Let's talk about why exploitation cinema is so endlessly interesting

Your imaginary friend is not your new flatmate.

I guess, for me, I'll go with films on a B-budget with B-stars that have to rely on something like sex or violence to sell their tickets because they didn't have Steve McQueen in the cast.

Nowadays I think A films have taken so much from B films that it's hard to define which is which without relying on budgetery concerns to pinpoint it. Independence Day and Armageddon feel like over-done B movies.

If we're talking about genre pictures or B-movies or schlock or whatever you want to call it, well, John Waters is brilliant on this stuff, because he's clever, funny, literate and has an informed sexual and political perspective to his appreciation of films otherwise previously excluded from the canon. In some ways, I figure Waters was just taking the Cahiers du Cinema manifesto to its logical conclusion. Unfortunately, he also started a trend of "aren't these films so bad they're funny" trainspotting that has now degenerated to the level of Jonathon Ross' "see how many obscure crap movies I can name-drop to impress the squares" schtick.

There's pleasures to be found in any film. But privileging Cannibal Ferox over The Godfather is usually an empty game of hipsterism. If it isn't, why make a thread about nothing more than how great you are for liking "exploitation" cinema?

Use ideas please.

You know, on any other film forum - or socialising - as I do - with many colleagues in both film and film journalism, never have I come across such shit as Noodle's post. Jonathan Ross, by the way, is - in my opinion - fantastic. His Incredibly Strange Film Show introduced a whole new generation to HG Lewis, David Friedman, Sam Raimi...

As for Jonathan Ross, well, I'm sure Sam Raimi's hella relieved that Wossy was there to rescue him from the obscurity that he'd otherwise be shrouded in.

Your post was shit because I was using B-cinema as a way to feel "superior" (the vast majority of my top 20 films of all time are major A-classics). Even if I was, I find it hilarious that many decided to slag off Casablanca on my recent thread - often pointing out how it was just another big studio film that fluked its way to success. Of course, this is horseshit but anyway, I digress...

Nor am I championing B-cinema, or exploitation films, at the expense of major studio productions. In fact, in the case of many exploitation movies ("Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS", "Blood Feast", "I Spit on Your Grave", "She Freak", "Mark of the Devil", "Reefer Madness" or whatever) it is the advertising and the time and place that make them interesting rather than the quality, or lack thereof, of the movies.

I feel this thread is already too weighted down with assholishness to really be of worth now though.

For once I see no reason why your thread couldn't have turned into a sensible, thought-provoking discussion on the subject proposed - oh well, as you request...