 80s, 00:20:08.099 --> 00:20:10.859 the term C -movie popped up, specifically to 00:20:10.859 --> 00:20:13.480 describe that cheap cable TV filler we just discussed. 00:20:14.220 --> 00:20:17.569 The C... Literally stood for cable while also 00:20:17.569 --> 00:20:19.750 implying a grade below B. Makes sense. Shows 00:20:19.750 --> 00:20:22.569 like Mystery Science Theater 3000 built an entire 00:20:22.569 --> 00:20:25.450 cultural phenomenon by gently mocking these exact 00:20:25.450 --> 00:20:27.630 types of films. Then you descend even further 00:20:27.630 --> 00:20:30.009 to the Z -movie. This is the absolute bottom 00:20:30.009 --> 00:20:32.549 of the barrel. Micro -budgets, often a total 00:20:32.549 --> 00:20:34.890 lack of artistic merit or even basic technical 00:20:34.890 --> 00:20:37.450 competency. Like, you can literally see the microphone 00:20:37.450 --> 00:20:39.569 dropping into the shot. Yeah, the classic historical 00:20:39.569 --> 00:20:41.430 example always cited there is Ed Wood's Plan 00:20:41.430 --> 00:20:44.109 9 from Outer Space. There's also Psychotronic. 00:20:44.299 --> 00:20:47.400 which is a fantastic term coined by critic Michael 00:20:47.400 --> 00:20:50.579 J. Weldon. It describes those bizarre, obscure 00:20:50.579 --> 00:20:53.299 genre films that mainstream critics completely 00:20:53.299 --> 00:20:56.519 ignore, but fans celebrate for their sheer camp 00:20:56.519 --> 00:20:59.640 value and weirdness. I love that term. But perhaps 00:20:59.640 --> 00:21:01.720 the most culturally significant evolution of 00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:05.319 the term isn't about movies at all. It's B -television. 00:21:05.680 --> 00:21:08.380 B -television. How does the B -movie aesthetic 00:21:08.380 --> 00:21:11.569 apply to TV broadcasting? So this is a theory 00:21:11.569 --> 00:21:13.990 put forward by German media scholar Heide Marie 00:21:13.990 --> 00:21:16.950 Schumacher. She observed that as commercial television 00:21:16.950 --> 00:21:19.890 expanded in Germany, it needed to build audience 00:21:19.890 --> 00:21:23.049 loyalty quickly and, more importantly, cheaply. 00:21:23.349 --> 00:21:25.849 So it adopted the core tactics of the B -movie. 00:21:26.109 --> 00:21:28.269 What does that look like in practice? Schumacher 00:21:28.269 --> 00:21:31.049 argues that B -television relies heavily on emotional 00:21:31.049 --> 00:21:33.769 manipulation. They create special news programs 00:21:33.769 --> 00:21:36.230 that lean heavily into sensationalized sex and 00:21:36.230 --> 00:21:38.990 crime stories with frantic, fast -paced editing. 00:21:39.210 --> 00:21:41.650 And they produce reality T2 shows that actually 00:21:41.650 --> 00:21:43.950 intervene in real people's lives to generate 00:21:43.950 --> 00:21:46.750 conflict. Wow. The goal of this programming isn't 00:21:46.750 --> 00:21:49.430 to inform the viewer. It's to create visceral 00:21:49.430 --> 00:21:52.430 emotional engagement. So what does this all mean? 00:21:52.730 --> 00:21:56.130 Wait. If the tactics of B television are relying 00:21:56.130 --> 00:21:58.809 on frantic editing, exploiting real people's 00:21:58.809 --> 00:22:01.329 emotions, and leaning into sensationalized sex 00:22:01.329 --> 00:22:04.130 and conflict for cheap ratings, doesn't that 00:22:04.130 --> 00:22:06.569 mean every time you watch a modern reality TV 00:22:06.569 --> 00:22:09.970 show, a dating show, or a Real Housewives reunion, 00:22:10.329 --> 00:22:12.509 you are essentially just consuming the modern 00:22:12.509 --> 00:22:15.490 equivalent of a 1970s grindhouse exploitation 00:22:15.490 --> 00:22:18.250 film? It is the exact same psychological mechanism. 00:22:18.509 --> 00:22:21.509 The medium changed, but human psychology didn't. 00:22:21.579 --> 00:22:24.359 The desire for unpretentious, visceral, easily 00:22:24.359 --> 00:22:26.480 consumable entertainment didn't disappear when 00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:28.000 the drive -ins closed down or when the video 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:29.880 stores went bankrupt. It just moved. It just 00:22:29.880 --> 00:22:32.099 migrated from the outdoor screen to the VHS player 00:22:32.099 --> 00:22:34.640 directly to your living room couch. The mechanisms 00:22:34.640 --> 00:22:37.180 of exploitation simply adapted to the most dominant 00:22:37.180 --> 00:22:39.740 format of the era. When you lay the history out 00:22:39.740 --> 00:22:41.819 like that, it completely changes how you look 00:22:41.819 --> 00:22:44.579 at the media landscape. B -movies aren't a mark 00:22:44.579 --> 00:22:47.180 of poor quality or failure. They are a badge 00:22:47.180 --> 00:22:50.880 of relentless survival and pure, scrappy innovation. 00:22:51.539 --> 00:22:53.720 Without the penny -pinching world of the B -movie, 00:22:54.140 --> 00:22:56.880 there is no Star Wars. There is no independent 00:22:56.880 --> 00:22:59.759 film movement. There is no modern blockbuster. 00:23:00.079 --> 00:23:02.380 The entire language of modern cinema was written 00:23:02.380 --> 00:23:05.000 by people trying to make a quick buck on a four 00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:07.180 -day shooting schedule. Which leaves us with 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:09.059 a really fascinating question about the future. 00:23:09.779 --> 00:23:12.519 Today, the technological and financial barriers 00:23:12.519 --> 00:23:15.160 to entry have completely collapsed. Anyone with 00:23:15.160 --> 00:23:17.759 a smartphone can shoot a movie in 4K resolution, 00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:20.619 edit it on a basic laptop, and distribute it 00:23:20.619 --> 00:23:23.019 globally on YouTube or TikTok for absolutely 00:23:23.019 --> 00:23:25.440 free. That's true. If the financial walls that 00:23:25.440 --> 00:23:27.440 separated A -list from Poverty Row have fallen, 00:23:27.779 --> 00:23:29.980 and the line between an amateur video and a studio 00:23:29.980 --> 00:23:32.789 film is completely blurred by technology, Does 00:23:32.789 --> 00:23:35.230 the B -movie even exist anymore? Or has the entire 00:23:35.230 --> 00:23:38.130 internet simply become one giant global poverty 00:23:38.130 --> 00:23:40.559 row? That is an incredible thought to end on. 00:23:40.740 --> 00:23:43.099 The sheer volume of content being uploaded every 00:23:43.099 --> 00:23:46.559 minute makes 1930s Hollywood look slow. Next 00:23:46.559 --> 00:23:48.839 time you're scrolling past some bizarre trashy 00:23:48.839 --> 00:23:51.180 looking video on your feed or a chaotic reality 00:23:51.180 --> 00:23:53.579 show, look a little closer at the mechanics of 00:23:53.579 --> 00:23:55.599 what they're doing to hold your attention. You 00:23:55.599 --> 00:23:57.559 might just be watching the next evolution of 00:23:57.559 --> 00:23:59.680 cinema happening right in front of you. Keep 00:23:59.680 --> 00:24:01.920 your popcorn handy and watch out for buzzing 00:24:01.920 --> 00:24:04.420 seats. We'll catch you on the next deep dive.