The reason why people went to see those movies was to be shocked and thrilled, because sometimes a raw experience like that is just more entertaining. If you take a peek through some of the old exploitation films you shouldn't be surprised to find lots of violence and lots of nudity - They're movies made for adults, that aren't pornography.
Death Proof, my choice of the newest double feature to have a wide release in years, is built like any Slasher film you may have seen in a 70's theater. It also has the components of other exploitation films. It has one of the greatest car chases I've ever seen, which was probably Tarantino seeing if anyone remembers the classic 1971 action/car chase movie Vanishing Point. There's even a Dodge Challenger in both movies.
A couple other aspects of Death Proof that are reminiscent of early exploitation films are its uses of violence and sexuality, and its role of women.
Firstly, exploitation films are never humble when it comes to violence. The bloodier the merrier. It may not always look real but there's usually some limbs hacked off, someone getting raped, blood-spewing stabbings, or in some cases cannibalism. Also there tends to be more sex and nudity than you'd expect to see. Sexuality was used a great deal to entice more audience members.
Secondly, female characters were usually given the same roles for all movies. Most of the time they were put in for being remotely attractive because if they showed some skin the film would get more viewers. However, the component that Death Proof recreates is a type of revenge plot which was frequently used in exploitation films, where a woman (or in this case a group of them) are in distress but rise up, kick ass, and get back at their male enemies.
One of the most infamous exploitation movies to come out of the 70's was the oh so disturbing I Spit On Your Grave. This film captures the extreme violence and sexuality, as well as having the female revenge plot line. The first half of the movie involves one woman being raped 4 times, but the second half is her time to get back at the men who violated her, killing them in such creative ways as boat motor mutilation, and castration. The famous critic Roger Ebert calls the film a "vile bag of garbage" he also adds, "at the film's end I walked out of the theater quickly, feeling unclean, ashamed and depressed." So, if you feel you're a sensitive film-goer you might want to stray from the exploitation genre, or at least from I Spit On Your Grave. Even Ebert let his emotions get to him with that movie.
One thing I found easily when I dove into this gritty genre of films is that sometimes they can just be really, really dumb, and hilarious in a dumb way. For instance, the movie Blood Feast, which is hailed as the first "splatter film" (a movie with a tremendous amount of graphic violence and gore) is awfully funny when it shouldn't be. With acting worse than Stephen Baldwin, some really fake looking internal organs, and a lousy plot-line, Blood Feast is probably the campiest movie I've ever seen. At least I got a laugh from it though.
I thank Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez for making Grindhouse and introducing me to the sewer of American film-making. If you're reading this and aren't familiar with many exploitation films, I'll give you my top 3, so you can have a place to start if you're interested.
3. I Drink Your Blood - This movie is hilarious in its stupidity and its outrageous violence. When a group of satanists come into a peaceful town and start to terrorize the people there, a boy transfers the blood of a rabid dog into meat pies and serves them to the satanists. The result - Lots of killing and foaming at the mouth.
2. The Last House On The Left - Extremely scary, and truly shows how awful violence is. It gets disturbing to the point where you feel a little depressed about being human, so quite obviously it's a very powerful film. A group of killers have fun with and then kill 2 girls, then they naively stay in the house of one of the murdered girls and her parents take their revenge. Btw, these bad guys don't seem like actors, they seem more like real psychopaths that were put in front of a camera.
1. Coffy - After finding out her sister has become a heroin addict, a nurse takes the law into her own hands by personally taking down all the drug dealers and pimps. That nurse is played by Pam Grier, and she is one of the coolest and sexiest ladies to ever have been on screen. As the original film poster explains she's, "the baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town." Having a real hip lady as the hero really empowers women and evidently also happens to form my favorite exploitation film.
I want to see Coffy
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