Pertaining to Justin Chin's "Undetectable"

PDF generated using the open source mwlib toolkit. See http://code.pediapress.com/ for more information. PDF generated at: Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:14:57 UTC Contents

Articles Viral load 1 Fantastic Voyage 3 B movie 10 Blight 39 References Article Sources and Contributors 40 Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 41 Article Licenses License 42 Viral load 1 Viral load

Viral load is a measure of the severity of a viral infection, and can be calculated by estimating the amount of virus in an involved body fluid. For example, it can be given in RNA copies per milliliter of blood plasma. Determination of viral load is part of the therapy monitoring during chronic viral infections, and in immunocompromised patients such as those recovering from bone marrow or solid organ transplantation. Currently, routine testing is available for HIV-1, cytomegalovirus, hepatitis B virus, and hepatitis C virus.

HIV viral load test Several different HIV viral load tests have been developed, and three are currently approved for use in the US: • Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor test (Hoffman-La Roche), better known as the PCR test • NucliSens HIV-1 QT, or NASBA (bioMerieux) • Versant/Quantiplex HIV-1 RNA, or bDNA (Chiron/Bayer) These tests have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States for use in monitoring the health of people with HIV, in conjunction with other markers. Higher numbers in the viral load tests indicate an increased risk of getting sick from opportunistic diseases. These tests are also approved for monitoring the effects of anti-HIV therapy, to track viral suppression and detect treatment failure. Successful combination antiretroviral therapy should give a fall in viral load of 1.5 to 2 logs (30-100 fold) within six weeks, with the viral load falling below the limit of detection within four to six months.[1] An affordable, largely manual test, which has the European regulatory approval for clinical

use, is also used for viral load monitoring (ExaVir Load from Cavidi AB, http:/ / www. cavidi. [2] com). It depends on measuring virus-associated reverse transcriptase (RT) activity and can therefore detect all types and subtypes of HIV. The technology does not require sophisticated laboratories and can therefore make viral load testing more accessible in all parts of the world. [3] [4] Viral load tests can also be used to diagnose HIV infection, especially in children under 18 months born to mothers with HIV, where the presence of maternal antibodies prevents the use of antibody-based (ELISA) diagnostic tests. Persons with HIV are most contagious during the earliest stages of infection, when an antibody test would yield a negative result. Therefore, the importance of viral load testing is deemed important for yielding an earlier HIV diagnosis. Since persons are most contagious during early infection, widespread testing could provide significant public health benefits. Viral load 2

Results The results of these tests are usually given as number of HIV RNA copies per milliliter (ml) of blood. The PCR test may give the number of HIV RNA copies per 0.05 mL, so one would multiply the result by 20 to get the standard result.

References

[1] DHHS Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents. Guidelines for the Use of Antiretroviral

Agents in HIV-1-Infected Adults and Adolescents. May 4, 2006. (available for download from AIDSInfo (http:/ /

www. aidsinfo. nih. gov/ OrderPublication/ OrderPubsBrowseSearchResultsTable. aspx?from=G&

searchString=& MenuItem=Guidelines)) [2] Malmsten A, Shao XW, Sjödahl S, Fredriksson EL, Pettersson I, Leitner T, Källander CFR, Sandström E, Gronowitz JS: Improved HIV-1 viral load determination based on reverse transcriptase activity recovered from human plasma. J. Med. Virology 76:347-359, 2005. [3] Greengrass VL, Turnball SP, Hocking J, Dunne AL, Tachedjian G, Corrigan GE, Crowe SM. Evaluation of a low cost reverse transcriptase assay for plasma HIV-1 viral load monitoring. Curr HIV Res 3(2):183-190, 2005. [4] Jennings C, Fiscus SA, Crowe SM, Danilovic AD, Morack RJ, Scianna S, Cachafeiro A, Brambilla DJ, Schupbach J, Stevens W, Respess R, Varnier OE, Corrigan GE, Gronowitz JS, Ussery MA, Bremer JW. Comparison of two human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) RNA surrogate assays to the standard HIV RNA assay. J Clin Microbiol. 2005 Dec;43(12):5950-6. Fantastic Voyage 3 Fantastic Voyage

Fantastic Voyage

film poster by Tom Chantrell Directed by Richard Fleischer Produced by Saul David Written by Story: Jerome Bixby Otto Klement Screenplay: Harry Kleiner Adaptation: David Duncan Starring Stephen Boyd Raquel Welch Edmond O'Brien Donald Pleasence Music by Leonard Rosenman Cinematography Ernest Laszlo, ASC Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Release date(s) August 24, 1966 (U.S.A.) Running time 100 minutes Language English

Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 science fiction film written by Harry Kleiner. Bantam Books obtained the rights for a paperback novelization based on the screenplay and approached Isaac Asimov to write it.[1] Because the novelization was released six months before the movie, many people mistakenly believed Asimov's book had inspired the movie.[2] According to Fred Schodt's The Astro Boy Essays, FOX also approached NBC to get the rights to an Astro Boy episode which had the same premise, but they never contacted the manga artist or credited him in the final product. The movie inspired an animated television series, as well as a painting of the same name by Salvador Dalí.[3] Fantastic Voyage 4

Plot The United States and the Soviet Union have both developed technology that allowed matter to be miniaturized using a process that shrinks individual atoms, but its value is limited because objects shrunk return to normal size after a period of time - the smaller an object is made, the quicker it reverts. Scientist Jan Benes, working behind the Iron Curtain, has figured out how to make the shrinking process work indefinitely. With the help of the CIA, he escapes to the West, but an attempted assassination leaves him comatose, with a blood clot in his brain. To save his life, Charles Grant (the agent who extracted him, played by Stephen Boyd), pilot Captain Bill Owens (William Redfield), Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasence), surgeon Dr. Peter Duval (Arthur Kennedy) and his assistant Cora Peterson (Raquel Welch) board a submarine, the Proteus, which is then miniaturized and injected into Benes. The ship is reduced to one micrometre in length, giving the team only one hour to repair the clot; after that, the submarine will begin to revert to its normal size and become large enough for Benes' immune system to detect and attack. The crew faces many obstacles on their journey. They are forced to detour through the heart (a temporary cardiac arrest must be induced to avoid destructive turbulence), the inner ear (all in the lab must remain quiet to prevent similar turbulence) and the alveoli of the lungs (where they replenish their supply of oxygen). When the surgical laser needed to destroy the clot is damaged, it becomes obvious there is a saboteur on the mission. They cannibalize their radio to repair the laser. When they finally reach the brain clot, there are only six minutes remaining to operate and then exit the body. The traitor, Dr. Michaels, knocks Owens out and takes control of the Proteus while the rest of the crew is outside for the operation. Duval successfully removes the clot with the laser. Michaels tries to crash the sub into the clot area to kill Benes, but Grant fires the laser at the ship, causing it to veer away and crash. Michaels is trapped in the wreckage and killed when a white blood cell attacks and destroys the Proteus. Grant saves Owens from the ship, and they all swim desperately to one of the eyes, where they escape via a teardrop.

Cast

• Stephen Boyd as Grant • Jean Del Val as Jan Benes

• Raquel Welch as Cora • Barry Coe as Communications aide

• Edmond O'Brien as General Carter • Ken Scott as Secret Service

• Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels • Shelby Grant as Nurse

• Arthur O'Connell as Colonel Donald Reid • James Brolin as Technician

• William Redfield as Captain Bill Owens • Brendan Fitzgerald as Wireless operator

• Arthur Kennedy as Dr. Duval Fantastic Voyage 5

Production The "whirlpool" scene where the two-inch Proteus miniature was spun around and sucked into a fistula shortly after the sub was injected into Benes' bloodstream was made using a large punch bowl, strawberry-flavored milk, and three cups of Cheerios cereal. According to L.B. Abbott, a bird stole the miniature while it was drying on a window sill following a paint touch-up. It has never been recovered, and Abbott jokingly theorized that it is probably still part of some bird's nest up in some tree. Donald Pleasance's final scene involved a lot of screaming in agony. Much of that turned out to be real, as the soap suds that were used to represent the white blood cells attacking him had gotten into his eyes, and as he was trapped in the command chair as the scene called for, he was unable to wipe his eyes free of the suds or receive medical attention until the scene was safely 'in the can'. Much of the interior scenes of the secret complex were filmed at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena at night. Brief glimpses of the outside playing field area can be seen as General Carter takes Grant through the complex on a small golf cart, as they pass the stairway entrances to each section of the stadium. The entire operating theater, control room, and miniaturization chamber were all one contiguous set. The only piece of this area of the complex that was separate was the sterilization chamber. The film was originally planned to have an epilogue, with Dr. Benes having recovered from the microsurgery. However, despite the success of the mission, he still suffered some minor brain damage; specifically the portion of his memory that contained the secret of how to maintain a miniaturized state for longer than an hour. Verified as genuine, copies of scripts containing this ending have circulated in conventions for years, and can be found on the Internet. Asimov's novelization includes a similar epilogue, though omitting the memory loss.

Reuse of sets and props The actual full-sized set and prop for the Proteus was placed in storage at the 20th Century Fox backlot for years, and maintained in relatively good condition. It was brought out of retirement briefly for use in filming a Public Service Announcement in 1972 for the American Medical Association on the risks of heart disease. Shortly afterwards, it was painted orange and modified for use as a rescue vessel in Irwin Allen's disaster film, The Poseidon Adventure. However, due to budget constraints, all scenes featuring the rescue craft were cut before any scenes were filmed, and the hull of the modified Proteus was later scrapped. Parts of the miniature sets, as well as some of the full-sized sets, were "borrowed" by Irwin Allen for use on some of his various TV shows. The season one Lost in Space episode, "The Derelict" features the brain set used as the interior for the alien spaceship that has swallowed the Jupiter 2. The brain cells were explained to be a "crystaline power source." One of the blood vessel sets was used as a conveyor tube in an episode of Lost in Space where Will Robinson has just been converted into a diminutive duplicate of Dr. Zachary Smith. Part of the inner ear miniature set was used in the episode "Jonah and the Whale" on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The laser gun was used on several of Allen's series as an alien weapon prop. Fantastic Voyage 6

Much of the aforementioned usage of sets and props from Fantastic Voyage in Irwin Allen's TV efforts can be attributed to two facts: Special effects for both efforts were supervised by L. B. Abbott, and both were filmed in adjacent stages at the 20th Century Fox studios. Paul Zastupnevich, Allen's associate during the majority of his science-fiction TV work, stated in numerous interviews that the use of the Fantastic Voyage sets and props was, at times, due to "midnight requisitioning" on the part of both Allen and Abbott. Richard Basehart also referred to specifics on filming the episode "Jonah and the Whale" of having to film certain scenes long after normal studio hours because they were "borrowing" a set from another production and had to finish shooting before that production resumed shooting the following morning.

Music The score was composed and conducted by Leonard Rosenman. The composer deliberately wrote no music for the first four reels of the film, before the protagonists enter the human body. Rosenman wrote that "the harmony for the entire score is almost completely atonal except for the very end when our heroes grow to normality."[4] The complete score was released in 1998 on compact disc, on Film Score Monthly records.

Background

Logical flaws In the original movie, the crew (apart from the saboteur) manage to leave Benes' body safely before reverting to normal size, but the Proteus remains inside, as do the remains of the saboteur's body (albeit digested by a white blood cell), as well as several gallons (full scale) of a carrier solution (presumably saline) used in the injection syringe. Isaac Asimov pointed out[5] that this was a serious logical flaw in the plot, since the submarine (even if reduced to bits of debris) would also revert to normal size, killing Benes in the process. Therefore, in his novelization Asimov had the crew provoke the white cell into following them, so that it drags the submarine to the tearduct. The submarine (or rather, the wreckage of it) then expands outside Benes' body. Moreover, the scene where the crew collects air from Benes' lungs after their own supply is sabotaged should not work, as the air consists of normal-sized molecules. Asimov's novelization solved this problem as well by including a miniaturization device in the jury-rigged suction machine. However, in the movie, the unminiaturized air was used only to pressurize a tank for ballast, not for breathing. According to the introduction of the novel, Asimov was rather reluctant to write the novel because he believed that the miniaturization of matter is physically impossible. But he decided that it was still good fodder for story-telling and that it could still make for some intelligent reading. Plus it was known that 20th Century Fox wanted someone with some science-fiction clout to help promote the film. To his credit, aside from the initial "impossibility" of the shrinking machine, Asimov went to great lengths to accurately portray what it would actually be like to be shrunk to that scale, such as the lights on the sub being highly penetrating to normal matter, time distortion, and other side effects that are completely ignored in the movie. Fantastic Voyage 7

Related novels and comics Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, was written by Isaac Asimov as an attempt to develop and present his own story apart from the 1966 screenplay. This novel is not a sequel to the original, but instead is a separate story taking place in the Soviet Union with an entirely different set of characters. Fantastic Voyage: Microcosm is a third interpretation, written by Kevin J. Anderson, published in 2001. This version has the crew of the Proteus explore the body of a dead alien that crash-lands on earth, and updates the story with such modern concepts as nanotechnology (replacing killer white cells). A comic book adaptation of the film was released by Gold Key in 1967. Drawn by industry legend Wally Wood, the book followed the plot of the movie with general accuracy, but many scenes were depicted differently and/or outright dropped, and the ending was given an epilogue similar as that seen in some of the early draft scripts for the film.

In Popular Culture The film was parodied in the Futurama episode Parasites Lost. Fantastic Voyage was not referenced explicitly, however.

Awards The film won two Academy Awards and was nominated for three more:[6] Won • Best Art Direction (Jack Martin Smith, Dale Hennesy, Walter M. Scott, Stuart A. Reiss) • Best Visual Effects Nominated • Best Cinematography • Best Editing • Best Sound

Adaptations

1968 Animated television series Two years after the film was released, ABC aired an animated series on Saturday mornings. The series was produced by Filmation. In the series, a different team of scientists performed their missions in a craft known as Voyager, a submarine which featured wedge-shaped wings and large, swept T-tail, and was capable of flight. A model kit of Voyager was offered by Aurora Model Company for several years, and has become a sought-after collectors' item since then. As of June, 2008, the Voyager kit has been re-released by the Moebius model company. Fantastic Voyage 8

Remake Plans for a remake or sequel have been in discussion since at least 1984, but the project has been stuck in development hell ever since. In 1984, Isaac Asimov was approached to write Fantastic Voyage II, out of which a movie would be made.[7] Asimov "was sent a suggested outline" that mirrored the movie Innerspace and "involved two vessels in the bloodstream, one American and one Soviet, and what followed was a kind of submicroscopic version of World War III."[7] Asimov was against such an approach. Following a dispute between publishers, the original commissioners of the novel approached Philip Farmer, who "wrote a novel and sent [in] the manuscript" that was rejected despite "stick[ing] tightly to the outline [that was sent to Asimov."[7] "It dealt with World War III in the bloodstream, and it was full of action and excitement."[7] Although Asimov urged the publisher to accept Farmer's manuscript, it was insisted that Asimov write the novel. So, Asimov eventually wrote the book in his own way ("completely different in plot from what [Farmer] had written"), which was eventually published by Doubleday in 1987 as Fantastic Voyage II and "dealt not with competing submarines in the bloodstream, but with one submarine, with [an] American hero cooperating (not entirely voluntarily) with four Soviet crew members."[7] The novel was not made into a movie, however. James Cameron was also interested in directing a remake (since at least 1997),[8] but decided to devote his efforts to his Avatar project. He still remained open to the idea of producing a feature based on his own screenplay, and in 2007, 20th Century Fox announced that pre-production on the project was finally underway. Roland Emmerich agreed to direct, but rejected the script written by Cameron.[8] [9] Marianne and Cormac Wibberley were hired to write a new script, but the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike delayed filming, and Emmerich began working on 2012 instead.[9] [10]

References

Bibliography • Asimov, Isaac (1980). In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954-1978. New York: Avon. ISBN 0380530252.

See also • List of American films of 1966 • Microsurgery

External links • Fantastic Voyage [11] at the Internet Movie Database • Fantastic Voyage [12] at Allmovie • Proteus [13] • 3D Model of Proteus Submarine [14] • Various releases of music from the film [15] Fantastic Voyage 9

References

[1] Asimov 1980. p. 363. [2] Asimov 1980:390.

[3] " Lot description for Dali's Le voyage fantastique (http:/ / www. christies. com/ LotFinder/ lfsearch/

LotDescription. aspx?intObjectId=4856995)". The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale (February 6, 2007). Christie's website. . Retrieved 2007-01-29. [4] Bond, Jeff (1998). Release notes for Fantastic Voyage by Leonard Rosenman, p. 2 (CD insert notes). Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.: Film Score Monthly (Vol. 1, No. 3). [5] Asimov 1980:363-364

[6] " NY Times: Fantastic Voyage (http:/ / movies. nytimes. com/ movie/ 16772/ Fantastic-Voyage/ awards)". NY Times. . Retrieved 2008-12-27. [7] I, Asimov. Isaac Asimov. p. 501. Batnam Book. 1994.

[8] " Roland Emmerich Tries To Explain Why James Cameron’s Fantastic Voyage Script Sucked (http:/ / www.

slashfilm. com/ 2007/ 09/ 26/

roland-emmerich-tries-to-explain-why-james-camerons-fantastic-voyage-script-sucked/ )". slashfilm.com. September 26, 2007. . Retrieved 2008-08-20.

[9] " Exclusive: Emmerich On Fantastic Voyage (http:/ / www. empireonline. com/ news/ story. asp?NID=21109)". empireonline.com. September 27, 2007. . Retrieved 2008-08-20.

[10] " Emmerich to captain 'Voyage' (http:/ / www. variety. com/ article/ VR1117970307. html?categoryid=13&

cs=1& query=fantastic+ voyage)". variety.com. August 15, 2007. . Retrieved 2007-08-15.

[11] http:/ / www. imdb. com/ title/ tt0060397/

[12] http:/ / www. allmovie. com/ work/ 16772

[13] http:/ / www. lunadude. com/ pet_proj/ proteus

[14] http:/ / sketchup. google. com/ 3dwarehouse/ details?mid=a77c64b41bcc66bbca4b459ebb5d9bcb

[15] http:/ / www. soundtrackcollector. com/ catalog/ soundtrackdetail. php?movieid=6222 B movie 10 B movie

A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture conceived neither as an arthouse film nor as pornography. In its original usage, during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature. Although the U.S. production of movies intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s, the term B movie continued to be used in the broader sense it maintains today. In its post–Golden Age usage, there is ambiguity on both sides of the definition: on the one hand, many B movies display a high degree of craft and aesthetic ingenuity; on the other, the primary interest of many inexpensive exploitation films is prurient. In some cases, both are true.

In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the 1950s. Early B movies were The "King of the Bs," Roger Corman, produced and directed The Raven (1963) for American often part of series in which the star International Pictures. Vincent Price headlines a repeatedly played the same character. Almost cast of veteran character actors along with a young always shorter than the top-billed films they Jack Nicholson. were paired with, many had running times of 70 minutes or less. The term connoted a general perception that B movies were inferior to the more handsomely budgeted headliners; individual B films were often ignored by critics. Latter-day B movies still sometimes inspire multiple sequels, but series are less common. As the average running time of top-of-the-line films increased, so did that of B pictures. In its current usage, the term has two primary and somewhat contradictory connotations: it may signal an opinion that a certain movie is (a) a genre film with minimal artistic ambitions or (b) a lively, energetic film uninhibited by the constraints imposed on more expensive projects and unburdened by the conventions of putatively "serious" independent film. The term is also now used loosely to refer to some higher budgeted, mainstream films with exploitation-style content, usually in genres traditionally associated with the B movie.

From their beginnings to the present day, B movies have provided opportunities both for those coming up in the profession and others whose careers are waning. Celebrated filmmakers such as Anthony Mann and Jonathan Demme learned their craft in B movies. B movies are where actors such as John Wayne and Jack Nicholson became established, and the Bs have also provided work for former A movie actors, such as Vincent Price and Karen Black. Some actors, such as Béla Lugosi and Pam Grier, worked in B movies for most of B movie 11

their careers. The term B actor is sometimes used to refer to a performer who finds work primarily or exclusively in B pictures.

This article is part of the → B movie series. B movies (Hollywood Golden Age) B movies (Transition in the 1950s) B movies (The exploitation boom) B movies (1980s to the present) Z movie

History

Roots of the B movie: 1920s

It is not clear that the term B movie (or B film or B picture) was in general use before the 1930s, but a similar concept was already well established. In 1927–28, at the end of the silent era, the production cost of an average feature from a major Hollywood studio ranged from $190,000 at Fox to $275,000 at MGM. That average reflected both "specials" that might cost as much as $1 million and films made quickly for around $50,000. These cheaper films allowed the studios to derive maximum value from facilities and contracted staff in between a studio's more important productions, while also breaking in new personnel.[2] Studios in the minor leagues of the industry, such as Columbia Pictures and Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), focused on exactly those sort of cheap productions; their movies, with relatively Columbia's That Certain Thing (1928) short running times, targeted theaters that had to was made for less than $20,000. Soon, director Frank Capra's association with economize on rental and operating costs—particularly Columbia would help vault the studio [1] those in small towns and so-called neighborhood toward Hollywood's major leagues. venues, or "nabes," in big cities. Even smaller, so-called Poverty Row outfits made films whose production costs might run as low as $3,000, seeking a profit through whatever bookings they could pick up in the gaps left by the larger concerns.[3]

With the widespread arrival of sound film in American theaters in 1929, many independent exhibitors began dropping the then-dominant presentation model, which involved live acts and a broad variety of shorts before a single featured film. A new programming scheme developed that would soon become standard practice: a newsreel, a short and/or a serial, B movie 12

and a cartoon, followed by a double feature. The second feature, which actually screened before the main event, cost the exhibitor less per minute than the equivalent running time in shorts. The majors' "clearance" rules favoring their affiliated theaters prevented the independents' timely access to top-quality films; the second feature allowed them to promote quantity instead.[4] The additional movie also gave the program "balance"—the practice of pairing different sorts of features suggested to potential customers that they could count on something of interest no matter what specifically was on the bill. The low-budget picture of the 1920s thus evolved into the second feature, the B movie, of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Bs in the Golden Age of Hollywood (1): 1930s The major studios, at first resistant to the B feature, soon adapted. All established "B units" to provide films for the expanding second-feature market. Block booking became standard practice: to get access to a studio's attractive A pictures, many theaters were obliged to rent the company's entire output for a season. With the B films rented at a flat fee (rather than the box office percentage basis of A films), rates could be set virtually guaranteeing the profitability of every B movie. The parallel practice of blind bidding largely freed the majors from worrying about their Bs' quality—even when booking in less than seasonal blocks, exhibitors had to buy most pictures sight unseen. The five largest studios — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation (20th Century Fox as of 1935), Warner Bros., and RKO Radio Pictures (descendant of FBO) — also belonged to companies with sizable theater chains, further securing the bottom line. Poverty Row studios, from modest outfits like Mascot Pictures, Tiffany Pictures, and Sono Art-World Wide Pictures down to shoestring operations, made exclusively B movies, serials, and other shorts, and also distributed totally independent productions and imported films. In no position to directly block book, they mostly sold regional distribution exclusivity to "states rights" firms, which in turn peddled blocks of movies to exhibitors, typically six or more pictures featuring the same star (a relative status on Poverty Row).[5] Two "major-minors" — Universal Studios and rising Columbia Pictures — had production lines roughly similar to, though somewhat better endowed than, the top Poverty Row studios. However, in contrast to the "majors", the "minors" had few or no theaters, while having major-league-level film distribution exchanges.[6] In the standard Golden Age model, the industry's top product, the "A films", premiered at a small number of select first-run houses in major cities. Double features were not the rule at these prestigious venues. As described by historian Edward Jay Epstein, "During these first runs, films got their reviews, garnered publicity, and generated the word of mouth that served as the principal form of advertising."[7] Then it was off to the subsequent-run market where the double feature prevailed. At the larger local venues controlled by the majors, movies might turn over on a weekly basis. At the thousands of smaller, independent theaters, programs often changed two or three times a week. To meet the constant demand for new B product, the low end of Poverty Row turned out a stream of micro-budget movies rarely much more than sixty minutes long; these were known as "quickies" for their tight production schedules—as short as four days.[8] As Brain Taves describes, "Many of the poorest theaters, such as the 'grind houses' in the larger cities, screened a continuous program emphasizing action with no specific schedule, sometimes offering six quickies for a nickel in an all-night show that changed daily."[9] Many small theaters never saw a big-studio A film, getting their movies from the states rights concerns that handled almost B movie 13

exclusively Poverty Row product. Millions of Americans went to their local theaters as a matter of course: for an A picture, along with the trailers, or screen previews, that presaged its arrival, "[t]he new film's title on the marquee and the listings for it in the local newspaper constituted all the advertising most movies got."[10] Aside from at the theater itself, B films might not be advertised at all. The introduction of sound had driven costs higher: by 1930, the average U.S. feature film cost $375,000 to produce.[11] A broad range of motion pictures occupied the B category. The leading studios made not only clear-cut A and B films, but also movies classifiable as "programmers" (also known as "in-betweeners" or "intermediates"): "Depending on the prestige of the theater and the other material on the double bill, a programmer could show up at the top or bottom of the marquee."[12] On Poverty Row, many Bs were made on budgets that would have barely covered petty cash on a major's A film, with costs at the bottom of the industry running as low as $5,000.[8] By the mid-1930s, the double feature was the dominant U.S. exhibition model, and the majors responded. In 1935, B movie production at Warner Bros. was raised from 12 to 50 percent of studio output. The unit was headed by Bryan Foy, known as the "Keeper of the Bs."[13] At Fox, which also shifted half of its production line into B territory, Sol M. Wurtzel was similarly in charge of more than twenty movies a year during the late 1930s. A number of the top Poverty Row firms consolidated: Sono Art joined another company to create Monogram Pictures early in the decade. In 1935, Monogram, Mascot, and several smaller studios merged to form Republic Pictures. The heads of Monogram soon pulled out and revived their company. Into the 1950s, most Republic and Monogram product was roughly on par with the low end of the majors' output. Less sturdy Poverty Row concerns—with a penchant for grand sobriquets like Conquest, Empire, Imperial, and Peerless—continued to churn out dirt-cheap quickies.[14] Joel Finler has analyzed the average length of feature releases in 1938, indicating the studios' relative emphasis on B production (United Artists produced little, focusing on the distribution of prestigious films from independent outfits):[15]

Stony Brooke (Wayne), Tucson Smith (Corrigan), and Lullaby Joslin (Terhune) didn't get much time in harness. Republic Pictures' Pals of the Saddle (1938) lasts just 55 minutes, average for a Three Mesquiteers adventure. B movie 14

Studio Category Avg. duration

MGM Big Five 87.9 minutes

Paramount Big Five 76.4 minutes

20th Century-Fox Big Five 75.3 minutes

Warner Bros. Big Five 75.0 minutes

RKO Big Five 74.1 minutes

United Artists Little Three 87.6 minutes

Columbia Little Three 66.4 minutes

Universal Little Three 66.4 minutes

[16] Grand National Poverty Row 63.6 minutes

Republic Poverty Row 63.1 minutes

Monogram Poverty Row 60.0 minutes

Taves estimates that half of the films produced by the eight majors in the 1930s were B movies. Calculating in the three hundred or so films made annually by the many Poverty Row firms, approximately 75 percent of Hollywood movies from the decade, more than four thousand pictures, are classifiable as Bs.[17] The Western was by far the predominant B genre in both the 1930s and, to a lesser degree, the 1940s.[18] Film historian Jon Tuska has argued that "the 'B' product of the Thirties—the Universal films with [Tom] Mix, [Ken] Maynard, and [Buck] Jones, the Columbia features with Buck Jones and Tim McCoy, the RKO George O'Brien series, the Republic Westerns with John Wayne and the Three Mesquiteers...achieved a uniquely American perfection of the well-made story."[19] At the far end of the industry, Poverty Row's Ajax put out oaters starring Harry Carey, then in his fifties. The Weiss outfit had the Range Rider series, the American Rough Rider series, and the Morton of the Mounted "northwest action thrillers."[20] One notable low-budget oater of the era, made totally outside the studio system, profited from an outrageous concept: a Western with an all-midget cast, The Terror of Tiny Town (1938) was such a success in its independent bookings that Columbia picked it up for distribution.[21] Series of various genres, featuring recurrent, title-worthy characters or name actors in familiar roles, were particularly popular during the first decade of sound film. Fox's many B series, for instance, included Charlie Chan mysteries, Ritz Brothers comedies, and musicals with child star Jane Withers.[22] These series films are not to be confused with the short, cliffhanger-structured serials that sometimes appeared on the same program. As with serials, however, many series were intended to attract young people—a theater that twin-billed part-time might run a "balanced" or entirely youth-oriented double feature as a matinee and then a single film for a more mature audience at night. In the words of one industry report, afternoon moviegoers, "composed largely of housewives and children, want quantity for their money while the evening crowds want 'something good and not too much of it.'"[23] Series films are often unquestioningly consigned to the B movie category, but even here there is ambiguity: at MGM, for example, popular series like the Andy Hardy chronicles had leading stars and budgets that would have been A-level at some of the lesser majors.[24] For many series, even a lesser major's standard B budget was far out of reach: Poverty Row's Consolidated Pictures featured Tarzan, the Police Dog in a series with the proud name of Melodramatic Dog Features.[25] B movie 15

Bs in the Golden Age of Hollywood (2): 1940s By 1940, the average production cost of an American feature was $400,000, a negligible increase over ten years.[11] A number of small Hollywood companies had folded around the turn of the decade, including the ambitious Grand National, but a new firm, Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), emerged as third in the Poverty Row hierarchy behind Republic and Monogram. The double feature, never universal, was still the prevailing exhibition model: in 1941, 50 percent of theaters were double-billing exclusively, with others screening under the policy part-time.[26] In the early 1940s, legal pressure forced the studios to replace seasonal block booking with packages generally limited to five pictures. Restrictions were also placed on the majors' ability to enforce blind bidding.[27] These were crucial factors in the progressive shift by most of the Big Five over to A-film production, making the smaller studios even more important as B movie suppliers. Genre pictures made at very low cost remained the backbone of Poverty Row, with even Republic's and Monogram's budgets rarely climbing over $200,000. Many smaller Poverty Row firms folded as the eight majors, with their proprietary distribution exchanges, now commanded "around 95 percent of all domestic (U.S. and Canada) rental receipts."[28] In 1946, independent producer David O. Selznick brought his bloated-budget spectacle Duel in the Sun to market with heavy nationwide promotion and wide release. The distribution strategy was a major success, despite what was widely perceived as the movie's poor quality.[29] The Duel release anticipated practices that fueled the B-movie industry in the late 1950s; when the top Hollywood studios made them standard two decades after that, the B movie would be hard hit. Considerations beside cost made the line between A and B movies ambiguous. Films shot on B-level budgets were occasionally marketed as A pictures or emerged as sleeper hits: One of 1943's biggest films was Hitler's Children, an RKO thriller made for a fraction over $200,000. It earned more than $3 million in rentals, industry language for a distributor's share of gross box office receipts.[30] Particularly in the realm of film noir, A pictures sometimes echoed visual styles generally associated with cheaper films. Programmers, with their flexible exhibition role, were ambiguous by definition, leading in certain cases to historical confusion. Ronald Reagan, frequently identified as a "B movie star," in fact often had leading parts not only in programmers but also run-of-the-mill A movies that were Bs only in the sense of perceived quality. As late as 1948, the double feature remained a popular exhibition mode—it was standard policy at 25 percent of theaters and used part-time at an additional 36 percent.[31] The leading Poverty Row firms began to broaden their scope: In 1947, Monogram established a subsidiary, Allied Artists, to develop and distribute relatively expensive films, mostly from independent producers. Around the same time, Republic launched a similar effort under the "Premiere" rubric.[32] In 1947 as well, PRC was subsumed by Eagle-Lion, a British company seeking entry to the American market. Warners' former Keeper of the Bs, Brian Foy, was installed as production chief.[33] B movie 16

In the 1940s, RKO stood out among the industry's Big Five for its focus on B pictures. From a latter-day perspective, the most famous of the major studios' Golden Age B units is Val Lewton's horror unit at RKO. Lewton produced such moody, mysterious films as Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Body Snatcher (1945), directed by Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, and others who would become renowned only later in their careers or entirely in retrospect. The movie now widely described as the first classic film noir—Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), a 64-minute B—was produced at RKO, which would release many additional melodramatic thrillers in a similarly stylish vein. The other major studios also turned out a considerable number of movies now identified as noir during the 1940s. Though many of the best-known film noirs were A-level productions, most 1940s pictures in the mode were either of the ambiguous programmer type or destined straight for the bottom of the Raw Deal, a 1948 film noir directed by Anthony bill. In the decades since, these cheap Mann and shot by John Alton, was put out by entertainments, generally dismissed at the Poverty Row's Eagle-Lion firm. Such movies were time, have become some of the most treasured routinely marketed as pure sensationalism, but products of Hollywood's Golden Age.[35] many also possessed great visual beauty, "resplendent with velvety blacks, mists, netting, and other expressive accessories of poetic noir [34] In one sample year, 1947, RKO produced in decor and lighting." addition to several noir programmers and A pictures, two straight B noirs: Desperate and The Devil Thumbs a Ride. Ten true B noirs that year came from Poverty Row's big three—Republic, Monogram, and PRC/Eagle-Lion—and one from tiny Screen Guild. Three majors beside RKO contributed a total of five more. Along with these eighteen unambiguous B noirs, an additional dozen or so noir programmers came out of Hollywood.[36] Still, most of the majors' low-budget production remained the sort now largely ignored. RKO's representative output included the Mexican Spitfire and Lum and Abner comedy series, thrillers featuring the Saint and the Falcon, Westerns starring Tim Holt, and Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller. Jean Hersholt played Dr. Christian in six films between 1939 and 1941. The Courageous Dr. Christian (1940) was a standard entry: "In the course of an hour or so of screen time, the saintly physician managed to cure an epidemic of spinal meningitis, demonstrate benevolence towards the disenfranchised, set an example for wayward youth, and calm the passions of an amorous old maid."[37]

Down in Poverty Row, low budgets led to less palliative fare. Republic aspired to major-league respectability while making many cheap and modestly budgeted Westerns, but there wasn't much from the bigger studios that compared with Monogram "exploitation pictures" like juvenile delinquency exposé Where Are Your Children? (1943) and the prison B movie 17

film Women in Bondage (1943).[38] In 1947, PRC's The Devil on Wheels brought together teenagers, hot rods, and death. The little studio had its own house auteur: with his own crew and relatively free rein, director Edgar G. Ulmer was known as "the Capra of PRC."[39] Ulmer made films of every generic stripe: His Girls in Chains was released in May 1943, six months before Women in Bondage; by the end of the year, Ulmer had also made the teen-themed musical Jive Junction as well as Isle of Forgotten Sins, a South Seas adventure set around a brothel.

Transition I/The B movie in the television age: 1950s In 1948, a Supreme Court ruling in a federal antitrust suit against the majors outlawed block booking and led to the Big Five divesting their theater chains. With audiences draining away to television and studios scaling back production schedules, the classic double feature vanished from many American theaters during the 1950s. The major studios promoted the benefits of recycling, offering former headlining movies as second features in the place of traditional B films.[40] With television airing many classic Westerns as well as producing its own original Western series, the cinematic market for B oaters in particular was drying up. After barely inching forward in the 1930s, the average U.S. feature production cost had essentially doubled over the 1940s, reaching $1 million by the turn of the decade—a 93 percent rise after adjusting for inflation.[11] The first prominent victim of the changing market was Eagle-Lion, which released its last films in 1951. By 1953, the old Monogram brand had disappeared, the company having adopted the identity of its higher-end subsidiary, Allied Artists. The following year, Allied released Hollywood's last B series Westerns. Non-series B Westerns continued to appear for a few more years, but Republic Pictures, long associated with cheap sagebrush sagas, was out of the filmmaking business by decade's end. In other genres, Universal kept its Ma and Pa Kettle series going through 1957, while Allied Artists stuck with the Bowery Boys until 1958.[41] RKO, weakened by years of mismanagement, exited the movie industry in 1957.[42] Hollywood's A product was getting longer—the top ten box-office releases of 1940 had averaged 112.5 minutes; the average length of 1955's top ten was 123.4.[43] In their modest way, the Bs were following suit. The age of the hour-long feature film was past; 70 minutes was now roughly the minimum. While the Golden Age–style second feature was dying, B movie was still used to refer to any low-budget genre film featuring relatively unheralded performers ("B actors"). The term retained its earlier suggestion that such movies relied on formulaic plots, "stock" character types, and simplistic action or unsophisticated comedy. At the same time, the realm of the B movie was becoming increasingly fertile territory for experimentation, both serious and outlandish. Ida Lupino, well known as an actress, established herself as Hollywood's sole female director of the era. In short, low-budget pictures made for her production company, The Filmakers, Lupino explored virtually taboo subjects such as rape in 1950's Outrage and 1953's self-explanatory The Bigamist. Her most famous directorial effort, The Hitch-Hiker, a 1953 RKO release, is often referred to as the only classic film noir directed by a woman.[44] That same year, RKO put out another historically notable film made at low cost: Split Second concludes in a nuclear test range, making it perhaps the first "atomic noir." The most famous such movie, the independently produced Kiss Me Deadly (1955), typifies the persistently murky middle ground between the A and B picture: a "programmer capable of occupying either half of a neighbourhood theatre's double-bill, [it was] budgeted at approximately $400,000. [Its] distributor, United Artists, released around twenty-five B movie 18

programmers with production budgets between $100,000 and $400,000 in 1955."[45] The film's length, 106 minutes, is A level, but its star, Ralph Meeker, had previously appeared in only one major film. Its source is pure pulp, one of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels, but Robert Aldrich's direction is self-consciously aestheticized. The result is a brutal genre picture that also evokes contemporary anxieties about what was often spoken of simply as the Bomb. The fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, along with less expressible qualms about radioactive fallout from America's own atomic tests, energized many of the era's genre films. Science fiction, horror, and various hybrids of the two were now of central economic importance to the low-budget end of the business. Most down-market films of the type—like many of those produced by William Alland at Universal (e.g., Creature from the Black Lagoon [1954]) and Sam Rocketship X-M (1950), produced and released by small Katzman at Columbia (e.g., It Came Lippert Pictures, is cited as possibly "the first postnuclear [46] from Beneath the Sea holocaust film." It was at the leading edge of a large cycle of movies, mostly low-budget and many long forgotten, [1955])—provided little more than classifiable as "atomic bomb cinema." simple diversion. But these were genres whose fantastic nature could also be used as cover for mordant cultural observations often difficult to make in mainstream movies. Director Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), released by Allied Artists, treats conformist pressures and the evil of banality in haunting, allegorical fashion.[47] The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), directed by Bert I. Gordon, is both a monster movie that happens to depict the horrific effects of radiation exposure and "a ferocious cold-war fable [that] spins Korea, the army's obsessive secrecy, and America's post-war growth into one fantastic whole."[48]

The Amazing Colossal Man was released by a new company whose name was much bigger than its budgets. American International Pictures (AIP), founded in 1956 by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff in a reorganization of their American Releasing Corporation (ARC), soon became the leading U.S. studio devoted entirely to B-cost productions. American International helped keep the original-release double bill alive through paired packages of its films: these movies were low-budget, but instead of a flat rate, they were rented out on a percentage basis, like A films.[49] I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) is perhaps the best known AIP film of the era. As its title suggests, the studio relied on both fantastic genre subjects and new, teen-oriented angles. If Hot Rod Gang (1958) worked, then why not hot rod horror? Result: Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959). AIP is credited with having "led the way...in demographic exploitation, target marketing, and saturation booking, all of which would become standard procedure for the majors in planning and releasing their mass-market 'event' films" by the late 1970s.[50] In terms of content, the majors were already there, with "J.D." movies such as Warner Bros.' Untamed B movie 19

Youth (1957) and MGM's High School Confidential (1958), both starring Mamie Van Doren. In 1954, a young filmmaker named Roger Corman received his first screen credits as writer and associate producer of Allied Artists' Highway Dragnet. Corman soon independently produced his first movie, The Monster from the Ocean Floor, on a $12,000 budget and a six-day shooting schedule.[51] Among the six films he worked on in 1955, Corman produced and directed the first official ARC release, Apache Woman, and Day the World Ended, half of Arkoff and Nicholson's first twin-bill package. Corman would go on to direct over fifty feature films through 1990. As of 2007, he remained active as a producer, with more than 350 movies to his credit. Often referred to as the "King of the Bs," Corman has said that "to my way of thinking, I never made a 'B' movie in my life," as the traditional B movie was dying out when he began making pictures. He prefers to describe his metier as "low-budget exploitation films."[52] In later years Corman, both with AIP and as head of his own companies, would help launch the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Robert Towne, and Robert De Niro, among many others. In the late 1950s, William Castle became known as the great innovator of the B movie publicity gimmick. Audiences of Macabre (1958), an $86,000 production distributed by Allied Artists, were invited to take out insurance policies to cover potential death from fright. The 1959 creature feature The Tingler featured Castle's most famous gimmick, Percepto: at the film's climax, buzzers attached to select theater seats would unexpectedly rattle a few audience members, prompting either appropriate screams or even more appropriate laughter.[53] With such films, Castle "combine[d] the saturation advertising campaign perfected by Columbia and Universal in their Sam Katzman and William Alland packages with centralized and standardized publicity stunts and gimmicks that had previously been the purview of the local exhibitor."[54] The postwar drive-in theater boom was vital to the expanding independent B movie industry. In January 1945, there were 96 drive-ins in the United States; a decade later, there were more than 3,700.[55] Unpretentious pictures with simple, familiar plots and reliable shock effects were ideally suited for auto-based film viewing, with all its attendant distractions. The phenomenon of the drive-in movie became one of the defining symbols of American popular culture in the 1950s. At the same time, many local television stations began showing B genre films in late-night slots, popularizing the notion of the midnight movie. Increasingly, American-made genre films were joined by foreign movies acquired at low cost and, where necessary, dubbed for the U.S. market. In 1956, distributor Joseph E. Levine financed the shooting of new footage with American actor Raymond Burr that was edited into the Japanese sci-fi horror film Godzilla. The British Hammer Film Productions made the successful The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), major influences on future horror film style. In 1959, Levine's Embassy Pictures bought the worldwide rights to Hercules, a cheaply made Italian movie starring American-born bodybuilder Steve Reeves. On top of a $125,000 purchase price, Levine then spent $1.5 million on advertising and publicity, a virtually unprecedented amount.[56] The New York Times was nonplussed, claiming that the movie would have drawn "little more than yawns in the film market...had it not been [launched] throughout the country with a deafening barrage of publicity."[57] Levine counted on first-weekend box office for his profits, booking the film "into as many cinemas as he could for a week's run, then withdrawing it before poor word-of-mouth withdrew it for him."[58] Hercules opened at a remarkable 600 B movie 20

theaters, and the strategy was a smashing success: the film earned $4.7 million in domestic rentals. Just as valuable to the bottom line, it was even more successful overseas.[56] Within a few decades, Hollywood would be dominated by both movies and an exploitation philosophy very like Levine's.

The golden age of exploitation (1): 1960s Despite all the transformations in the industry, by 1961 the average production cost of an American feature film was still only $2 million—after adjusting for inflation, less than 10 percent more than it had been in 1950.[11] The traditional twin bill of B film preceding and balancing a subsequent-run A film had largely disappeared from American theaters. The AIP-style dual genre package was the new model. In July 1960, the latest Joseph E. Levine sword-and-sandals import, Hercules Unchained, opened at neighborhood theaters in New York. A suspense film, Terror Is a Man, ran as a "co-feature" with a now familiar sort of exploitation gimmick: "The dénouement helpfully includes a 'warning bell' so the sensitive can 'close their eyes.'"[59] That year, Roger Corman took AIP down a new road: "When they asked me to make two ten-day black-and-white horror films to play as a double feature, I convinced them instead to finance one horror film in color."[60] House of Usher typifies the continuing ambiguities of B picture classification. It was clearly an A film by the standards of both director and studio, with the longest shooting schedule and biggest budget Corman had ever enjoyed. But it is generally seen as a B movie: the schedule was still a mere fifteen days, the budget just $200,000 (one-tenth the industry average),[61] and its 85-minute running time close to an old thumbnail definition of the B: "Any movie that runs less than 80 minutes."[62] With the loosening of industry censorship constraints, the 1960s saw a major expansion in the commercial viability of a variety of B movie subgenres that came to be known collectively as exploitation films. The combination of intensive and gimmick-laden publicity with movies featuring vulgar subject matter and often outrageous imagery dated back decades—the term had originally defined truly fringe productions, made at the lowest depths of Poverty Row or entirely outside the Hollywood system. Many graphically depicted the wages of sin in the context of promoting prudent lifestyle choices, particularly "sexual hygiene." Audiences might see explicit footage of anything from a live birth to a ritual circumcision.[63] Such films were not generally booked as part of movie theaters' regular schedules but rather presented as special events by traveling roadshow promoters (they might also appear as fodder for "grindhouses", which typically had no regular schedule at all). The most famous of those promoters, Kroger Babb, was in the vanguard of marketing low-budget, sensationalistic films with a "100% saturation campaign," inundating the target audience with ads in almost any imaginable medium.[64] In the era of the traditional double feature, no one would have characterized these graphic exploitation films as "B movies." With the majors having exited traditional B production and exploitation-style promotion becoming standard practice at the lower end of the industry, "exploitation" became a way to refer to the entire field of low-budget genre films. The 1960s would see exploitation-style themes and imagery become increasingly central to the realm of the B. B movie 21

Exploitation movies in the original sense continued to appear: 1961's Damaged Goods, a cautionary tale about a young lady whose boyfriend’s promiscuity leads to venereal disease, comes complete with enormous, grotesque closeups of VD's physical effects.[65] At the same time, the concept of fringe exploitation was merging with a related, similarly venerable tradition: “nudie" films featuring nudist-camp footage or striptease artists like Bettie Page had simply been the softcore pornography of previous decades. As far back as 1933, This Nude World was "Guaranteed the Most Educational Film Ever Produced!"[66] In the late 1950s, as more of the old grindhouse theaters devoted themselves specifically to "adult" product, a few filmmakers began making nudies with greater attention to plot. Best known was Russ Meyer, who released his first successful narrative nudie, The Immoral Mr. Teas, in 1959. Five years later, on a sub-$100,000 budget, Meyer came out with Lorna, "a Motorpsycho (1965) wasn't hard to market. It had harder-edged film that combined sex with director Russ Meyer's reputation for eroticism; the [66] gritty realism and violence." A talented biker theme ("MURDERcycles") that would soon director, Meyer would gain renown for prove its popularity in historic fashion; and that so-called sexploitation pictures such as trendy title word—psycho. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and Vixen! (1968). These films were largely relegated to the fringe circuit of "adult" theaters, while AIP teen movies with wink-wink titles like Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1966), starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, played drive-ins and other reputable venues. Roger Corman's The Trip (1967) for American International, written by veteran AIP/Corman actor Jack Nicholson, never shows a fully bared, unpainted breast, but flirts with nudity throughout. The Meyer and Corman lines were drawing closer.

One of the most influential films of the era, on Bs and beyond, was Paramount's Psycho. Its $8.5 million in earnings against a production cost of $800,000 made it the most profitable movie of 1960.[67] Its mainstream distribution without the Production Code seal of approval helped weaken U.S. film censorship. And, as William Paul notes, this move into the horror genre by respected director Alfred Hitchcock was made, "significantly, with the lowest-budgeted film of his American career and the least glamorous stars. [Its] greatest initial impact...was on schlock horror movies (notably those from second-tier director William Castle), each of which tried to bill itself as scarier than Psycho."[68] Castle's first film in the Psycho vein was Homicidal (1961), an early step in the development of the slasher subgenre that would take off in the late 1970s. Blood Feast (1963), a movie about human dismemberment and culinary preparation made for approximately $24,000 by experienced nudie-maker Herschell Gordon Lewis, established a new, more immediately B movie 22

successful subgenre, the gore or splatter film. Lewis's business partner David F. Friedman drummed up publicity by distributing vomit bags to theatergoers—the sort of gimmick Castle had mastered—and arranging for an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida—the sort of problem exploitation films had long run up against, except Friedman had planned it.[69] This new breed of gross-out movie typifies the emerging sense of "exploitation"—the progressive adoption of traditional exploitation and nudie elements into horror, into other classic B genres, and into the low-budget film industry as a whole. Imports of Hammer Film's increasingly explicit horror movies and Italian gialli, highly stylized pictures mixing sexploitation and ultraviolence, would fuel this trend. The Production Code was officially scrapped in 1968, to be replaced by the first version of the modern rating system. That year, two horror films came out that heralded directions American cinema would take in the next decade, with major consequences for the B movie. One was a high-budget Paramount production, directed by the celebrated Roman Polanski. Produced by B horror veteran William Castle, Rosemary's Baby "took the genre up-market for the first time since the 1930s."[70] It was a critical success and the year's seventh-biggest hit. The other was George Romero's now classic Night of the Living Dead, produced on weekends in and around Pittsburgh for $114,000. Building on the achievement of B genre predecessors like Invasion of the Body Snatchers in its subtextual exploration of social and political issues, it doubled as a highly effective thriller and an incisive allegory for both the Vietnam War and domestic racial conflicts. Its greatest influence, though, derived from its clever subversion of genre clichés and the connection made between its exploitation-style imagery, low-cost, truly independent means of production, and high profitability.[71] With the Code gone and the X rating established, major studio A films like Midnight Cowboy could now show "adult" imagery, while the market for increasingly hardcore pornography exploded. In this transformed commercial context, work like Russ Meyer's gained a new legitimacy. In 1969, for the first time a Meyer film, Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!, was reviewed in the The New York Times.[72] Soon, Corman would be putting out nudity-filled sexploitation pictures such as Private Duty Nurses (1971) and Women in Cages (1971). In May 1969, the most important of all exploitation movies premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Much of its significance owes to the fact that it was produced for a respectable, if still modest, budget and released by a major studio. The project was first taken by one of its cocreators, Peter Fonda, to American International. Fonda had become AIP's top star in the Corman-directed The Wild Angels (1966), a biker movie, and The Trip, as in LSD. The idea Fonda pitched would combine those two proven themes. AIP was intrigued but balked at giving his collaborator, Dennis Hopper, also a studio alumnus, free directorial rein. Eventually they arranged a financing and distribution deal with Columbia, as two more graduates of the Corman/AIP exploitation mill joined the project: Jack Nicholson and cinematographer László Kovács. The film (which incorporated another favorite exploitation theme, the redneck menace, as well as a fair amount of nudity) was brought in at a cost of $501,000. Easy Rider earned $19.1 million in rentals and became "the seminal film that provided the bridge between all the repressed tendencies represented by schlock/kitsch/hack since the dawn of Hollywood and the mainstream cinema of the seventies."[73] B movie 23

The golden age of exploitation (2): 1970s In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new generation of low-budget film companies emerged that drew from all the different lines of exploitation as well as the sci-fi and teen themes that had been a mainstay since the 1950s. Operations such as Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Cannon Films, and New Line Cinema brought exploitation films to mainstream theaters around the country. The major studios' top product was continuing to inflate in running time—in 1970, the ten biggest earners averaged 140.1 minutes.[74] The Bs were keeping pace: In 1955, Corman had a producorial hand in five movies averaging 74.8 minutes. He played a similar part in five films originally released in 1970, two for AIP and three for his own New World: the average length was 89.8 minutes.[75] These films could turn a tidy profit. The first New World release, the biker movie Angels Die Hard, cost $117,000 to produce and took in more than $2 million at the box office.[76] The biggest studio in the low-budget field remained a leader in exploitation's growth. In 1973, American International gave a shot to young director Brian De Palma. Reviewing Sisters, Pauline Kael observed that its "limp technique doesn't seem to matter to the people who want their gratuitous gore.... [H]e can't get two people talking in order to make a simple expository point without its sounding like the drabbest Republic picture of 1938."[77] Many examples of the so-called blaxploitation genre, featuring stereotype-filled stories revolving around drugs, violent crime, and prostitution, were the product of AIP. One of blaxploitation's biggest stars was Pam Grier, who began her career with a bit part in Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Several New World pictures followed, including The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972), both directed by Jack Hill. Hill also directed her best-known performances, in two AIP blaxploitation films: Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Grier has the distinction of starring in the first widely distributed movie to climax with a castration scene. Blaxploitation was the first exploitation genre in which the major studios were central. Indeed, the United Artists release Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), directed by Ossie Davis, is seen as the first significant film of the type. But the movie that truly ignited the blaxploitation phenomenon was completely independent: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) is also perhaps the most outrageous example of the form: wildly experimental, borderline pornographic, and essentially a manifesto for a black American revolution. Melvin Van Peebles wrote, co-produced, directed, starred in, edited, and composed the music for the film, which was completed with a loan from Bill Cosby.[78] Its distributor was small Cinemation Industries, then best known for releasing dubbed versions of the Italian Mondo Cane "shockumentaries" and the Swedish skin flick Fanny Hill, as well as for its one in-house production, The Man from O.R.G.Y. (1970). These sorts of films played in the "grindhouses" of the day—many of them not outright porno theaters, but rather venues for all manner of exploitation cinema. The days of six quickies for a nickel were gone, but a continuity of spirit was evident. B movie 24

In 1970, a low-budget crime drama shot in 16 mm by first-time American director Barbara Loden won the international critics' prize at the Venice Film Festival. Wanda is both a seminal event in the independent film movement and a classic B picture. The crime-based plot and often seedy settings would have suited a straightforward exploitation film or an old-school B noir. The sub-$200,000 production, for which Loden spent six years raising money, was praised by Vincent Canby for "the absolute accuracy of its effects, the decency of its point of view and...purity of technique."[79] Like Romero and Van Peebles, other filmmakers of the era made pictures that combined the gut-level entertainment of exploitation with biting social commentary. The first three features directed by Larry Cohen, Bone (1972), Black Caesar (1973), and Hell Up in Harlem (1973), were all nominally blaxploitation movies, but Cohen used them as vehicles for a satirical examination of race relations and Piranha (1978), directed by Joe Dante and written by John Sayles for Corman's New World Pictures, is the wages of dog-eat-dog capitalism. The a triple threat: an action-filled creature feature; a gory horror film Deathdream (1974), humorous parody of Jaws; and an environmentalist directed by Bob Clark, is also an agonized cautionary tale. protest of the war in Vietnam. Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg made serious-minded low-budget horror films whose implications are not so much ideological as psychological and existential: Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), The Brood (1979). An Easy Rider with conceptual rigor, the movie that most clearly presaged the way in which exploitation content and artistic treatment would be combined in modestly budgeted films of later years was United Artists' biker-themed Electra Glide in Blue (1973), directed by James William Guercio.[80] The New York Times reviewer thought little of it: "Under different intentions, it might have made a decent grade-C Roger Corman bike movie—though Corman has generally used more interesting directors than Guercio."[81]

In the early 1970s, the growing practice of screening nonmainstream motion pictures as late shows, with the goal of building a cult film audience, brought the midnight movie concept home to the cinema, now in a countercultural setting—something like a drive-in movie for the hip.[82] One of the first films adopted by the new circuit in 1971 was the three-year-old Night of the Living Dead. The midnight movie success of low-budget pictures made entirely outside of the studio system, like John Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972), with its campy spin on exploitation, spurred the development of the independent film movement. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), an inexpensive film from 20th Century-Fox that spoofed all manner of classic B picture clichés, became an unparalleled hit when it was relaunched as a late show feature the year after its initial, unprofitable release. Even as B movie 25

Rocky Horror generated its own subcultural phenomenon, it contributed to the mainstreaming of the theatrical midnight movie. Asian martial arts films began appearing as imports regularly during the 1970s. These "kung fu" films as they were often called, whatever martial art they featured, were popularized in the United States by the Hong Kong–produced movies of Bruce Lee and marketed to the same audience targeted by AIP and New World. Horror continued to attract young, independent American directors. As Roger Ebert explained in one 1974 review, "Horror and exploitation films almost always turn a profit if they're brought in at the right price. So they provide a good starting place for ambitious would-be filmmakers who can't get more conventional projects off the ground."[83] The movie under consideration was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Made by Tobe Hooper for no more than $250,000, it became one of the most influential horror films of the 1970s.[84] John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), produced on a $320,000 budget, grossed over $80 million worldwide and effectively established the slasher flick as horror's primary mode for the next decade. Just as Hooper had learned from Romero's work, Halloween, in turn, largely followed the model of Black Christmas (1974), directed by Deathdream's Bob Clark.[85] On television, the parallels between the weekly series that became the mainstay of prime-time programming and the Hollywood series films of an earlier day had long been clear. In the 1970s, original feature-length programming increasingly began to echo the B movie as well. As production of TV movies expanded with the introduction of the ABC Movie of the Week in 1969, soon followed by the dedication of other network slots to original features, time and financial factors shifted the medium progressively into B picture territory. Television films inspired by recent scandals—such as The Ordeal of Patty Hearst, which premiered a month after her release from prison in 1979—harkened all the way back to the 1920s and such movies as Human Wreckage and When Love Grows Cold, FBO pictures made swiftly in the wake of celebrity misfortunes. Many 1970s TV films—such as The California Kid (1974), starring Martin Sheen—were action-oriented genre pictures of a type familiar from contemporary cinematic B production. Nightmare in Badham County (1976) headed straight into the realm of road-tripping-girls-in-redneck-bondage exploitation. The reverberations of Easy Rider could be felt in such pictures, as well as in a host of big-screen exploitation films. But its greatest influence on the fate of the B movie was less direct. By 1973, the major studios were catching on to the commercial potential of genres once largely consigned to the bargain basement. Rosemary's Baby had been a big hit, but it had little in common with the exploitation style. Warner Bros.' The Exorcist demonstrated that a heavily promoted horror film could be an absolute blockbuster: it was the biggest movie of the year and by far the highest-earning horror movie yet made. In William Paul's description, it is also "the film that really established gross-out as a mode of expression for mainstream cinema.... [P]ast exploitation films managed to exploit their cruelties by virtue of their marginality. The Exorcist made cruelty respectable. By the end of the decade, the exploitation booking strategy of opening films simultaneously in hundreds to thousands of theaters became standard industry practice."[86] Writer-director George Lucas's American Graffiti, a Universal production, did something similar. Described by Paul as "essentially an American-International teenybopper pic with a lot more spit and polish," it was 1973's third biggest film and, likewise, by far the highest-earning teen-themed movie yet made.[87] Even more historically significant movies with B themes and A-level financial backing would follow in their wake. B movie 26

Decline of the B (1): 1980s Most of the B movie production houses founded during the exploitation era collapsed or were subsumed by larger companies as the field's financial situation changed in the early 1980s. Even a comparatively cheap, efficiently made genre picture intended for theatrical release began to cost millions of dollars, as the major movie studios steadily moved into the production of expensive genre movies, raising audience expectations for spectacular action sequences and realistic special effects. Intimations of the trend were evident as early as Airport (1969) and especially in the mega-schlock of The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1973), and The Towering Inferno (1974). Their disaster plots and dialogue were B-grade at best; from an industry perspective, however, these were pictures firmly rooted in a tradition of star-stuffed extravaganzas. The Exorcist had demonstrated the drawing power of big-budget, effects-laden horror. But the tidal shift in the majors' focus owed largely to the enormous success of three films: Steven Spielberg's creature feature Jaws (1975) and George Lucas's space opera Star Wars (1977) had each, in turn, become the highest-grossing film in motion picture history. Superman, released in December 1978, had proved that a studio could spend $55 million on a movie about a children's comic book character and turn a big profit—it was the top box-office hit of 1979.[88] Blockbuster fantasy spectacles like the original 1933 King Kong had once been exceptional; in the new Hollywood, increasingly under the sway of multi-industrial conglomerates, they would rule.[89] B movie 27

It had taken a decade and half, from 1961 to 1976, for the production cost of the average Hollywood feature to double from $2 million to $4 million—actually a decline if adjusted for inflation. In just four years it more than doubled again, hitting $8.5 million in 1980 (a constant-dollar increase of about 25 percent). Even as the U.S. inflation rate eased, the average expense of moviemaking would continue to soar.[91] With the majors now routinely saturation booking in over a thousand theaters, it was becoming increasingly difficult for smaller outfits to secure the exhibition commitments needed to turn a profit. Double features were now literally history—almost impossible to find except at revival houses. One of the first leading casualties of the new economic regime was venerable B studio Allied Artists, which declared bankruptcy in April 1979.[92] In the late 1970s, AIP had moved into the production of relatively expensive films like the very successful Amityville Horror and the "Too gory to be an art film, too arty to be an disastrous Meteor in 1979. The studio was sold exploitation film, funny but not quite a comedy": off and dissolved as a moviemaking concern by 168 private investors kicked in for Blood Simple's [90] the end of 1980.[93] $1.5 million budget. In the tradition of Mann and Alton, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen brought a striking visual style to the B noir in 1984. Despite the mounting financial pressures, distribution obstacles, and overall risk, a substantial number of genre movies from small studios and independent filmmakers were still reaching theaters. Horror was the strongest low-budget genre of the time, particularly in the "slasher" mode as with The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown. The film was produced for New World on a budget of $250,000.[94] At the beginning of 1983, Corman sold New World; New Horizons, later Concorde–New Horizons, became his primary company. In 1984, New Horizons released a critically applauded movie set amid the punk scene written and directed by Penelope Spheeris. The New York Times review concluded: "Suburbia is a good genre film."[95]

Larry Cohen continued to twist genre conventions in pictures such as Q (aka Q: The Winged Serpent; 1982): "the kind of movie that used to be indispensable to the market: an imaginative, popular, low-budget picture that makes the most of its limited resources, and in which people get on with the job instead of standing around talking about it."[96] In 1981, New Line put out Polyester, a John Waters movie with a small budget and an old-school exploitation gimmick: Odorama. That October, a gore-filled yet stylish horror movie made for less than $400,000 debuted in Detroit.[97] The writer, director, and co-executive producer of The Book of the Dead, Sam Raimi, was a week shy of his twenty-second birthday; star and co-executive producer Bruce Campbell was twenty-three. "A shoestring tour de force,"[98] it was picked up for distribution by New Line, retitled The Evil Dead, and B movie 28

became a hit. One of the most successful 1980s B studios was a survivor from the heyday of the exploitation era, Troma Pictures, founded in 1974. Troma's most characteristic productions, including Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986), Redneck Zombies (1986), and Surf Nazis Must Die (1987), take exploitation for an absurdist spin. Troma's best-known production is The Toxic Avenger (1985); its hideous hero, affectionately known as Toxie, became the symbol of Troma and an icon of the 1980s B movie. One of the few successful B studio startups of the decade was Rome-based Empire Pictures, whose first production, Ghoulies, reached theaters in 1985. The video rental market was becoming central to B film economics: Empire's financial model relied on seeing a profit not from theatrical rentals, but only later, at the video store.[99] A number of Concorde–New Horizon releases also went this route, appearing only briefly in theaters, if at all. The growth of the cable television industry also helped support the low-budget film industry, as many B movies quickly wound up as "filler" material for 24-hour cable channels or were made expressly for that purpose.

Decline of the B (2): 1990s By 1990, the cost of the average U.S. film had passed $25 million.[100] Of the nine films released that year to gross more than $100 million at the U.S. box office, two would have been strictly B movie material before the late 1970s: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dick Tracy. Three more—the science-fiction thriller Total Recall, the action-filled detective thriller Die Hard 2, and the year's biggest hit, the slapstick kiddie comedy Home Alone—were also far closer to the traditional arena of the Bs than to classic A-list subject matter.[101] The growing popularity of home video and access to unedited movies on cable and satellite television along with real estate pressures were making survival more difficult for the sort of small- or non-chain theaters that were the primary home of independently produced genre films. Drive-in screens were rapidly disappearing from the American landscape. Surviving B movie operations adapted in different ways. Releases from Troma now frequently went straight to video. New Line, in its first decade, had been almost exclusively a distributor of low-budget independent and foreign genre pictures. With the smash success of exploitation veteran Wes Craven's original Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), whose nearly $2 million cost it had directly backed, the company began moving steadily into higher-budget genre productions. In 1994, New Line was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System; it was soon being run as a midsized studio with a broad range of product alongside Warner Bros. within the Time Warner conglomerate. The following year, Showtime launched Roger Corman Presents, a series of thirteen straight-to-cable movies produced by Concorde–New Horizons. A New York Times reviewer found that the initial installment qualified as "vintage Corman...spiked with everything from bared female breasts to a mind-blowing quote from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice."[102] At the same time as exhibition venues for B films vanished, the independent film movement was burgeoning; among the results were various crossovers between the low-budget genre movie and the "sophisticated" arthouse picture. Director Abel Ferrara, who built a reputation with violent B movies such as The Driller Killer (1979) and Ms. 45 (1981), made two works in the early nineties that marry exploitation-worthy depictions of sex, drugs, and general sleaze to complex examinations of honor and redemption: King of New York (1990) was backed by a group of mostly small production companies and the cost of Bad Lieutenant (1992), $1.8 million, was financed totally independently.[103] Larry Fessenden's micro-budget monster movies, such as No Telling (1991) and Habit (1997), reframe classic B movie 29

genre subjects—Frankenstein and vampirism, respectively—to explore issues of contemporary relevance. The budget of David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), $10 million, was not comfortably A-grade, but it was hardly B-level either. The film's imagery was another matter: "On its scandalizing surface, David Cronenberg's Crash suggests exploitation at its most disturbingly sick."[104] Financed, like King of New York, by a consortium of production companies, it was picked up for U.S. distribution by Fine Line Features. This result mirrored the film's scrambling of definitions: Fine Line was a subsidiary of New Line, recently merged into the Time Warner empire—specifically, it was the old exploitation distributor's arthouse division.

Transition II/The B movie in the digital age: 2000s By the turn of the millennium, the average production cost of an American feature had already spent three years above the $50 million mark.[100] In 2005, the top ten movies at the U.S. box office included three adaptations of children's fantasy novels (including one extending and another initiating a series), a child-targeted cartoon, a comic book adaptation, a sci-fi series installment, a sci-fi remake, and a King Kong remake.[105] It was a slow year for Corman: he produced just one movie, which had no American theatrical release, true of most of the pictures he had been involved in recently. As big-budget Hollywood movies further usurped traditional low-rent genres, the ongoing viability of the familiar brand of B movie was in grave doubt. New York Times critic A. O. Scott warned of the impending "extinction" of "the cheesy, campy, guilty pleasures" of the B picture, as "the schlock of the past has evolved into star-driven, heavily publicized, expensive mediocrities...."[106] On the other hand, recent industry trends suggest the reemergence of something that looks very like the traditional A-B split in major studio production, though with fewer "programmers" bridging the gap. According to a 2006 report by industry analyst Alfonso Marone, "The average budget for a Hollywood movie is currently around $60m, rising to $100m when the cost of marketing for domestic launch (USA only) is factored into the equation. However, we are now witnessing a polarisation of film budgets into two tiers: large productions ($120-150m) and niche features ($5-20m).... Fewer $30-70m releases are expected."[107] Fox launched a new subsidiary in 2006, Fox Atomic, to concentrate on teen-oriented genre films, mostly variations of horror. The economic model is deliberately low-rent, at least by major studio standards. According to a Variety report, "Fox

Atomic is staying at or below the $10 million mark B movies aren't necessarily "schlock." for many of its movies. It's also encouraging Writer-director-star-producer-composer-etc. filmmakers to shoot digitally—a cheaper process Shane Carruth made Primer (2004) for that results in a grittier, teen-friendly look. And $7,000. The sophisticated sci-fi film is 77 minutes long. B movie 30

forget about stars. Of Atomic's nine announced films, not one has a big-name."[108] In sum, this is an updated version of a Golden Age big studio B unit targeting a market very similar to the one AIP helped define in the 1950s. In a development hinted at in this Variety piece, recent technological advances are greatly facilitating the production of truly low-budget motion pictures. Although there have always been economical means with which to shoot movies, including Super 8 and 16 mm film and video cameras recording onto analog videotape, these mediums could hardly rival the image quality of 35 mm film. The development and widespread usage of digital cameras and postproduction methods allow even low-budget filmmakers to produce films with excellent (and not necessarily "grittier") image quality and editing effects. As Marone observes, "the equipment budget (camera, support) required for shooting digital is approximately 1/10th that for film, significantly lowering the production budget for independent features. At the same time, over the past 2-3 years, the quality of digital filmmaking has improved dramatically."[109] Independent filmmakers, whether working in a genre or arthouse mode, continue to find it difficult to gain access to distribution channels, though so-called digital end-to-end methods of distribution offer new opportunities. In a similar way, Internet sites such as YouTube have opened up entirely new avenues for the presentation of low-budget motion pictures.

Associated terms The terms C movie and the more common Z movie describe progressively lower grades of the B-movie category. The terms drive-in movie and midnight movie, which emerged in association with specific historical phenomena, are now often used as synonyms for B movie. A more recently coined synonym is psychotronic movie.

C movie The C movie is the grade of motion picture at the low end of the B movie, or—in some taxonomies—simply below it.[110] In the 1980s, with the growth of cable television, the C grade began to be applied with increasing frequency to low-quality genre films used as filler programming for that market. The "C" in the term then does double duty, referring not only to quality that is lower than "B" but also to the initial c of cable. Helping to popularize the notion of the C movie was the TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988–99), which ran on national cable channels (first Comedy Central, then the Sci Fi Channel) after its first year. Updating a concept introduced by TV hostess Vampira over three decades before, MST3K presented cheap, low-grade movies, primarily science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, along with running voiceover commentary highlighting the films' shortcomings. Director Ed Wood has been called "the master of the 'C-movie'" in this sense, although Z movie (see below) is perhaps even more applicable to his work.[111] The rapid expansion of niche cable and satellite outlets such as Sci Fi (with its Sci Fi Pictures) and HBO's genre channels in the 1990s and 2000s has meant an ongoing market for contemporary C pictures, many of them "direct to cable" movies—modestly budgeted genre films never released in theaters.[112] B movie 31

Z movie

The term Z movie (or grade-Z movie) is used by some to characterize low-budget pictures with quality standards well below those of most B and even so-called C movies. Most films referred to as Z movies are made on very small budgets by operations on the fringes of the commercial film industry. The micro-budget "quickies" of 1930s fly-by-night Poverty Row production houses may be thought of as Z movies avant la lettre.[113] The films of director Ed Wood, such as Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)—frequently cited as one of the worst pictures ever made—exemplify the classic grade-Z movie. Latter-day Zs are often characterized by violent, gory, and/or sexual content and a minimum of artistic interest; much of this product is destined for the subscription TV equivalent of the grindhouse.

Often called "the worst film ever made," Ed Psychotronic movie Wood's ultra-low-budget Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) has become the most famous Psychotronic movie is a term coined by film critic of all Z movies. Michael J. Weldon—referred to by a fellow critic as "the historian of marginal movies"—to denote the sort of low-budget genre pictures that are generally disdained or ignored entirely by the critical establishment.[114] Weldon's immediate source for the term was the Chicago cult film The Psychotronic Man (1980), whose titular character is a barber who develops the bizarre ability to kill using psychic energy.[115] According to Weldon, “My original idea with that word is that it’s a two-part word. 'Psycho' stands for the horror movies, and 'tronic' stands for the science fiction movies. I very quickly expanded the meaning of the word to include any kind of exploitation or B-movie.”[116] The term, popularized beginning in the 1980s with publications of Weldon's such as The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film and Psychotronic Video magazine, has subsequently been adopted by other critics and fans. Use of the term tends to emphasize a focus on and affection for those B movies that lend themselves to appreciation as camp.[117] B movie 32

See also • A-side and B-side • B-Movie Film Festival • Cinematograph Films Act 1927 • Drive-In Classics • Vestron Video

References

• Archer, Eugene (1960). "'House of Usher': Poe Story • Nachbar, Jack, ed. (1974). Focus on the Western on Bill With 'Why Must I Die?'" The New York Times, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall). ISBN [118] September 15 (available online ). 0-13-950626-8

• Auty, Chris (1999). "The Amazing Colossal Man," in • Naremore, James (1998). More Than Night: Film Time Out Film Guide, 8th ed., ed. John Pym (London Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and et al.: Penguin), 24. ISBN 0-140-28365-X London: University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-21294-0

• Balio, Tino (1995 [1993]). Grand Design: Hollywood • Nason, Richard (1959). "Weak 'Hercules'; as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 Italian-Made Spectacle Opens at 135 Theatres," (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of The New York Times, July 23 (available online [119] California Press). ISBN 0-520-20334-8 ).

• Biskind, Peter (1998). Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How • O'Connor, John J. (1995). "Horror Hero of the 90's, the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock'n'Roll Generation Saved Half Man, Half Bomb," The New York Times, July [120] Hollywood (New York: Simon & Schuster). ISBN 11 (available online ). 0-684-80996-6

• Braucort, Guy (1972 [1970]). "Interview with Don • Oppermann, Michael (1996). "Ed Wood" (film Siegel", in Focus on the Science Fiction Film, ed. review), Journal of American Studies of Turkey 3 [121] William Johnson (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: (spring) (available online ). Prentice-Hall), 74–76. ISBN 0-13-795161-2

• Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray (1984). Hollywood Films • Ottoson, Robert (1981). A Reference Guide to the of the Seventies (New York: Harper & Row). ISBN American Film Noir: 1940–1958 (Metuchen, N.J., 0-06-091117-4. and London: Scarecrow Press). ISBN 0-8108-1363-7

• Canby, Vincent (1969). "By Russ Meyer," The New • Paul, William (1994). Laughing, Screaming: [122] York Times, September 6 (available online ). Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy (New York: Columbia University Press). ISBN 0-231-08464-1

• Canby, Vincent (1984). "Down-and-Out Youths in • Petit, Chris (1999). "The Winged Serpent (aka 'Suburbia'", The New York Times, April 13 (available Q—The Winged Serpent)," in Time Out Film Guide, [123] online ). 8th ed., ed. John Pym (London et al.: Penguin), 1172. ISBN 0-140-28365-X

• Collum, Jason Paul (2004). Assault of the Killer B's: • Prince, Stephen (2002). A New Pot of Gold: Interviews with 20 Cult Film Actresses (Jefferson, Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, N.C., and London: McFarland). ISBN 0-7864-1818-4 1980–1989 (Berkeley: University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-23266-6

• Cook, David A. (2000). Lost Illusions: American • Reid, John Howard (2005a). Hollywood 'B' Movies: Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, A Treasury of Spills, Chills & Thrills (Morrisville, 1970–1979 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: N.C.: Lulu). ISBN 1-41165065-4 University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-23265-8 B movie 33

• Corman, Roger, with Jim Jerome (1998). How I Made • Reid, John Howard (2005b). Movie Westerns: a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Hollywood Films the Wild, Wild West (Morrisville, Dime, new ed. (New York: Da Capo). ISBN N.C.: Lulu). ISBN 1-41166610-0 0-306-80874-9

• Di Franco, J. Philip, ed. (1979). The Movie World of • Rockoff, Adam (2002). Going to Pieces: The Rise Roger Corman (New York and London: Chelsea and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978–1986 (Jefferson, House, 1979). ISBN 0-87754-050-0 N.C., and London: McFarland). ISBN 0-7864-1227-5

• Ebert, Roger (1974). "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," • Reynaud, Bérénice (2006). "Wanda's Shattered [124] Chicago Sun-Times, January 1 (available online ). Lives" (booklet accompanying Parlour Pictures DVD release of Wanda).

• Epstein, Edward Jay (2005). The Big Picture: The New • Rubin, Martin (1999). Thrillers (Cambridge, UK, Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood (New York: and New York: Cambridge University Press). ISBN Random House). ISBN 1-4000-6353-1 0-521-58183-4

• Finler, Joel W. (1988). The Hollywood Story (New • Russell, Carolyn R. (2001). The Films of Joel and York: Crown). ISBN 0-517-56576-5 Ethan Coen (Jeferson, N.C., and London: McFarland). ISBN 0-7864-0973-8

• Greenspun, Roger (1973). "Guercio's 'Electra Glide in • Sapolsky, Barry S., and Fred Molitor (1996). Blue' Arrives: Director Makes Debut With a Mystery," "Content Trends in Contemporary Horror Films," in The New York Times, August 20 (available online Horror Films: Current Research on Audience [125] ). Preferences and Reactions, ed. James B. Weaver (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum), 33–48. ISBN 0-8058-1174-5

• Halperin, James L., ed. (2006). Heritage Signature • Schaefer, Eric (1999). "Bold! Daring! Shocking! Vintage Movie Poster Auction #636 (Dallas: Heritage True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959 Capital). ISBN 1-5996-7060-7 (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press). ISBN 0-8223-2374-5

• Harper, Jim (2004). Legacy of Blood: A • Schatz, Thomas (1993). "The New Hollywood," in Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies (Manchester, Film Theory Goes to the Movies: Cultural Analysis UK: Headpress). ISBN 1-900486-39-3 of Contemporary Film, ed. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins (New York and London: Routledge), 8–36. ISBN 0-415-90575-3

• Heffernan, Kevin (2004). Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: • Schatz, Thomas (1998 [1989]). The Genius of the Horror Films and the American Movie Business, System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era 1953–1968 (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke (London: Faber and Faber). ISBN 0-571-19596-2 University Press). ISBN 0-8223-3215-9

• Hirschhorn, Clive (1979). The Warner Bros. Story • Schatz, Thomas (1999 [1997]). Boom and Bust: (New York: Crown). ISBN 0-517-53834-2 American Cinema in the 1940s (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press). ISBN 0-520-22130-3

• Hirschhorn, Clive (1999). The Columbia Story • Schickel, Richard (2005). Elia Kazan: A Biography (London: Hamlyn). ISBN 0-600-59836-5 (New York: HarperCollins). ISBN 0-06-019579-7

• Jewell, Richard B., with Vernon Harbin (1982). The • Scott, A. O. (2005). "Where Have All the Howlers RKO Story (New York: Arlington House/Crown). ISBN Gone?" The New York Times, "Arts & Leisure," 0-517-54656-6 December 18.

• Kael, Pauline (1976 [1973]). "Un-People," in Reeling • Segrave, Kerry (1992). Drive-In Theaters: A History (New York: Warner), 263–279. ISBN 0-446-83420-3 from Their Inception in 1933 (Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland). ISBN 0-8995-0752-2

• Lasky, Betty (1989). RKO: The Biggest Little Major of • Shapiro, Jerome F. (2002). Atomic Bomb Cinema: Them All (Santa Monica, Calif.: Roundtable). ISBN The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film (New York 0-915677-41-5 and London: Routledge). ISBN 0-415-93659-4 B movie 34

• Lev, Peter (2003). Transforming the Screen: • Strawn, Linda May (1975 [1974]). "Samuel Z. 1950–1959 (New York et al.: Thomson-Gale). ISBN Arkoff [interview]," in McCarthy and Flynn, Kings 0-684-80495-6 of the Bs, 255–266.

• Leydon, Joe (1997). "100 Proof," Variety, March 2 • Taves, Brian (1995 [1993]). "The B Film: [126] (available online ). Hollywood's Other Half," in Balio, Grand Design, 313–350.

• Loy, R. Philip (2004). Westerns in a Changing • Thompson, Howard (1960). "'Hercules Unchained' America, 1955–2000 (Jefferson, N.C., and London: Heads Twin Bill," The New York Times, July 14 [127] McFarland). ISBN 0-7864-1871-0 (available online ).

• Lubasch, Arnold H. (1979). "Allied Artists Seeks Help • Tuska, Jon (1974). "The American Western Cinema: Under Bankrupcty Act; Allied Artists Files Chapter 1903–Present," in Nachbar, Focus on the Western, XI," The New York Times, April 5. 25–43.

• Maltby, Richard (2000). "'The Problem of • Van Peebles, Melvin (2003). "The Real Deal: What Interpretation...': Authorial and Institutional It Was...Is! Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" Intentions In and Around Kiss Me Deadly," Screening (commentary accompanying Xenon Entertainment [128] the Past (June 30) (available online ). DVD release of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song).

• Maslin, Janet (1997). "An Orgy of Bent Fenders and • Warren, Bill (2001). The Evil Dead Companion Bent Love," The New York Times, March 21 (available (New York: St. Martin's). ISBN 0-312-27501-3 [129] online ).

• McCarthy, Todd, and Charles Flynn, eds. (1975). • Zeitchik, Steven, and Nicole Laporte (2006). Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood "Atomic Label Proves a Blast for Fox," Variety, [130] System—An Anthology of Film History and Criticism November 19 (available online ). (New York: E.P. Dutton). ISBN 0-525-47378-5

• Morrow, John (1996). "Cinekirbyesque: Examining Jack's Deal with Empire Pictures," Jack Kirby Collector 12 (July).

External links • The Astounding B-Monster [131] historically oriented compendium of B-movie articles and interviews • Atomic Monsters [132] humorous reviews of 1950s creature features with video clips • Badmovies.org Interviews [133] conversations with professionals in the B-movie industry • The Biology of B-Movie Monsters [134] analysis by Professor Michael C. LaBarbera, University of Chicago • B-Masters Cabal [135] confederation of movie review sites specializing in B and cult movies • The B-Movie [136] primer on the field of low-budget film; part of the GreenCine website • B-Movie Central [137] detailed reviews of many B movies • The B-Movie Comic [138] webcomic parodying a B movie while describing relevant filmmaking techniques • The B-Movie Database [139] wide-ranging site with a focus on contemporary B movies • The Film Fiend [140] B-movie reviews with an edge • Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension [141] focusing on "the very bottom of the cinematic bell curve" • Lost Highway [142] reviews of B movies and cult films • Stomp Tokyo [143] B-movie reviews with an emphasis on monster films B movie 35

References

[1] Hirschhorn (1999), pp. 9–10, 17. [2] Finler (1988), p. 36; Balio (1995), p. 29. [3] See, e.g., Taves (1995), p. 320. [4] Balio (1995), p. 29. See also Schatz (1999), pp. 16, 324. [5] Taves (1995), pp. 326–327. [6] See, e.g., Balio (1995), pp. 103–104. [7] Epstein (2005), p. 6. See also Schatz (1999), pp. 16–17. [8] Taves (1995), p. 325. [9] Taves (1995), p. 326. [10] Epstein (2005), p. 4. [11] Finler (1988), p. 36. [12] Taves (1995), p. 317. Taves (like this article) adopts the usage of "programmer" argued for by author Don Miller in his 1973 study B Movies (New York: Ballantine). As Taves notes, "the term programmer was used in a variety of different ways by reviewers" of the 1930s (p. 431, n. 8). Some present-day critics employ the Miller–Taves usage; others refer to any B movie from the Golden Age as a "programmer" or "program picture." [13] Balio (1995), p. 102. [14] See Taves (1995), pp. 321–329. [15] Adapted from Finler (1988), pp. 21–22. [16] Active from 1936 to 1940, Grand National was akin to the United Artists of Poverty Row. Most of its releases were independently produced; in its peak year, 1937, Grand National did produce around twenty pictures of its own. See Taves (1995), p. 323; McCarthy and Flynn (1975), p. 20. [17] Taves (1995), p. 313. [18] Nachbar (1974), p. 2. [19] Tuska (1974), p. 37. [20] Taves (1995), p. 327–328. [21] Taves (1995), p. 316. [22] See, e.g., Taves (1995), p. 318. [23] Quoted in Schatz (1999), p. 75. [24] Naremore (1998), p. 141. [25] Taves (1995), p. 328. [26] Schatz (1999), p. 73. [27] Schatz (1999), pp. 19–21, 45, 72, 160–163. [28] Schatz (1999), p. 16. [29] Schatz (1993), p. 11. [30] Jewell (1982), 181; Lasky (1989), 184–185. [31] Schatz (1999), p. 78. [32] Schatz (1999), pp. 340–341.

[33] Schatz (1999), p. 295; Naremore (1998), p. 142; PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) (http:/ / www.

searchmytrash. com/ articles/ prc(8-05). shtml) essay by Mike Haberfelner, August 2005; part of the (re)Search my Trash website. Retrieved 12/30/06. [34] Robert Smith, "Mann in the Dark," quoted in Ottoson (1981), p. 145. [35] See, e.g., Dave Kehr, "Critic's Choice: New DVD's," The New York Times, August 22, 2006; Dave Kehr, "Critic's Choice: New DVD's," The New York Times, June 7, 2005; Robert Sklar, "Film Noir Lite: When Actions Have No Consequences," The New York Times, "Week in Review," June 2, 2002. [36] For a detailed consideration of classic B noir, see Arthur Lyons, Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir (New York: Da Capo, 2000). [37] Jewell (1982), p. 147. [38] Schatz (1999), p. 175. [39] Naremore (1998), p. 144. [40] Strawn (1974), p. 257. [41] Lev (2003), p. 205. [42] Lasky (1989), p. 229. [43] See Finler (1988), pp. 276–277, for top films. Finler lists The Country Girl as 1955, when it made most of its money, but it premiered in December 1954. The Seven Year Itch replaces it in this analysis (the two films happen to be virtually identical in length). [44] See, e.g., Eddie Muller, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), p. 176. [45] Maltby (2000). B movie 36

[46] Shapiro (2002), p. 96. See also Atomic Films: The CONELRAD 100 (http:/ / www. conelrad. com/ conelrad100/

index. html) part of the CONELRAD website. [47] Lev (2003), pp. 186, 184; Braucort (1972), 75. [48] Auty (1999), p. 24. See also Shapiro (2002), pp. 120–124. [49] Strawn (1974), p. 259; Lev (2003), p. 206. [50] Cook (2000), p. 324. See also p. 171. [51] Di Franco (1979), p. 3. [52] Corman (1998), p. 36. It appears Corman made at least one true B picture—according to Arkoff, Apache Woman, to his displeasure, was handled as a second feature (Strawn [1974], p. 258). [53] Heffernan (2004), pp. 102–104. [54] Heffernan (2004), pp. 95–98. [55] Segrave (1992), p. 33. [56] Cook (2000), p. 324. [57] Nason (1959). [58] Hirschhorn (1979), p. 343. [59] Thompson (1960). [60] Quoted in Di Franco (1979), p. 97. [61] Per Corman, quoted in Di Franco (1979), p. 97. [62] Quoted in Reid (2005a), p. 5. [63] Schaefer (1999), pp. 187, 376. [64] Schaefer (1999), p. 118.

[65] Something Weird Traveling Roadshow Films (http:/ / www. dvdverdict. com/ reviews/ roadshow. php) review of DVD release with historical analysis by Bill Gibron, July 24, 2003; part of the DVD Verdict website. Retrieved 11/17/06. [66] Halperin (2006), p. 201. [67] Cook (2000), p. 222. [68] Paul (1994), p. 33. [69] Rockoff (2002), pp. 32–33. [70] Cook (2000), pp. 222–223. [71] Cook (2000), p. 223. [72] Canby (1969). [73] Quote: Cagin and Dray (1984), p. 53. General history: Cagin and Dray (1984), pp. 61–66. Financial figures: per associate producer William L. Hayward, cited in Biskind (1998), p. 74. [74] See Finler (1988), p. 277, for top films. Finler lists Hello, Dolly! as 1970, when it made most of its money, but it premiered in December 1969. The Owl and the Pussycat, 51 minutes shorter, replaces it in this analysis. [75] From 1955: Apache Woman, The Beast with a Million Eyes, Day the World Ended, The Fast and the Furious, and Five Guns West. From 1970: Angels Die Hard, Bloody Mama, The Dunwich Horror, Ivanna (aka Scream of the Demon Lover; U.S. premiere: 1971), and The Student Nurses. For purchase of Ivanna: Di Franco (1979), p. 164. [76] Di Franco (1979), p. 160. [77] Kael (1976), p. 269. [78] Van Peebles (2003). [79] Quoted in Reynaud (2006). See Reynaud also for Loden's fundraising efforts. For production cost: Schickel

(2005), p. 432. See also "For Wanda" (http:/ / www. sensesofcinema. com/ contents/ 02/ 22/ wanda. html) essay by Bérénice Reynaud, 2002 (1995); part of the Sense of Cinema website. Retrieved 12/29/06. [80] See, e.g., Tom Milne, "Electra Glide in Blue," in Time Out Film Guide, 8th ed., ed. John Pym (London et al.: Penguin, 1999), p. 303. [81] Greenspun (1973). [82] See, e.g., Jack Stevenson, Land of a Thousand Balconies: Discoveries and Confessions of a B-Movie Archaeologist (Manchester, UK: Headpress/Critical Vision, 2003), pp. 49–50; Joanne Hollows, "The Masculinity of Cult," in Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste, ed. Mark Jancovich (Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 35–53; Janet Staiger, Blockbuster TV: Must-see Sitcoms in the Network Era (New York and London: New York University Press, 2000), p. 112. [83] Ebert (1974). [84] For the film's cost: Rockoff (2002), p. 42. For its influence: Sapolsky and Molitor (1996), p. 36; Rubin (1999), p. 155. [85] For the film's cost and worldwide gross: Harper (2004), pp. 12–13. For its influence and debt to Black Christmas: Rockoff (2002); Paul (1994), p. 320. [86] Paul (1994), pp. 288, 291. B movie 37

[87] Paul (1994), p. 92.

[88] Superman (1978) (http:/ / www. boxofficemojo. com/ movies/ ?id=superman. htm) part of Box Office Mojo website. Retrieved 12/29/06. [89] See The eight majors in the post-system era for a record of the sales and mergers involving the eight major studios of the Golden Age. [90] David Handelman ("The Brothers from Another Planet," Rolling Stone, May 21, 1987), quoted in Russell (2001), p. 7. [91] Finler (1988), p. 36. Prince (2002) gives $9 million as the average production cost in 1980, and a total of $13 million after adding on costs for manufacturing exhibition prints and marketing (p. 20). See also p. 21, chart 1.2. The Box Office Mojo website gives $9.4 million as the 1980 production figure; see Movie Box Office Results

by Year, 1980–Present (http:/ / www. boxofficemojo. com/ yearly/ ). Retrieved 12/29/06. [92] Lubasch (1979). [93] Cook (2000), pp. 323–324. [94] Collum (2004), pp. 11–14.

[95] Canby (1984). Note that IMDb.com's entry on the film (http:/ / www. imdb. com/ title/ tt0086589/ ) incorrectly states that it was released by New World. [96] Petit (1999), p. 1172. [97] Cost per Bruce Campbell, cited in Warren (2001), p. 45 [98] David Chute (Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, May 27, 1983), quoted in Warren (2001), p. 94. [99] Morrow (1996), p. 112.

[100] Movie Box Office Results by Year, 1980-Present (http:/ / www. boxofficemojo. com/ yearly/ ) part of Box Office Mojo website. Retrieved 12/29/06.

[101] 1990 Yearly Box Office Results (http:/ / www. boxofficemojo. com/ yearly/ chart/ ?yr=1990& p=. htm) part of Box Office Mojo website. Retrieved 12/29/06. Dick Tracy literally had been B movie material—the character was featured in four low-budget RKO films in the 1940s. For how espionage and crimebusting thrillers were long "widely regarded as nothing more than B-movie fodder," see James Chapman, Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (New York and Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 46–50. [102] O'Connor (1995).

[103] Johnstone (1999), p. 16; "Abel Ferrara, Bad Lieutenant" (http:/ / mondofausto. com/ interview-abelferrara. htm) part of the Mondo Video website. Retrieved 1/1/07. Online claims that King of New York was budgeted at $8 million do not appear to be well founded. No reliable figure has been located to date. [104] Maslin (1997).

[105] 2005 Yearly Box Office Results (http:/ / www. boxofficemojo. com/ yearly/ chart/ ?yr=2005& p=. htm) part of Box Office Mojo website. Retrieved 1/2/07. [106] Scott (2005).

[107] "One More Ride on the Hollywood Roller-coaster" (http:/ / www. spectrumstrategy. com/ Pages/ GB/

perspectives/ Spectrum-The-Hollywood-movie-business. pdf) industry analysis by Alfonso Marone, Spectrum Strategy Consultants senior manager; part of the Spectrum Strategy website. Retrieved 12/29/06. [108] Zeitchik and Laporte (2006).

[109] "One More Ride on the Hollywood Roller-coaster" (http:/ / www. spectrumstrategy. com/ Pages/ GB/

perspectives/ Spectrum-The-Hollywood-movie-business. pdf). [110] See, e.g., Megumi Komiya and Barry Litman, "The Economics of the Prerecorded Videocassette Industry," in Social and Cultural Aspects of VCR Use, ed. Julia R. Dobrow (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990), pp. 25–44. [111] Oppermann (1996).

[112] See, e.g., "David Payne: Do Fear the Reeker" (http:/ / www. filmthreat. com/ index.

php?section=interviews& Id=924& archive=Date& match=0& page=2) interview with the director by Eric Campos, December 12, 2005; part of the Film Threat website. Retrieved 10/20/06. [113] See, e.g., Taves (1995), p. 323.

[114] "Sad News: Psychotronic Video Magazine Gives Up the Ghost" (http:/ / community. tvguide. com/ thread. jspa?threadID=700004011), column by Maitland McDonagh, TVGuide.com, July 17, 2006. Retrieved 12/26/06.

[115] The Psychotronic Vestibule (http:/ / www. psychotronicvideo. com/ wow/ vestibule. shtml) portal to Weldon's Psychotronic Web site. Retrieved 10/20/06.

[116] "The Psychotronic Man" (http:/ / www. uttertrash. net/ michaelweldon. htm) interview with Michael Weldon by Bob Ignizio, April 20, 2006; part of the Utter Trash website. Retrieved 10/20/06. [117] See, e.g., Steven Jay Schneider and Tony Williams, "Introduction" (1–12; pp. 2, 5), and Andrew Syder and Dolores Tierney, "Importation/Mexploitation, or, How a Crime-Fighting, Vampire-Slaying Mexican Wrestler Almost Found Himself in an Italian Sword-and-Sandals Epic" (33–55; pp. 34–35, 50–53), in Horror International, B movie 38

ed. Steven Jay Schneider and Tony Williams (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005).

[118] http:/ / movies2. nytimes. com/ mem/ movies/ review. html?res=9402E6DC1631EF3ABC4D52DFBF66838B679EDE

[119] http:/ / movies2. nytimes. com/ mem/ movies/ review. html?title1=Hercules& title2=&

reviewer=RICHARD%20NASON%2e& pdate=19590723& v_id=22192

[120] http:/ / query. nytimes. com/ gst/ fullpage. html?res=990CEEDE173AF932A25754C0A963958260

[121] http:/ / www. bilkent. edu. tr/ ~jast/ Number3/ OppermannEW. html

[122] http:/ / movies2. nytimes. com/ mem/ movies/ review. html?_r=1&

title1=Finders%20Keepers%2c%20Lovers%20Weepers%20%28Movie%29& title2=&

reviewer=VINCENT%20CANBY& pdate=19690906& v_id=& oref=slogin

[123] http:/ / movies2. nytimes. com/ mem/ movies/ review. html?res=9507E7D61738F930A25757C0A962948260

[124] http:/ / rogerebert. suntimes. com/ apps/ pbcs. dll/ article?AID=/ 19740101/ REVIEWS/ 401010319/ 1023

[125] http:/ / movies2. nytimes. com/ mem/ movies/ review. html?res=9807E7D61631E63BBC4851DFBE668388669EDE

[126] http:/ / www. variety. com/ review/ VE1117432607. html?categoryid=31& cs=1& p=0

[127] http:/ / movies2. nytimes. com/ mem/ movies/ review. html?_r=1&

res=9B04E0D61230EF3ABC4C52DFB166838B679EDE& oref=slogin

[128] http:/ / www. latrobe. edu. au/ screeningthepast/ firstrelease/ fr0600/ rmfr10e. htm

[129] http:/ / movies2. nytimes. com/ mem/ movies/ review. html?_r=1& title1=Crash%20(Movie)& oref=slogin

[130] http:/ / www. variety. com/ article/ VR1117954196. html?categoryid=13& cs=1

[131] http:/ / www. bmonster. com/

[132] http:/ / www. atomicmonsters. com/

[133] http:/ / www. badmovies. org/ interviews/

[134] http:/ / fathom. lib. uchicago. edu/ 2/ 21701757/

[135] http:/ / www. b-masters. com/

[136] http:/ / www. greencine. com/ static/ primers/ b-movies. jsp

[137] http:/ / www. bmoviecentral. com/

[138] http:/ / www. bmoviecomic. com/

[139] http:/ / www. bmdb. ca/

[140] http:/ / www. thefilmfiend. com

[141] http:/ / www. jabootu. net/

[142] http:/ / www. dchighway. com/

[143] http:/ / www. stomptokyo. com/ Blight 39 Blight

Blight refers to a specific symptom affecting plants in response to infection by a pathogenic organism. It is simply a rapid and complete chlorosis, browning, then death of plant tissues such as leaves, branches, twigs, or floral organs.[1] Accordingly, many diseases that primarily exhibit this symptom are called blights. Several notable examples are: • Late blight of potato, caused by the water mold Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary, the disease which led to the Great Irish Famine • Southern corn leaf blight, caused by the fungus Cochliobolus heterostrophus (Drechs.) Drechs, anamorph Bipolaris maydis (Nisikado & Miyake) by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora (Burrill) Winslow et al., is the most severe disease of pear and also is found in apple and raspberry, among others. • Bacterial leaf blight of rice, caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae (Uyeda & Ishiyama) Dowson.[2] • Early blight of potato and tomato, caused by species of the ubiquitous fungal genus Alternaria • Leaf blight of the grasses On leaf tissue, symptoms of blight are the initial appearance of lesions which rapidly engulf surrounding tissue. However, leaf spot may, in advanced stages, expand to kill entire areas of leaf tissue and thus exhibit blight symptoms.

References

[1] Agrios, George N. Plant Pathology. 5th ed. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Academic Press, 2005. [2] Oda, M., Sekizawa, Y., and Watanabe, T. 1966. "Phenazines as Disinfectants Against Bacterial Leaf Blight of the Rice Plant." Applied Microbiology 14(3):365-367. Article Sources and Contributors 40 Article Sources and Contributors

Viral load Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=299101370 Contributors: AlbertR, Angela, GrahamColm, Heron, Hp, Kingturtle, MichaelJanich, Mimihitam, Mlaffs, Nunh-huh, PaleWhaleGail, Raineybt, Richardcavell, Rustavo, Sabedon, Speciate, Variable, Zigger, 8 anonymous edits

Fantastic Voyage Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=308153904 Contributors: 23skidoo, AMK152, Academic Challenger, AirBa, Andrzejbanas, Anibius, Anville, Arthemius x, Attilios, Big iron, BigT2006, Binabik80, Bob Weiss, Bobblewik, Briaboru, Bryan Derksen, CanadianLinuxUser, Chiba13, Clarityfiend, Critic-at-Arms, Cvieg, D6, Dave314159, David Gerard, Davidatwikip, Dbenbenn, Dbenzhuser, Delpino, DetectiveKemper, Discospinster, Dl2000, DoctorWho42, Dogru144, Dream out loud, EWS23, Ellmist, Erik, Erik9, Fnlayson, Foofbun, GUllman, Gcapp1959, Geape, George100, Gojira09, Goustien, Guy Harris, HDCase, Hailey C. Shannon, HalJor, Hesperian, Hnsampat, Ineuw, Ironbam7, Itub, JDEDIT, Johnthescavenger, Jokestress, Jombage, Jskdpm, JustPhil, Kevinalewis, KharBevNor, Kicking222, Kuralyov, Lee M, Leonidas23, Lugnuts, Luigi30, Luigibob, Luis Dantas, Lunadude, Magnius, Mallanox, Massimo Macconi, MegX, Miss Madeline, Molix, Mrgadgetman, New User, Nivix, Noirish, Pacific1982, Pat Berry, PaulLev, Phact, Phbasketball6, Predator47, Primogen, Redeagle688, Richard75, Robofish, RockMFR, RodC, RossF18, Scoutersig, Shawn81, Simas175, SlowJog, Starwiz, Supernumerary, Supersexyspacemonkey, Tassedethe, Tempodivalse, The Librarian At Terminus, The News Hound, TheMovieBuff, TheValentineBros, Thmazing, Torchstone, Tsength, Tuttt, Val42, Vgy7ujm, Wayne Miller, Zephyrad, 霧木諒二, 130 anonymous edits

B movie Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=305092063 Contributors: AbbyCallahan1234, Ace of Sevens, AlbertSM, Alereon, [email protected], Andman8, Andrzejbanas, Andy Marchbanks, AniRaptor2001, Antaeus Feldspar, Anthopos, Aranel, ArmadilloFromHell, Art LaPella, Arteitle, Ascidian, Ashthecat3, Atommo, B00P, Bartman1776, Bdesham, Betacommand, Bigharley, BillFlis, Binx, Bizvid, Blue80, BostonRed, Brighterorange, Bryan Derksen, Bubbleboys, ButtfaceStephanie, CPWinter, CQJ, Cabiria, Cafe77777, CambridgeBayWeather, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Catherine breillat, Charles Matthews, Cherrywall, Chicheley, Cleared as filed, Colt45atthebeach, CommonsDelinker, Crzrussian, D6, DCGeist, Daddy Kindsoul, Davidlawrence, DearPrudence, Demonslave, Den fjättrade ankan, Dhodges, Dmoon1, DocKino, DocWatson42, Doctor Sunshine, DoctorWho42, DragonflySixtyseven, Dtoddmiller, Dwoodwoo, Easterbradford, Ed Poor, EdGl, Edward, Efyoo, ExRat, Fieldday-thursday, Finlay McWalter, FlareNUKE, Foofbun, Fossilgojira, Fourvin-en, Fredrik, Fyyer, GMcGath, Gaius Cornelius, Gandalf Drûg, Gary King, Gcm, Geogre, Hailey C. Shannon, Hal Raglan, Hephaestos, Hooverbag, Hypermagic, ILovePlankton, INaNimAtE, Ibaranoff24, Iceberg3k, Igordebraga, InnocuousPseudonym, Irishguy, J.smith, JButler, JLCA, JaGa, Jahsonic, Jay32183, Jeeves, Jeffq, Jeremy Visser, Jesster79, JethroElfman, Jon138, Jonathan F, Josquius, Judgesurreal777, Jweiss11, KVox, Kelly Martin, Kevin Myers, Kickstart70, Kozuch, Lemmey, Levin, LiniShu, Lockley, M313R, Mactabbed, Marcok, Marcus Brute, Marskell, Martin villafuerte85, MegX, Meidosemme, Mel Etitis, Mesolimbo, Mike R, MikeWazowski, Minesweeper, Mipadi, Misternuvistor, MitchellTF, Nativeborncal, Nehrams2020, Nick, NickelShoe, Niz, Noirish, NuncAutNunquam, Oakshade, Ogat, OlEnglish, OnBeyondZebrax, Onorem, Ortolan88, PBP, Pearle, Pedant, PhantomS, Phydend, Pixaranimator, Poccil, Ppntori, Purple Rose, Quadzilla99, Qutezuce, RHB, RJFJR, Raccoon Fox, RadioActive, RayAYang, Rhindle The Red, Rick Norwood, Righttovanish1, Rjwilmsi, Rmky87, Robert K S, Robertissimo, Ron Ritzman, Ryanaxp, Ryulong, Saganaki-, Scottandrewhutchins, Sensorium, Sfahey, Sharnak, Shoujun, Simon12, Sivazh, Skier Dude, Skybunny, SkyelerSudiaRules, Slugger, Sparky the Seventh Chaos, Sperril, T-Bone, Tawker, TechnoFaye, Teeb, The Anome, The Guy Who Knows Horror, The JPS, The Placebo Effect, Themfromspace, Thomas.macmillan, Tjmayerinsf, Tregoweth, Treisijs, Twas Now, WOSlinker, Waukegan, Who, Wmahan, Woohookitty, Zachlipton, Zeetherapist, Zoicon5, anonymous edits 194 ,יונ ,ינמיתה למגה ,Иван Москалев Blight Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=290184545 Contributors: Andycjp, Anthere, BradBeattie, Brim, Cbrownhead, Cholga, Cleminnoob, Corvus cornix, Cryo1, Cyde, Daniel Collins, Darklilac, Delldot, Dpaking, ERcheck, Edcolins, EncycloPetey, Even More Blight, Gold heart, Grendelkhan, Hooperbloob, IceCreamAntisocial, Jcuadros, Joyous!, Kaarel, Kachyna, Krylonblue83, Lowellian, MPF, Mbostock, Merovingian, Michael anonymous edits 21 ,ينام ,Hardy, Michael Snow, Million Moments, Neutrality, TJRC, Timo Honkasalo, Tom, Unocname, Whouk Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors 41 Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

File:Fantasticvoyageposter.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Fantasticvoyageposter.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Andrzejbanas, Eachwiped, 1 anonymous edits Image:RavenPoster.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:RavenPoster.jpg License: unknown Contributors: American International Pictures. (Original uploader was DCGeist at en.wikipedia) Image:Zombies NightoftheLivingDead.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Zombies_NightoftheLivingDead.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Direction and cinematography both by George A. Romero Image:ThatCertainThing.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:ThatCertainThing.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Columbia Pictures (Original uploader was DCGeist at en.wikipedia) Image:PalsOfSaddlePoster.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:PalsOfSaddlePoster.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Republic Pictures (Original uploader was DCGeist at en.wikipedia) Image:RawDealPoster2.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:RawDealPoster2.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Eagle-Lion Pictures (Original uploader was DCGeist at en.wikipedia) Image:RocketshipXM2.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:RocketshipXM2.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Lippert Pictures (Original uploader was DCGeist at en.wikipedia) Image:MotorpsychoPoster.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:MotorpsychoPoster.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Original uploader was MECU at en.wikipedia Image:PiranhaPosterA.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:PiranhaPosterA.jpg License: unknown Contributors: User:DCGeist Image:BloodSimplePoster.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:BloodSimplePoster.jpg License: unknown Contributors: User:DCGeist Image:Primer.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Primer.jpg License: unknown Contributors: User:DCGeist File:Plan 9 Poster.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Plan_9_Poster.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Distributors Corporation of America License 42 License

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

http:/ / creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3. 0/