Eric Schaefer's Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A history of exploitation films 1919-1959 begins by establishing its timeframe, focus and omissions: 1919 saw the emergence of the first wave of VD films and the beginnings of a separate exploitation cinema, distinct from Hollywood. 1959 saw Russ Meyer's The Immoral Dr Teas , significant for presenting female nudity without any educational or other pretences while also coming at the end of a decade that saw the gradual break up of the old studio system and censorship systems that created much of the context for this "classical exploitation cinema", running in parallel to the classical Hollywood cinema identified by the likes of David Bordwell, Kristin Thomson and Janet Staiger. As far as omissions go, the most significant is the stag or pornographic film, similar in its technically primitive nature and appeal to the forbidden, but excluded on grounds of its illegality and – one assumes – the concomitant difficulties in researching them.
The term exploitation itself, Schaefer explains, referred in the first instance to the way in which these films were promoted in ways that went beyond Hollywood hype – whether represented by 'A', 'B' or Poverty Row productions – would countenance as a means of compensating for their inadequacies elsewhere. He identifies a number of key features. First, the importance of a forbidden topic – sex and sex hygiene, prostitution and vice, drug abuse etc – that Hollywood proper could not exploit through its self-regulatory mechanisms. Second, the low budgets and short shooting schedules of exploitation films gave them a distinctive style – or lack of – compared to Hollywood. Third, exploitation films were distributed independently, either on the basis of states rights – i.e. selling on a state by state basis – or roadshowing – or taking on the road from town to town in a touring carnival sort of way, with the distributors also often "four walling" or hiring entire theatres. Fourth, exploitation films played in independent theatres rather than those forming part of the vertically intrgrated studio combines. Last, there were typically few prints of exploitation films compared to Hollywood product, but these would also be in circulation for far longer.
Chapter 1 deals with the origins of the exploitation film, noting its origins in Progressivism and its claims to provide education, a useful justification and point of distinction from Hollywood with its exclusive focus on entertainment. (Leave messages to Western Union and all that.) Unsurprisingly, exploitation discourse was thus marked by contradictions around the social and cinematic other, its raison d'etre being to represent the forbidden while also indicating precisely why this forbidden should remain such.
Chapter 2 explores the modes of production and style of the exploitation film in a manner analogous to the work on the classical Hollywood cinema previously identified, noting its relative primitivism that hearkened back to the earlier "cinema of attractions". Of particular interest here is the notion of the "square up" with its double meaning of the written prologue establishing a context in which to view the film – this is about education, enlightenment or expose rather than mere exploitation – and of the separate reel of material sometimes used to convince an unruly audience that they had gotten their money's worth.
Chapter 3 discusses the actual processes of distribution, advertising and screening of classical exploitation in greater detail, drawing on archive materials and personal testimonies. What's lacking, however, is much of a sense of the audience for the films. Were there people who attended exploitation showings regularly or exclusively? How did they read the films? Equally, however, it could be argued that such questions have scarcely been examined as far as Hollywood cinema goes, thanks to the general tendency within film studies to focus on the text, leaving the audience to the rival cultural studies discipline. Also more or less absent is anything dealing with the directors and actors, though again this absence can be explicated on grounds of a likely lack of material.
Chapter 4 examines the viscittudes and vagries of censorship at both local and national levels, including the high/low and class/mass disources around exploitation and its significant Hollywood other. Chapters 5 through 8 discuss four key exploitation genres in the form of sex hygiene films; drug films; vice, exotic and atrocity films; and nudist and burlesque films, in each case charting their development over the 40 year period. One thing that's interesting here is the way in which some of the discourses examined remain significant today, as in the question of whether sex films promoted sexual amorality or safer behaviour – though, to be sure, influencing audience behaviour was secondary, if anything, to the exploiteers themselves – or the way the idea that marijuana is a gateway to harder drugs derives strongly from the interventions of a few moral entrepreneurs and other opportunists.
The conclusion looks at the end of classical exploitation, noting – amongst other things – the surprising interface between European art cinema and exploitation in the immediate aftermath of WWII when a number of Italian neo-realist films were sold on the basis of their earthy, sexy content as was Ingmar Bergman's Summer with Monika , albeit cut down to little more than an hour. (Also worth noting in terms of the Europe/USA connection is how the exotic and atrocity genre – the "Goona Goonas" in the parlance of the exploiteers – emerge as a forerunner of the mondo film.)
Perhaps the best thing about the book, besides the extensive appendix listing films discussed, is the way in which it is written, intelligent and academic but without ever being boring or overemphasising theory at the expense of data. Every point Schaefer makes seems grounded in the films themselves, then informed by theory, making for a nice change from all too many studies where the theory (over)determines everything and the film count for little unless it supports the theoretical point.
While it may raise almost as many questions as it answers, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! is an impressive piece of work that illuminates another aspect of the shadow history of cinema that had hitherto treated with the condescension of posterity. Unreservedly recommended.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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