Exploitation Films: Teaching Sin in the Suburbs

Abstract

Teaching exploitation films—those low-budget, sensational movies of various stripes that revel in sex, nudity, vice, and violence—presents some of the same difficulties as teaching any film course. Exploitation films do, however, present some unique challenges and can be classified as “difficult” films—although not for the reasons one might immediately assume. I regularly teach a course called “Cheap Thrills: The Politics and Poetics of Low Culture.” The class is essentially a survey of the history of exploitation films, beginning with racy Mutoscope movies, through white slave films and “classical” exploitation fare, to sexploitation, 1970s grindhouse standards, and cheapie directto-video releases. Along the way there are detours into other cultural realms: the sideshow and the dime museum, pulp magazines and comic books, and tabloid television. At one time teaching exploitation films was difficult simply because the material necessary to teach them was so hard to secure. Although there is not yet an overwhelming amount of historical and critical literature, the number of books and articles continues to grow. 1 And where once it was a challenge to find exploitation films for classroom use, there are now countless titles available on DVD and videotape. Those problems have been overcome. Yet today, the things that one might conceive of as being “difficult” about teaching exploitation movies—their sexual and violent content—are usually met with a jaded amusement by students. Granted, this might be different at other colleges and in other regions. But I find that students are able to nimbly negotiate nudity, sexual situations, and violence and gore, whether the fake dismemberings in dayglo red in something like Blood Feast (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1963) or the fairly realistic carnage of Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980), with ease. The scenes that tend to cause the most visceral and vociferous reactions in my classes are those of childbirth from creaky hygiene movies such as Street Corner (Albert