Many people discount the ‘B’ movies of yesteryear as being naïve, teenage drivel, fit for nothing more than visual stimulation for eating popcorn in the front seat of your’58 Thunderbird, while you contemplate how to most effectively make moves on your girlfriend. The monsters aren’t threatening, the acting is terrible, and the stories are even worse. I would argue, however, that simply because these films are mindless does not mean that our response to them must be. In terms of pop culture history, there must have been some reason why films such as Billy The Kid Versus Dracula (1966) and The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) sold tickets. Admittedly, the previous drive-in scenario still holds true with these films, (people didn’t mark their calendars to see these films, they merely got out of the house on a Friday night and saw what the theater was playing), but there is something significant in the place these films hold in history. People want horror films, and will stretch the suspension of disbelief to new levels in order to enjoy a horror film (as is necessary with films such as The Torture Chamber of Dr.Sadism). Without B Movie horror, we may have forgotten what horror is all about. It is not about being frightened, or being scared. It is about seeing humanity confront evil, which takes some form of Noel Carroll’s art-horror monster. It is not science fiction. It is not primarily concerned with exploring the dangers and possibilities of new worlds and the future. It is ultimately about the average person confronting non-average evil. This primordial struggle is very much evident in B Movies, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the directors who kept this spirit alive.
Surviving the withering effects of science-fiction was a difficult task for horror to do. It needed to recede into the depths of B movie obscurity to preserve its purity. Like the monks of the Dark Ages who receded into their monasteries to preserve the culture of the West, horror film makers of the 1950’s and 1960’s were forced to make low-budget, (often) low quality films. We must not judge these films as falling out the horror genre merely because they are not horrifying. It is important to judge a genre by its intended effects, rather than make high achievement of these effects the standard. In B Movies we find honest efforts of filmmakers to make horror films. You may laugh at them, but I urge you all to view B movies in a new light. Laugh not at the filmmakers, but laugh in joy at the notion that horror can survive all odds, even the confines of B movies, while retaining its primitive purity; a beauty in simplicity, without pretense.
robert
1 comment:
I completely agree with your assessments of the importance of B movies. Although I don't remember exactly which actor I heard say this, they claimed that the reason they do the big-budget films is so they can make enough money to pursue the low-budget, often never heard-of films that mean the most to them. It is absolutely true that often B movies have the right idea. Many movies, especially those in the horror genre, are made merely to produce a profit (see Saw XXV). They give the intended audience whatever it is they seem to like, be it blood, sex, gore, or all of the above. However, they do so at the cost of an exciting, frightening, and yet thought-provoking tale. The agenda behind a B movie is typically not to generate money. Instead, it is to make the best movie possible for the sake of enjoyment and preservation of a genre.
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