A Brief History of B Movies

Introduction

Different decades had different kinds of B movies.  This wasn’t just due to the tastes and expectations of filmmakers and audiences; it was also due to changes in the business of production, acquisition, distribution, and exhibition.  

The following brief history is American-centric because it’s what I know.

Also note that categorizing B movies into metallic ages is something I do; it's neither an academically recognized practice nor an agreed upon categorization system used by other amateur movie critics.

Iron Age B Movies and the Height of the Golden Age of Hollywood (Late 1930s through 1940s)

B movies before the 1950s were usually secondary features made by major studios or acquired from smaller production companies that had ties to major studios.  During this time, movie theaters tended to be big, glorious palaces that showed two feature length movies (a prestige feature plus a secondary feature) along with a few short subjects, like cartoons, newsreels, and musical performance shorts. (By the way, musical performance shorts were the music videos of their decade.)  For the price of one admission, you could binge watch it all. 

The major studios were also making epic movies; it was the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Meanwhile during this age, you'd find cheaper movies and serials from "Poverty Row" companies like Republic and Monogram. Low budget Universal monster movies of the 1940s also fell into this category.

At the time, nobody called them B movies; "Second Feature" was a common term.

In general, the major studios owned the means of production, acquisition, distribution, and exhibition.  They were motivated to make and acquire cheap movies and short subjects to have something to show at their theaters along with their big prestige movies.

The Golden Age of B Movies and the Great Turnabout (1950s through mid 1960s)

The major studios’ monopolies on production acquisition, distribution, and exhibition led to some unfair and unethical business practices, which were addressed in an antitrust suit brought against Paramount.. Paramount lost. 

After Paramount's loss in court, the major studios started giving up their means of distribution and exhibition.  By the 1950s, the major studios focused on expensive prestige movies and presentation gimmicks that could compete with what was on TV while leaving secondary movie production to other groups.  (It was also during this time that the term "B movie" was coined.) New distribution companies became the means of both distribution and initial publicity campaigns. The distributors and exhibitors tended to be separate businesses.

The Golden Age of Hollywood gradually ended while a Golden Age of B Movies gradually began. Various distribution companies specializing in selling and advertising small movies formed and worked directly with new, modestly funded independent movie production groups. 

It was a turnabout:

• Before the, 1950s, major studios told exhibitors what they were going to show. 

• During the 1950s, exhibitors and distributors began to tell small studios what they were going to make.

The change in production and distribution led to post-war boom enterprises with various small studios springing up as cottage industries.

Sometimes distribution was directly tied to production; for example, some distribution companies would develop ad campaigns for movies that hadn't been made yet and then go to production companies to get them made. For example, AIP developed an ad campaign for a movie called Beast with a Million Eyes and sold it to the exhibitors, and then went to producer Roger Corman for a movie to go with their ad campaign.

And sometimes the exhibitors themselves directly influenced production: for example Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman (1958) was produced by a drive-in theater exhibition group that had formed its own distribution company.

Although the major studios continued to make big movies with big gimmicks, the exhibitors tended to prefer movies that weren't too long because shorter movies meant they could sell more admissions over the course of a day -- but they couldn't be too short because their patrons would complain.

This was the age of American International Pictures (AIP) and Roger Corman's style of "movie as product" production scheduling, Allied Artists (formerly Monogram), and a jillion cheap western movies, sci-fi movies, horror movies and comedies.  (Think of it all as a foundation for the type of things TV studios would be making quickly and economically during the following decades). 

Distribution companies also began acquiring foreign language films and contracting small production companies to produce and sometimes rewrite dubbed versions of them for American audiences. 

Although the exhibitors were now theoretically free to show whatever movies they could get their hands on, an independent group that regulated self-censorship for the motion picture industry, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), had been entrusted to tell exhibitors what they could not show.  It was an “all or nothing” system: Your movie had to be free of all potentially objectionable content to get MPAA approval.  But if you made or acquired movies that couldn't get MPAA approval, there was still a specialized, dubious market for your movies.

It was nothing new: a self imposed system for industrial regulation of objectionable content had been in place since the 1930s.  But it was all about to become much more flexible, and that change would trigger a new Age of B movies.

The Silver Age of B Movies, the Rise of Sex and Gore, and the "End" of B Movies (Mid 1960s through late 1970s)

During the mid 1960s, the MPAA formed a group that evaluated motion pictures and assigned ratings based on content. Potentially objectionable content was allowed, but movies would now bear a rating indicating how much potentially objectionable content it had. This allowed more artistic freedom, although how much art was actually produced was a matter of debate

Small studios and distribution groups quickly took advantage of this new system by making and acquiring competitively sensationalistic movies with gory violence and explicit sexuality.  They also started importing and dubbing foreign language movies that would have been “too dirty” for the previous system.

Also during this time, traditional theater exhibitors started moving away from programs with "two features and some shorts" to "one feature and maybe a cartoon". Multi-bill programs, which now could have movies with objectionable content, were more likely found in drive-ins. The term “drive-in movie” became a type of B movie genre. (See also how the term "grindhouse movie" became a type of B movie.)

By the end of the 1970s, the term "B movie" had lost its functional meaning. This decade also saw the rise of Summer blockbusters. Drive-ins started closing. Most places stopped showing second features. (You could still find them, but they were becoming increasingly rare.) 

People started calling low budget movies made by small studios “independent films” instead of "B movies". Common technical improvements in cinematography and sound recording/editing that had been developed while making Summer blockbusters also made it possible for movies with modest budgets to look and sound more expensive, but the rock bottom price to make a movie went up. Modestly budgeted feature films that looked and sounded technically competent along with occasional movies from major studios became sole attractions in theaters.

And thus ended the Silver Age of B Movies and "B movies" in general. Long live the era of Independent Film.

Epilogue

In the days of brick & mortar video stores during the 1990's, the spirit of the term "B movie" briefly returned.  For example if you walked into a Blockbuster video store and looked at the New Releases section, you might find about twenty copies of one movie and maybe one copy each of about twenty dubious movies.  The twenty-copy movies were the store’s A movies; the one copy movies were their B movies.

This also applies in the days of streaming media. For example, if you subscribe to an over-the-top media service that heavily pushes some shows while keeping other shows around for the sake of saying they have other shows, the heavily pushed shows are its A movies; the others are its B movies.

A vs B was about expectations. An "A movie" is expected to perform better than a "B movie". But sometimes a B movie is better for an audience than an A movie. (They used to call B movies that perform well above expectations "sleepers". Suddenly, a B movie might become an A movie -- and spawn an A sequel that becomes a B sequel.)

Finally, a movie with low expectations is, by definition, a dubious movie. And that's what we're here for.