Exploitation Film - Subgenres - Minor Sub-genres

Minor Sub-genres

• Britsploitation: exploitation films set in Great Britain, sometimes in homage to the Hammer Horror range of films. Examples are The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) and the Academy Award winning American film An American Werewolf in London (1981).

• Bruceploitation: films profiting from the death of Bruce Lee, with look-alike actors.

• CGIsploitation: films that use large amounts of low-budget computer generated special effects. A majority of these movies are produced and distributed by New Concorde and The Asylum. These films are commonly aired on the Syfy Channel

• Chopsocky: Martial arts movies made primarily in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the 1960's and 1970's, such as "The Hand of Death", "Master of the Flying Guillotine", "Five Deadly Venoms" and "The Legend of Shaolin".

• Category III films: Chinese films aimed at audiences 18 years or older, named after the age certificates they would receive in Hong Kong. These films are estimated to make up 25% of Hong Kong's film industry, and as in exploitation film itself, every genre of filmmaking is represented. Films made in the west, such as Wild Things and Eyes Wide Shut, often receive the Category III rating. Category III films are grouped into three classes based on censorship criteria: "quasi-pornographic" softcore pornography such as Sex and Zen, "genre films" which present adult-oriented versions of every genre of Hong Kong filmmaking, and "pornoviolence" films such as The Untold Story, which depict sexual violence and are often based on actual police cases. Well-known actors and directors such as Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat may be associated with genre films.

• Hippie exploitation: 1960s films about the hippie counterculture, showing stereotypical situations such as marijuana and LSD use, sex, and wild psychedelic parties. Curt Rowlett of Steamshovel Press described them:

From almost the beginning, Hollywood also got in on the action and produced a number of extremely lurid hippie exploitation films masquerading as cautionary public service announcements, but which were in fact aimed directly at feeding a morbid public appetite while pretending to take a moral stance. Often depicting drug-crazed hippies living and freaking out in “Manson family” style communes, such films as The Hallucination Generation (1967) and Riot on Sunset Strip (1967) depicted “hippie” youths running wild in an orgy of group sex, drugs, crime and even murder.

Further examples are the Love-Ins, Psych-Out, The Trip (1967), and Wild in the Streets.

• Hixploitation: films about the American South, featuring stereotypical hillbilly caricatures, such as Eaten Alive, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Moonshine Mountain, Poor White Trash 2, Redneck Zombies, and Two Thousand Maniacs!.

• Jewsploitation: films in which Jewish characters exact revenge against stereotypical adversaries, or engage in behavior seen by their communities as bizarre. A recent entry into the exploitation genre, Jewsploitation has themes similar to those of Blaxploitation and action films, often placing Jewish actors in traditionally Aryan roles. The genre originated in 2003 with The Hebrew Hammer, itself a parody of Blaxploitation films.

• Martial arts films: action films that are characterized by extensive fighting scenes employing various types of martial art. Examples include The Street Fighter and Sister Street Fighter series, and the Bruce Lee films The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon.

• Mexploitation: films about Mexican culture and portrayals of Mexican life, often dealing with crime, drug trafficking, money and sex. Hugo Stiglitz is a famous Mexican actor of this genre, as are Mario and Fernando Almada, brothers who made hundreds of movies on the same theme.

• Ninja films: these are a subgenre of martial arts films that center on the historically inaccurate stereotype of the ninja's costume and arsenal of weapons, often including fantasy elements such as ninja magic. Many such movies were produced by splicing stock ninja fight footage with footage from unrelated film projects.

• Nunsploitation: films featuring nuns in dangerous or erotic situations, such as The Devils, Killer Nun, School of the Holy Beast, Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentines, and Nude Nuns with Big Guns.

• Pinku eiga (pink films): Japanese sexploitation films popular throughout the 70s, often featuring softcore sex, rape, torture, BDSM and other unconventional sexual subjects.

• Pornochanchada: Brazilian naïve softcore pornographic films produced mostly in the 1970s.

• Stoner films: a subgenre of films that center around the explicit use of marijuana, typically in a comical and positive light. Cheech and Chong collaborations are a good example. A more recent series in this genre is Harold & Kumar.

• Teensploitation: the exploitation of teenagers by the producers of teen-oriented films, with plots involving drugs, sex, alcohol and crime. The word teensploitation first appeared in a show business publication in 1982 and was included in Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for the first time in 2004. River's Edge, inspired by the murder of Marcy Renee Conrad, is a highly acclaimed instance, featuring early performances by Crispin Glover and Keanu Reeves and a cameo appearance by Dennis Hopper. The Larry Clark films Bully, Ken Park and Kids are well-known teensploitation films. American International Pictures made films for the teenage market from the 1950 on .

• Vigilante films: films in which a person breaks the law to exact justice. These films were rooted in 1970s unease over government corruption, failure in the Vietnam War, and rising crime rates. They reflect the rising political trend of neoconservatism. The genre is believed to have originated with the 1970 film Joe. The classic example is the Death Wish series, starring Charles Bronson. Vigilante films often deal with individuals who cannot find help within the system, such as the Native American protagonist of Billy Jack, or characters in blaxploitation films such as Coffy, or people from small towns who go to larger cities in pursuit of runaway relatives, as in Hardcore (1979) and Trackdown (1976). There are "vigilante cop" movies about policemen who feel thwarted by the legal system, as in the Walking Tall series, Mad Max, and the Dirty Harry series of Clint Eastwood movies. These are not considered to be true vigilante films in the classic sense, because they do not involve ordinary citizens seeking justice for a personal hurt. Similarly, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver does not fit the category, because of its mentally disturbed protagonist. Other examples are Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales, Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, and F. Gary Gray's Law Abiding Citizen.