The 1960s and 1970s marked the rise of exploitation-style independent B movies; films which were mostly made without the support of Hollywood's major film studios. As censorship pressures lifted in the early 1960s, the low-budget end of the American cinema industry increasingly incorporated the sort of sexual and violent elements long associated with so-called "exploitation" films. The demise of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1968 and coupled with the success of the film Easy Rider the following year fueled the trend throughout the subsequent decade. The success of the B-studio exploitation movement had a significant effect on the strategies of the major studios during the 1970s.

1960s Despite many transformations in the industry, the average production cost of an American feature film remained mostly stable over the course of the 1950s. In 1950, the figure had been $1 million; in 1961, it reached $2 million—after adjusting for inflation, the increase in real terms was less than 10 percent. Finler (2003), p. 42. The traditional twin bill of B film preceding and balancing a subsequent-run A film had largely disappeared from American theaters. The dual genre-movie package, popularized by American International Pictures (AIP) in the previous decade, was the new face of the double feature. In July 1960, the latest Joseph E. Levine sword-and-sandals import, Hercules Unchained, opened at neighborhood theaters in New York. An 82-minute-long suspense film, Terror Is a Man, ran as a "co-feature", and is notable for including a now-common exploitation gimmick, asking sensitive viewers to close their eyes during the dénouement.Thompson (1960). That year, Roger Corman took American International 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."Quoted in Di Franco (1979), p. 97. A period piece in the vein of Britain's Hammer Films, House of Usher was a success, launching a series of Poe-based movies Corman would direct for AIP.See, e.g., Hogan (1997), pp. 212 et seq.

With the loosening of industry censorship constraints, the 1960s and 1970s saw a major expansion in the production and commercial viability of a variety of B-movie subgenres that have come to be known collectively as exploitation films. Exploitation-style promotional practices had become standard practice at the lower-budget end of the industry. With major studios having exited traditional B-movie production, exploitation became a way to refer to the entire field of low-budget genre films.

In the early 1960s, 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 manifestations. At the same time, the concept of fringe exploitation was merging with a closely related and 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, which promised an "Authentic Trip Through an American Nudist Colony!", was "Guaranteed the Most Educational Film Ever Produced!"Halperin (2006), p. 201. In the late 1950s, as more of the old grindhouse theaters specifically devoted themselves to "adult" product, a few filmmakers began making nudies with some greater semblance of plots. 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 harder-edged film that combined sex with gritty realism and violence." Meyer would build an underground reputation as a talented director with movies such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and Vixen! (1968), the sort of films, virtually ignored by the mainstream press, that had become known as sexploitation pictures.The earliest usage of "sexploitation" in a cinematic context so far located is in two Los Angeles Times articles from 1958: Howard Whitman, "Crisis in Morals" (May 26), and movie industry reporter Philip K. Scheuer, "Actor Clears Up Rip Torn Mystery" (June 3). In 1959, Scheuer may have been the first to use the phrase "sexploitation movie" (more precisely, "'sexploitation' movie") in his review "'Blue Denim' Tells of Youths' Plight" (August 20). That same year, the phrase "sexploitation film" appears in the government document Juvenile Delinquency: Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, pp. 7030, 7099. The term appears to have been in general circulation by 1964, judging from its repeated use that year in the periodical Film World. Many films, while not sexually explicit, were nevertheless relegated to adult theaters due to their sexual content.Such movies were usually covered by the major media with great disdain. The anonymous New York Times reviewer begins: "'HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI'—yep, that's the title that appeared yesterday on a circuit double bill. And anyone who ambles inside expecting the worst won't be disappointed. For here, finally and in color, is the answer to a moron's prayer." These films were often close to the last stop for faded stars; as the nameless reviewer put it, "This time let's pity Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney and good, old, now-departed Buster Keaton." "'Wild Bikini' Appearing in Neighborhoods," The New York Times, January 12, 1967 (available online).

One of the most influential films of the era, on B's 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.Cook (2000), p. 222. 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."Paul (1994), p. 33. Castle's first film in the Psycho vein was Homicidal (1961), an early step in the development of the slasher subgenre that would flourish in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In order to make up for low budgets, many studios resorted to extreme violence and gore. One of these films, Blood Feast (1963) laid the foundation of the splatter film genre.

Despite Psychos impact and the growing popularity of horror, major Hollywood studios largely continued to disdain the genre, at least for their own production lines. Along with the output of "off-Hollywood" U.S. concerns similar to Lewis and Friedman's, distributors brought in more foreign movies to fill the demands of rural drive-ins, lower-end urban theaters, and outright grindhouses.Worland (2007), p. 90. Hammer Films' success with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and its remake of Dracula (1958) had established the studio as an important supplier of horror movies to the American B market, a positioned it maintained throughout the 1960s. In 1961, American International released a movie clearly influenced by Hammer's characteristically bold visual style and moody pace—Black Sunday was a dubbed horror import from Italy, where it had premiered the previous year as La maschera del demonio. It became the highest grossing film in AIP history.Per commentary by Tim Lucas on Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, cited in Kehr (2007). The movie's director was Mario Bava, who would launch the horror subgenre known as giallo with La ragazza che sapeva troppo (The Girl Who Knew Too Much; 1963) and Sei Donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black Lace; 1964). Many gialli, highly stylized films mixing sexploitation and ultraviolence, were picked up for U.S. B-market distribution and would prove influential on American horror films in turn, especially of the slasher type. While in the past, the term B movie had been applied, both in the United States and abroad, almost exclusively to low- and modest-budget American films, the growing Italian exploitation film industry now also became associated with the label (usually styled in Italy as B-movie).

Decline of the Code

The Production Code was officially repealed in 1968 and replaced by the first version of the present-day MPA. That same year, two particularly relevant horror films were released. One was a high-budget Paramount production, directed by Roman Polanski and based on a bestselling novel by Ira Levin. Produced by B-horror veteran William Castle, Rosemary's Baby "took the genre up-market for the first time since the 1930s."Cook (2000), pp. 222–223. It was a critical success and the seventh-biggest box office hit of the year. The other was George A. Romero's now classic Night of the Living Dead, produced on weekends in and around Pittsburgh for $114,000. It built on the achievement of B-genre predecessors like Invasion of the Body Snatchers in its subtextual exploration of social and political issues, and was a critical and financial success.Cook (2000), p. 223.

With the Production 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 New York Times.Canby (1969). Soon, Corman would be putting out nudity-filled sexploitation pictures such as The Student Nurses (1970) and Women in Cages (1971). With The Vampire Lovers (1970), Hammer similarly launched "a cycle of lesbian vampire movies that bordered on soft porn."Worland (2007), p. 96.

In May 1969, the most important of all exploitation movies premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Much of Easy Rider'''s 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 co-creators, 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—who had appeared in The Trip and several other AIP opuses—free directorial rein. The duo then took their concept, for which they had projected a $60,000 budget, to producer Bert Schneider. Suggesting that they would have an easier time raising $600,000, Schneider helped arrange a financing and distribution deal with Columbia Pictures, where his brother was president. Two more graduates of the Corman/AIP exploitation mill joined the project: Jack Nicholson and cinematographer László Kovács. The film (which managed to incorporate 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 would earn $19.1 million in rentals, becoming, as one history puts it, "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."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.

1970s