I cracked open my copy of Michael J. Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopedia and found this entry on Deliverance:
"Although it was a hit, it took a while for this story of modern man out of his element to become the effective but much-copied cliche it is now. When today’s exploitation filmmakers need action ideas they often look to this or Straw Dogs."
Cool Hand Luke wasn’t listed.
Weldon’s one of the preeminent experts of B and exploitation cinema.
I’m still surprised when people say some films are just TOO GOOD to be exploitation films. In my mind those people become no better than the critics who denounce exploitation films outright.
It’s the first time I’ve heard someone consider No Country for Old Man a hixploitation film. It’s surprising. I love the movie, as many do. It’s a great crime film and modern-day western.
It breaks my heart when anyone drives a nail in the coffin of exploitation films because of the dashing of the grindhouses in the 1980s. Exploitation cinema is alive and well, even though in most cases the parameters in which they’re made today have changed. Putney’s celebrating the Grindhouse era with the Deuce and that’s different – the site doesn’t ignore what’s come after. I guess since modern day exploitation films don’t have the luxery of playing in grindhouse theaters, they somehow lack the grungy prestige associated with those films of decades past.
I thank God for the exploitation films of today. I include the films that pay homage to the exploitation cinema of the past in there as well. I forget who said it, maybe it was Putney, that he felt a movie that pays homage to a genre isn’t a part of that genre because in some way it’s spoofing the genre rather than following it. By paying homage you have to tap into the specificities of the genre, and by doing that, you’re making a genre movie. Homage is a pretty broad term. If a filmmaker makes a movie in a particular genre he/she adores, he’s paying homage to his favorite genre. It doesn’t make it any less the genre it’s representing. So I wouldn’t find any restriction from considering Jackie Brown a blaxploitation film. It’s still a crime film. No doubt. Most blaxploitation films ARE crime films.
[quote=“PutneySwope”]
Dstryd: I dont consider any of those exploitation films actually. Dark of The Sun is a war movie co-starring Jim Brown, Its not Blaxploitation. Cool Hand Luke is a southern prison movie. Blazing Saddles is a Western satire comedy. No Country for Old Men? That was made last year. Its a crime film.
Mondo docs isnt the same as March of The Penguins type doc.
You’re going wayyy off track now. Anyways, it was cool talking about the real exploitation films with ya.
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[quote=“moviemike”]
Cool Hand Luke wasn’t listed.
Weldon’s one of the preeminent experts of B and exploitation cinema.
I’m still surprised when people say some films are just TOO GOOD to be exploitation films. In my mind those people become no better than the critics who denounce exploitation films outright.
It’s the first time I’ve heard someone consider No Country for Old Man a hixploitation film. It’s surprising. I love the movie, as many do. It’s a great crime film and modern-day western.
[/quote]
Do some of you actually [color=red][size=100]read[/size] what I post, before responding, or merely pick movie titles out, randomly and assume you know what I meant when citing them. I never said, once, that these films are hixplo, blaxplo or anything else. I said that some could construe them to cross several genre boundaries, based on content. And if you’d read the post prior to the one you’re citing, moviemike, you’d know what I meant by the statement TOO GOOD.
You seem to be the only one getting it, Big Clint(I’m assuming that’s Clint Walker as your ava, from what I can make out on my monitor).
I’m not training my response directly at you, Dstryed_Btch. This time around, I chose not to go back and back and back and see who said what to what, I just read and responded to different posts. Somebody after you spoke about Cool Hand Luke mentioned it too, I’m pretty sure. I was just mentioning it because it was part of the conversation and I checked to see if it was listed. Don’t bite my head off.
[quote=“Kilgore Trout”]
Deliverance is NOT an exploitation movie. It actually has a very deep plot if you take the time to watch it. My interpretation is that the old ways are washed away by the flooding of the valey making a new beginning. It is a catharsis theme.
Cool hand Luke is NOT an exploitation movie either.
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Just because it has a deep plot doesnt mean it cant be a exploitation movie. To me its definitely an exploitation movie, but that aside, its a wild movie that I think is completely brillant and one of the more shocking movies of the time.
I gotta bring Fight For Your Life into the conversation. To me it’s more of a shocksploitation, but definitely sticks into the hixploitation genre aswell.
Ah, the incendiary grindhouse classic of racism, rape and revenge… FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE!
You don’t find it to be blaxploitation in the slightest?
Oh yeah, by the end it faded into a blaxploitation.
Cool Hand Luke never really came across as an exploitation film to me. Its more of a character study/drama that takes place in a Southern road prison. It would be like calling In The Heat of The Night an exploitation film. It just doesnt fit for me.
Fight For Your Life is more of a shocksploitation-racesploitation hostage subgenre flick. Its not Hixploitation (doesnt take place in The South) and its really not a Blaxploitation film. Just because the hostages are black doesnt mean its a blaxploitation film. To me anyways.
Theres certain rules for a film to be Blaxploitation. Just because a movie pays homage to it like Jackie Brown doesnt mean its an authentic 70s blaxploitation film. Jack Hill made Coffy and Foxy Brown. Those films simply arent the same as Jackie Brown.
Exploitation cinema will always be around in some form (just look at Hell Ride).
I know where some of the confusion lies. We keep creating new -sploitation words! LOL.
I still consider Fight for Your Life to be one of the ultimate blaxploitation films. I base it on the back and forth from William Sanderson, if not entirely from the rest of the convicts. You’ve got this racist hick putting the father down, callin’ him Captain Coon and what not, making him dance the jig and shit. Then you have the big time, famous, Redneck Convict Hick Vs. Standup Black Guy mano a mano fight at the end.
At the end of the day, Jackie Brown is a crime film, period. Quentin mentioned in the documentary Baadassss Cinema that blaxploitation films, at their core, are just really crime films. I won’t fight anybody about Jackie Brown’s legitimacy for being a blaxploitation film. But I will say for my money it has enough influence to the blaxploitation genre that I’d program it with any blaxploitation film in my collection any day of the week. It actually came under intense scrutiny when it was released just like any exploitation movie when Spike Lee chastised the dialogue for all the nigga this and nigga that. At the end of the day that kind of publicity is better than any exploitation marketing ploy.
There’s no homage section in the video store, but if I had my dream come true, there would be an exploitation film section. The true question would be would I put Jackie Brown in the crime section or the exploitation section? If Quentin had his druthers, Pulp Fiction would be in the comedy section of every video store, so who really knows?
Mike: Youre right that most Blaxploitation films were usually crime films. Actually Id say most Hixploitation films were crime films too (moonshiners, cops etc). Both those genres were basically Black urban crime or Rural Southern crime films (for the most part).
With Fight For Your Life, I never really considered it Blaxploitation because it has no funky score, its set in the country and the black people in it arent pimps, players or private eyes. Jessie Lee Kane just happens to hold a black family hostage. If I was going to put it in a certain section in a video store Id put it under crime/thrillers. Its def a family held hostage subgenre film, like Desperate Hours. But Blaxploitation like Coffy or The Mack? Not really. It has aspects in there towards the end of course, but still, its not part of that genre to me.
One other aspect that is a main part of Blaxploitation is the fact that the main characters are often like urban super heroes/heroines. In Fight For Your Life, the family are just regular people. They arent involved in any larger than life dealings.
In a way, even if the film was set in the city and Jessie Lee held a black family hostage I still dont think Id consider it a Blaxploitation film. Its a diff type of genre that Blaxploitation films really werent part of.
In Blaxploitation films, Jessie Lee Kane would be dead in a few minutes (see Foxy Brown’s escape on the hillbilly ranch). Blaxploitation characters would kill him very fast. Imagine if Jessie Lee kidnapped Jim Browns wife and he showed up at the house? The movie would be 10 minutes long.
Those are some good points, Putney. You’re totally right.
I’ve never put the movies in my own collection into specific genres because it’s so hard to categorize every movie, because many movies can fit into so many different genres. Fight for Your Life is definitely a “Desperate Hours” genre film. It’s definitely not like The Mack or Coffy or Shaft, but the parameters of it are the same… the black hero will rise. It’s just another subgenre of the blaxploitation film. There are subgenres, and then there are sub-subgenres.
It will definitely make a great double feature with Larry Cohen’s Bone, which is the same plot, flipped. That too is about race relations, with the black man as white man’s marriage counselor, possibly? A black man inspiring a caucasian to wake up and take charge? One of the great blaxploitation films, and the great Larry Cohen’s debut.
God, should we move this discussion into a new thread? LOL.
Bone: I dont consider that a Blaxploitation film really either. If I watch Coffy or The Mack, they have a completely different style than Bone or Fight for Your Life. Theres certain criteria that Blaxploitation films have across the board which is how I judge them. (Marketing, Promotion, Content, Music, Storylines).
Larry Cohen himself said that Bone wasnt a Blaxploitation film. Its a black comedy (as in the dark comedy genre, not black people) The producers tried to market it in a bunch of diff ways. They sold it as a Blaxploit film, that didnt work, then a sexploit film, that didnt work either. I think they even sold it as a horror film at one point.
Now if you skip forward to Black Caesar and Hell Up In Harlem, then we’re in the right territory. Those are legitimate Blaxploitation flix.
Did Larry say that on the commentary track, that it wasn’t a blaxploitation film? Or are you misconstruing that since he said that it was marketed as a blaxploitation film and it didn’t work and they went on to market it as something else, that that ultimately meant that it wasn’t a blaxploitation film? The movie never changed, only the marketing did. If it was being marketed as a blaxploitation film at one point, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the film itself was in fact a blaxploitation film and the marketing just didn’t work to bring in the audience? I have to listen to the commentary again. I only ask because I don’t remember. I’ll have to listen to it again. I remember the part where he said how it kept being remarketed and remarketed. But that’s just in the marketing, just as in the retitling of that picture. I could see the distributors marketing it differently because one state didn’t go to see it because of the way it was previously marketed, and then they come to see the movie, marketed differently now, mind you, and then get turned off by it again, and now the distributors get scared and market it as a comedy, because maybe it’ll have an audience that way. It’s the same thing that happened to Switchblade Sisters back in the day. They had trouble with the marketing of that picture too. Doesn’t make it any less an exploitation film.
Look at cannibal films. Cannibal films are exploitation films. But the style of Cannibal Holocaust is nowhere near the style of Cannibal Apocalypse. They’re different subgenres of cannibal film.
Yeah Larry explained how it was never meant to be a Blaxploitation film by him, but the promoters tried to use whatever means they could to sell it. I actually think if it had truly been a legitimate Blaxploitation film (example: Bone starring Yaphet Kotto as a pimp in the city) it wouldve been a big hit (Black Caesar and HUIH were massive hits). The movie itself is one of those films I like to call “genre mix em ups”. Its like you cant really put it under one category cuz its so off the wall.
I remember reading about how Switchblade Sisters was originally “The Jezebels” and it didnt do good cuz it sounded like an old Bettie Davis movie.
I think all Cannibal genre films are exploitation. I mean if theres people being eaten by cannibals, its a horror exploitation flick pretty much.
From what you said about cannibal films, doesn’t that prove my point? Cannibal Apocalypse is completely dissimilar to Cannibal Holocaust except for the subject of cannibals, so they’re still cannibal films, but in different subgenres.
Bone and Fight for Your Life are “Desperate Hours” films, no detracting from that, they’re still hostage films, BUT they still contend with the class struggle between whites and blacks, the racism and prejudice between whites and blacks, and the stereotypes therein. AND they’re crime films too. Wouldn’t they be in another subgenre of the blaxploitation film?
If Larry says he never meant to make Bone a blaxploitation film, great, but it reminds me of an interview with Craig Brewer about Black Snake Moan. He said when he wrote the script he was just making this little movie about the blues in the south, and when he got around to shooting the first day with Christina Ricci in the thick chains, he stepped back and he said, “Oh my fucking god, I’m making a blaxploitation film!”
Cannibals: Theres def diff kinds of storylines with Cannibal films. Thats true. Some are jungle films, some are urban based. Id just put em all together though to make it easy.
When it comes to Blaxploitation subgenres theres: The pimp film (Mack, Dolemite), the revenge film (Coffy), the horror film (Sugar Hill), Espionage & Martial Arts (That Man Bolt, Black Belt Jones). And often combinations of two (ex: horror revenge) Im not sure Blaxploitation ventures into the “people held hostage” subgenre. Theres a split from what Blaxploitation represents and what those other films are about I think. Theres little aspects in them that are Blaxploitation themed I guess, but would I put them under that general banner? No. Its like saying every film that deals with white/black issues that happens to contain crime should be under Blaxploitation. Its not correct. FFYL is on a very fine line. Its not really Blaxploitation but I think if you wanted to market it as that kind of film you almost could. It would be a black family revenge film. It probably was marketed as one anyways. It has about 12 diff alt titles.
From what Ive read about Craig Brewer hes a big fan of exploitation films. In one interview he also talked about how Gator Bait (HIXPLOITATION!!) is one of his faves too. I think hes another modern director like QT thats heavily influenced by all those old exploitation flicks.
Have you read this book, Putney? I need to buy this book instamatically. It’s called Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide.
http://www.fabpress.com/vsearch.php?CO=FAB082
I found this section interesting…
In addition to the A-to-Z reviews of blaxploitation movies, this book features interviews with ten great blaxploitation movie directors:
ROBERT A. ENDELSON
- Fight for Your Life
I havent read that. It really lists Fight For Your Life as blaxploitation? I dont really agree on that one. I think its more of a race/shocksploitation film. Its dealing with racism and shocking people in general more than anything. The family just happens to be black. Its like what if he had kidnapped a Chinese lady? He’s call them a bunch of slurs and they’d kick his ass with kung fu at the end?
Fight For Your Life is not marketed as a black film. If it was a real Blaxploitation film it would have a certain title like: Black Family’s Revenge or something. Theres nothing in the movie that puts it under the blaxploitation category other than the hostages are black.
Blaxploitation films revolve around one or more black title characters. FFYL revolves around Jessie Lee, his thug pals, the cops, some kids AND the black family.
Like you could call it: Hillbilly From Hell just as easy as anything. You cant call Coffy anything but Coffy!
Pete: Its definitly an “B&E” film but also has hixploitation feel to it. The reason I thought it was a Blaxploitation because I believe they marketed it as a blaxploitation, dont you remeber the “Black version” trailer? Plus it did have a ultra funky score, but to me FFYL is a shocksploitation more than anything else cause thats what it is meant to do is shock you. You hear kane yelling racist slurs and your shocked.
I like how we are all fighting which genre these movies fit into 
lol!
Its a good discussion. But FFYL, in my heart I just dont see it as a Blaxploit film. I think Im right on this. lol.
You dont go see Blaxploiters to listen to some racist call black people names for 70 minutes and then watch them sit there and take it. You go see Blaxploitation to see a main character/characters do their stuff for 90 minutes.
I’m sure you’re on the right track, Putney.
What would you call a raceploitation flick that involved blacks? Blaxploitation!