Editing B movie (section)

===Transition in the 1950s===
{{Main|B movies in the 1950s}}
In 1948, a Supreme Court ruling in a [[United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.|federal antitrust suit against the majors]] outlawed block booking and led to the Big Five divesting their theater chains. With audiences draining away to television and studios scaling back production schedules, the classic double feature vanished from many American theaters during the 1950s. The major studios promoted the benefits of recycling, offering former headlining movies as second features in the place of traditional B films.<ref>Strawn (1974), p. 257.</ref> With television airing many classic Westerns as well as producing its own original Western series, the cinematic market for B oaters in particular was drying up. After barely inching forward in the 1930s, the average U.S. feature production cost had essentially doubled over the 1940s, reaching {{Nowrap|$1 million}} by the turn of the decade—a 93% rise after adjusting for inflation.<ref name =F42/>

The first prominent victim of the changing market was Eagle-Lion, which released its last films in 1951. By 1953, the old Monogram brand had disappeared, the company having adopted the identity of its higher-end subsidiary, Allied Artists. The following year, Allied released Hollywood's last B series Westerns. Non-series B Westerns continued to appear for a few more years, but Republic Pictures, long associated with cheap sagebrush sagas, was out of the filmmaking business by decade's end. In other genres, Universal kept its [[Ma and Pa Kettle]] series going through 1957, while Allied Artists stuck with the Bowery Boys until 1958.<ref>Lev (2003), p. 205.</ref> RKO, weakened by years of mismanagement, exited the movie industry in 1957.<ref>Lasky (1989), p. 229.</ref>

Hollywood's A product was getting longer, the top ten box-office releases of 1940 had averaged 112.5 minutes; the average length of 1955's top ten was 123.4.<ref>See Finler (2003), pp. 357–58, for top films. Finler lists ''[[The Country Girl (1954 film)|The Country Girl]]'' as 1955, when it made most of its money, but it premiered in December 1954. ''[[The Seven Year Itch]]'' replaces it in this analysis (the two films happen to be virtually identical in length).</ref> In their modest way, the Bs were following suit. The age of the hour-long feature film was past; 70 minutes was now roughly the minimum. While the Golden Age-style second feature was dying, ''B movie'' was still used to refer to any low-budget genre film featuring relatively unheralded performers (sometimes referred to as ''B actors''). The term retained its earlier suggestion that such movies relied on formulaic plots, "stock" character types, and simplistic action or unsophisticated comedy.<ref>See, e.g., Matthews (2007), p. 92; Lyons (2000), p. 53.</ref> At the same time, the realm of the B movie was becoming increasingly fertile territory for experimentation, both serious and outlandish.

[[Ida Lupino]], a leading actress, established herself as Hollywood's sole female director of the era.<ref>Lev (2003), pp. 60–61.</ref> In short, low-budget pictures made for her production company, The Filmakers, Lupino explored taboo subjects such as rape in 1950's ''[[Outrage (1950 film)|Outrage]]'' and 1953's self-explanatory ''[[The Bigamist (1953 film)|The Bigamist]]''.<ref>Hurd (2007), pp. 10–13.</ref> Her best known directorial effort, ''[[The Hitch-Hiker (1953 film)|The Hitch-Hiker]]'', a 1953 RKO release, is the only film noir from the genre's classic period directed by a woman.<ref>Muller (1998), p. 176; Cousins (2004), p. 198.</ref> That year, RKO released ''[[Split Second (1953 film)|Split Second]]'', which concludes in a nuclear test range, and is perhaps the first "atomic noir".<ref>Jewell (1982), p. 272.</ref>

The most famous such movie, the independently produced ''[[Kiss Me Deadly]]'' (1955), typifies the persistently murky middle ground between the A and B picture, as Richard Maltby describes: a "programmer capable of occupying either half of a neighbourhood theatre's double-bill, [it was] budgeted at approximately $400,000. [Its] distributor, United Artists, released around twenty-five programmers with production budgets between $100,000 and $400,000 in 1955."<ref>Maltby (2000).</ref> The film's length, 106 minutes, is A level, but its star, [[Ralph Meeker]], had previously appeared in only one major film. Its source is pure [[pulp magazine|pulp]], one of [[Mickey Spillane]]'s [[Mike Hammer (character)|Mike Hammer]] novels, but [[Robert Aldrich]]'s direction is self-consciously aestheticized. The result is a brutal genre picture that also evokes contemporary anxieties about what was often spoken of simply as the Bomb.<ref>Schrader (1972), p. 61; Silver (1995).</ref>

[[File:RocketshipXM2.jpg|thumb|285px|''[[Rocketship X-M]]'' (1950), produced and released by small Lippert Pictures, is cited as possibly "the first postnuclear holocaust film".<ref>Shapiro (2002), p. 96. See also [http://www.conelrad.com/conelrad100/index.html Atomic Films: The CONELRAD 100].</ref> It was at the leading edge of a large cycle of movies, mostly low-budget and many long forgotten, classifiable as "atomic bomb cinema".]]
The fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, along with less expressible qualms about radioactive fallout from America's own atomic tests, energized many of the era's genre films. Science fiction, horror, and various hybrids of the two were now of central economic importance to the low-budget end of the business. Most down-market films of the type—like many of those produced by [[William Alland]] at Universal (such as ''[[Creature from the Black Lagoon]]'' (1954)) and [[Sam Katzman]] at Columbia (including ''[[It Came from Beneath the Sea]]'' (1955))—provided little more than thrills, though their special effects could be impressive.<ref>Kinnard (1988), pp. 67–73.</ref>

But these were genres whose fantastic nature could also be used as cover for mordant cultural observations often difficult to make in mainstream movies. Director [[Don Siegel]]'s ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film)|Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]'' (1956), released by Allied Artists, treats conformist pressures and the evil of banality in haunting, allegorical fashion.<ref>Lev (2003), pp. 186, 184; Braucort (1970), p. 75.</ref> ''[[The Amazing Colossal Man]]'' (1957), directed by [[Bert I. Gordon]], is both a monster movie that happens to depict the horrific effects of radiation exposure and "a ferocious cold-war fable [that] spins [[Korean War|Korea]], the army's obsessive secrecy, and America's post-war growth into one fantastic whole".<ref>Auty (2005), p. 34. See also Shapiro (2002), pp. 120–24.</ref>

''The Amazing Colossal Man'' was released by a new company whose name was much bigger than its budgets. [[American International Pictures]] (AIP), founded in 1956 by [[James H. Nicholson]] and [[Samuel Z. Arkoff]] in a reorganization of their American Releasing Corporation (ARC), soon became the leading American studio devoted entirely to B-cost productions.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QSdSRPZEdEkC&q=AIP+and+B%27s&pg=PA260|title=The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema|last=Davis|first=Blair|date=2012-04-06|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=9780813553245|language=en}}</ref> American International helped keep the original-release double bill alive through paired packages of its films: these movies were low-budget, but instead of a flat rate, they were rented out on a percentage basis, like A films.<ref>Strawn (1974), p. 259; Lev (2003), p. 206.</ref>

The success of ''[[I Was a Teenage Werewolf]]'' (1957) thus brought AIP a large return, made for about $100,000, it grossed more than {{Nowrap|$2 million}}.<ref>Lentz (2002), p. 17.</ref> As the film's title suggests, the studio relied on both fantastic genre subjects and new, teen-oriented angles. When ''Hot Rod Gang'' (1958) turned a profit, hot rod horror was given a try: ''Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow'' (1959). David Cook credits AIP with leading the way "in [[market segment|demographic exploitation]], [[target market]]ing, and saturation booking, all of which became standard procedure for the majors in planning and releasing their mass-market 'event' films" by the late 1970s.<ref>Cook (2000), p. 324. See also p. 171.</ref> In terms of content, the majors were already there, with films about [[juvenile delinquency]] such as Warner Bros.' ''[[Untamed Youth]]'' (1957) and MGM's ''[[High School Confidential (film)|High School Confidential]]'' (1958), both starring [[Mamie Van Doren]].<ref>Denisoff and Romanowski (1991), pp. 64–65, 95–100, 105.</ref>

In 1954, a young filmmaker named [[Roger Corman]] received his first screen credits as writer and associate producer of Allied Artists' ''[[Highway Dragnet]]''. Corman soon independently produced his first movie, ''[[Monster from the Ocean Floor]]'', on a $12,000 budget and a six-day shooting schedule.<ref>Di Franco (1979), p. 3.</ref> Among the six films he worked on in 1955, Corman produced and directed the first official ARC release, ''[[Apache Woman (1955 film)|Apache Woman]]'', and ''[[Day the World Ended]]'', half of Arkoff and Nicholson's first twin-bill package. Corman directed over fifty feature films through 1990. As of 2007, he remained active as a producer, with more than 350 movies to his credit. Often referred to as the "King of the Bs", Corman has said that "to my way of thinking, I never made a 'B' movie in my life", as the traditional B movie was dying out when he began making pictures. He prefers to describe his metier as "low-budget exploitation films".<ref>Corman (1998), p. 36. It appears Corman made at least one true B picture—according to Arkoff, ''Apache Woman'', to Corman's displeasure, was handled as a second feature (Strawn [1974], p. 258).</ref> In later years Corman, both with AIP and as head of his own companies, helped launch the careers of [[Francis Ford Coppola]], [[Jonathan Demme]], [[Robert Towne]], and [[Robert De Niro]], among many others.<ref>Rausch and Dequina (2008), p. 56.</ref>

In the late 1950s, [[William Castle]] became known as the great innovator of the B movie publicity gimmick. Audiences of ''Macabre'' (1958), an $86,000 production distributed by Allied Artists, were invited to take out insurance policies to cover potential death from fright. The 1959 creature feature ''[[The Tingler]]'' featured Castle's most famous gimmick, Percepto: at the film's climax, buzzers attached to select theater seats unexpectedly rattled a few audience members, prompting either appropriate screams or even more appropriate laughter.<ref>Heffernan (2004), pp. 102–4.</ref> With such films, Castle "combine[d] the saturation advertising campaign perfected by Columbia and Universal in their Sam Katzman and William Alland packages with centralized and standardized publicity stunts and gimmicks that had previously been the purview of the local exhibitor".<ref>Heffernan (2004), pp. 95–98.</ref>

The postwar [[drive-in theater]] boom was vital to the expanding independent B movie industry. In January 1945, there were 96 drive-ins in the United States; a decade later, there were more than 3,700.<ref>Segrave (1992), p. 33.</ref> Unpretentious pictures with simple, familiar plots and reliable shock effects were ideally suited for auto-based film viewing, with all its attendant distractions. The phenomenon of the drive-in movie became one of the defining symbols of American popular culture in the 1950s. At the same time, many local television stations began showing B genre films in late-night slots, popularizing the notion of the [[midnight movie]].<ref>Heffernan (2004), p. 161.</ref>

Increasingly, American-made genre films were joined by foreign movies acquired at low cost and, where necessary, dubbed for the U.S. market. In 1956, distributor [[Joseph E. Levine]] financed the shooting of new footage with American actor [[Raymond Burr]] that was edited into the Japanese sci-fi horror film ''[[Godzilla (1954 film)|Godzilla]]''.<ref>Matthews (2007), p. 91.</ref> The British [[Hammer Film Productions]] made the successful ''[[The Curse of Frankenstein]]'' (1957) and ''[[Dracula (1958 film)|Dracula]]'' (1958), major influences on future horror film style. In 1959, Levine's [[Embassy Pictures]] bought the worldwide rights to ''[[Hercules (1958 film)|Hercules]]'', a cheaply made Italian movie starring American-born bodybuilder [[Steve Reeves]]. On top of a $125,000 purchase price, Levine then spent {{Nowrap|$1.5 million}} on advertising and publicity, a virtually unprecedented amount.<ref name = Cook324>Cook (2000), p. 324.</ref>

''The New York Times'' was not impressed, claiming that the movie would have drawn "little more than yawns in the film market&nbsp;... had it not been [launched] throughout the country with a deafening barrage of publicity".<ref>Nason (1959).</ref> Levine counted on first-weekend box office for his profits, booking the film "into as many cinemas as he could for a week's run, then withdrawing it before poor word-of-mouth withdrew it for him".<ref>Hirschhorn (1979), p. 343.</ref> ''Hercules'' opened at a remarkable 600 theaters, and the strategy was a smashing success: the film earned {{Nowrap|$4.7 million}} in domestic rentals. Just as valuable to the bottom line, it was even more successful overseas.<ref name = Cook324/> Within a few decades, Hollywood was dominated by both movies and an exploitation philosophy very much like Levine's.

Also playing rounds during this time was [[K. Gordon Murray]], known for distributing international matinee fare like the 1959 [[Cinema of Mexico|Mexican kids' movie]] ''[[Santa Claus (1959 film)|Santa Claus]]''.<ref>[https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/miamis-b-movie-mogul-6345666?showFullText=true Miami's B-Movie Mogul|Miami New Times|]</ref>

{{anchor|The golden age of exploitation: 1960s}}