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97-505: Jagmohan " Jag " Mundhra (29 October 1948 – 4 September 2011) was an Indian director, producer, and screenwriter, best known for his early career as an American exploitation film writer-director. Mundhra was born at Nagpur and grew up in a Marwari locality in Calcutta in a conservative family where films were frowned upon. He nevertheless nurtured a secret ambition to become a filmmaker. His childhood, as of other Indians of his generation,

194-418: A community . Cult followings are also commonly associated with niche markets . Cult media are often associated with underground culture , and are considered too eccentric or anti-establishment to be appreciated by the general public or to be widely commercially successful. Many cult fans express their devotion with a level of irony when describing such entertainment. Sometimes, these cult followings cross

291-410: A cult following . Exploitation films often include themes such as suggestive or explicit sex, sensational violence, drug use, nudity, gore, destruction, rebellion, mayhem, and the bizarre. Such films were first seen in their modern form in the early 1920s, but they were popularized in the 60s and 70s with the general relaxing of censorship and cinematic taboos in the U.S. and Europe. An early example,

388-504: A Few Dollars More ; The Big Gundown ; Day of Anger ; Face to Face ; Duck, You Sucker! ; A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West . Quentin Tarantino directed two tributes to the genre, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight . A splatter film, or gore film, is a horror film that focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and violence. It began as a distinct genre in

485-458: A component of more complex plots set in elaborately constructed civilizations (such as the Frank Herbert ’s Dune series and the works of Isaac Asimov ), for much of the 20th century space travel has been mostly featured in cheap "B films" that often had in their core a simplistic plot typical of another exploitation subgenre, such as slasher or zombie films . Spacesploration films feature

582-454: A cult classic after leaking in 2006 and being notoriously shelved by Interscope Records . The musically experimental album quickly developed a following and acclaim online, becoming what The Village Voice writer Craig D. Lindsey called "the black-music equivalent of Fiona Apple 's once-shelved (and also notoriously bootlegged) album Extraordinary Machine ". Pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen 's post-" Call Me Maybe " career has been called

679-401: A cult following after their cancellation, which may cause interest in renewal. Arrested Development , which was cancelled in 2006 after its third season , was renewed by Netflix in 2013 and received two additional seasons. Futurama was cancelled in 2003 after its fourth season on Fox , but was later picked up by Comedy Central for an additional three seasons. In 2022, it was announced

776-453: A cult following, sometimes due to prestige like Apple and Supreme , while others like Spam do so for cultural reasons. There are also many cult car brands ranging from Trabant to Volvo and even specific models like the Fiat 500 , Ford Crown Victoria and Toyota AE86 have all spawned dedicated followings within the car enthusiast community. In September 2021, AMC Theatres began airing

873-571: A cult following. Quentin Tarantino 's films borrow stylistically from classic cult films, but are appreciated by a large audience; therefore, Tarantino's filmography is noted worldwide as lying somewhere between cult and mainstream cinema. Also, certain cult phenomena can grow to such proportions that they become mainstream, such as the filmography of cult directors like John Waters , John Sayles , John Cassavetes , Armando Bó , Eliseo Subiela , Ruggero Deodato , Takeshi Kitano , Abbas Kiarostami or Jesús Franco . Certain television series develop

970-433: A cult success, particularly her third studio album, Emotion . Japanese dub and dream pop band Fishmans gained a dedicated online cult following after the death of frontman Shinji Sato via word-of-mouth spread on imageboard and music forum sites throughout the 2000s and 2010s. Atlanta rapper Playboi Carti has gained a cult following after releasing his second studio album Whole Lotta Red . Brands can also attain

1067-480: A cult-classic status among followers of hardcore punk. Some alternative albums have also developed cult followings. The American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails released their 1989 debut Pretty Hate Machine to modest success on the Billboard 200 , peaking at number 75. It developed an underground popularity in subsequent years and sold enough to receive a platinum RIAA certification in 1995, becoming one of

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1164-424: A lead role. Laconic characters and desert scenes feature in many Ozploitation films, but the term has been used for a variety of Australian films of the era that relied on shocking or titillating their audiences. A documentary about the genre was Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! . Such films deal with themes concerning Australian society, particularly in respect of masculinity (especially

1261-513: A lifestyle unbound by the restrictions of clothing, yet this depiction was restricted by the requirement that genitals should not be shown. Still, there was a subversive element to them, as the nudist camps inherently rejected modern society and its values regarding the human body. These films frequently involve a criticism of the class system, equating body shame with the upper class, and nudism with social equality. One scene in The Unashamed makes

1358-426: A long decline during the mid-1980s with the advent of home video. As the drive-in movie theater began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, theater owners began to look for ways to bring in patrons. One solution was to book lower cost exploitation films. Some producers from the 1950s to the 1980s made films directly for the drive-in market, and the commodity product needed for a weekly change led to another theory about

1455-679: A lot beyond that. In those days, the word global citizen was not there, but inside I felt like one". A key influence on Mundhra was his admission to the highly competitive and prestigious IIT Bombay . In his words, "I had studied in a Hindi medium school up to 9th grade and always admired people who spoke English fluently. IIT taught me a lot of humility. In my wing, there were students who were from different states, and as far as English went, this person from Bihar who couldn't speak English to save his life outshone everyone else with his brilliance. I did well, but realized very early on while in IIT that engineering

1552-493: A movie about rape, but the empowerment of a woman. This character could be fictitious and yet the story would have had the same powerful message". In his own words, Kamla , Bawandar and Provoked (2006) are his trilogy of strong female-centric films. At the time of his death, Mundhra was working on a film based on the life of Sonia Gandhi . Mundhra was also a life member of the International Film & Television Club of

1649-505: A person is raped, left for dead, recovers and then exacts a graphic, gory revenge against the rapists. The most famous example is I Spit on Your Grave (also called Day of the Woman ). It is not unusual for the main character in these films to be a successful, independent city woman, who is attacked by a man from the country. The genre has drawn praise from feminists such as Carol J. Clover , whose 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in

1746-550: A point about the artificiality of clothing and its related values through a mocking portrayal of a group of nude artists who paint fully clothed subjects. The term "Ozploitation" refers broadly to Australian horror, erotic or crime films of the 1970s and 1980s. Changes to Australia's film classification system in 1971 led to the production of a number of such low-budget, privately funded films, assisted by tax exemptions and targeting export markets. Often an internationally recognised actor (but of waning notability) would be hired to play

1843-485: A producer, the first question he asks is not "what is your film like?" but "what film is your film like?" That's the way it is, we can only make Zombie 2 , never Zombie 1 . Luigi Cozzi Mockbusters, sometimes called "remakesploitation films", are copycat movies that try to cash in on the advertising of heavily promoted films from major studios. Production company the Asylum , which prefers to call them "tie-ins",

1940-780: A scientifically inaccurate and inconsistent depiction of space travel and are usually set in traversing spaceships and deserted planets, partially due to the films’ limited resources. Such films include From the Earth to the Moon , Robinson Crusoe on Mars , Planet of the Vampires , The Black Hole and Saturn 3 . During one of the peaks of space travel films, the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker featured outlandishly unrealistic scenes of space warfare , despite otherwise focusing on real contemporary (i.e. Cold War) intelligence agencies . Spaghetti Westerns are Italian-made westerns that emerged in

2037-423: A serial killer stalking and violently killing a sequence of victims. Victims are often teenagers or young adults. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) is often credited with creating the basic premise of the genre, though Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974) is usually considered to have started the genre while John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) was responsible for cementing the genre in the public eye. Halloween

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2134-440: A small team which continues as of 2023 . One of the earliest cult classics in rock was The Velvet Underground 's 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico . While hugely influential, it originally flopped commercially and alienated radio stations, music retailers, and magazines, who found the content too controversial to market. Over the next decade, it received greater recognition from rock critics , who helped make

2231-652: A stereotypically black American urban milieu. A prominent theme was black Americans overcoming hostile authority (" The Man ") through cunning and violence. The first examples of this subgenre were Shaft and Melvin Van Peebles ' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song . Others are Black Caesar , Black Devil Doll , Blacula , Black Shampoo , Boss Nigger , Coffy , Coonskin , Cotton Comes to Harlem , Dolemite , Foxy Brown , Hell Up in Harlem , The Mack , Disco Godfather , Mandingo , The Spook Who Sat by

2328-408: A topic of discourse for feminist film critics . Some critics have said that lesbian sex on screen is an expression of chauvinism and male power as the images are portrayed for male pleasure.   The casting of pornstars and hardcore actresses in sexploitation films is not uncommon. The films sometimes contain sex shows intended to shock or arouse their audiences. Slasher films focus on

2425-628: Is a modern homage to the genre. "Canuxploitation" is a neologism that was coined in 1999 by the magazine Broken Pencil , in the article "Canuxploitation! Goin' Down the Road with the Cannibal Girls that Ate Black Christmas. Your Complete Guide to the Canadian B-Movie", to refer to Canadian-made B-movies . Most mainstream critical analysis of this period in Canadian film history, however, refers to it as

2522-504: Is a prominent producer of these films. Such films have often come from Italy, which has been quick to latch on to trends like Westerns, James Bond movies, and zombie films. They have long been a staple of directors such as Jim Wynorski ( The Bare Wench Project , and the Cliffhanger imitation Sub Zero ), who make movies for the direct-to-video market. Such films are beginning to attract attention from major Hollywood studios, who served

2619-500: Is also responsible for establishing additional tropes which would go on to define the genre in years to come. The masked villain, a central group of weak teenagers with one strong hero or heroine, the protagonists being isolated or stranded in precarious locations or situations, and either the protagonists or antagonists (or possibly both) experiencing warped family lives or values were all tropes largely founded in Halloween . John Carpenter

2716-501: Is especially loved within the hippie subculture, while Hocus Pocus (1993) holds cult status among American women born in the 1980s and early 1990s. Certain mainstream icons can become cult icons in a different context for certain people. Reefer Madness (1936) was originally intended to warn youth against the use of marijuana , but because of its ridiculous plot, overwhelming number of factual errors and cheap look, it became watched by audiences of marijuana smokers and has gained

2813-778: Is now believed lost. In 1953, The Wild One , starring Marlon Brando, was the first film about a motorcycle gang. A string of low-budget juvenile delinquent films featuring hot-rods and motorcycles followed in the 1950s. The success of American International Pictures' The Wild Angels in 1966 ignited a more robust trend that continued into the early 1970s. Other biker films include Motorpsycho (1965), Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), The Born Losers (1967), Wild Rebels (1967), Angels from Hell (1968), Easy Rider (1969), Satan's Sadists (1969), Naked Angels (1969), Nam's Angels (1970), and C.C. and Company (1970). Stone (1974) , Mad Max (1979) and 1% (2017) combine elements of this subgenre with Ozploitation. In

2910-456: Is sometimes called paracinema . "Exploitation" is loosely defined and arguably has as much to do with the viewer's perception of the film as with the film's actual content. Titillating material and artistic content often co-exist, as demonstrated by the fact that art films that failed to pass the Hays Code were often shown in the same grindhouses as exploitation films. Exploitation films share

3007-578: Is the controversial 1980 Cannibal Holocaust , in which six real animals were killed on screen. Others include Cannibal Ferox , Eaten Alive! , Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death , The Mountain of the Cannibal God , Last Cannibal World and the first film of the genre, The Man From Deep River . Famous directors in this genre include Umberto Lenzi , Ruggero Deodato , Jesús Franco and Joe D'Amato . The Green Inferno (2013)

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3104-494: Is to shock the audience by dealing with taboo subject matter. The first mondo film is Mondo Cane ( A Dog's World ). Others include Shocking Asia , Africa Addio (aka Africa Blood and Guts and Farewell Africa ), Goodbye Uncle Tom and Faces of Death . These "nature-run-amok" films focus on an animal or group of animals, far larger and more aggressive than usual for their species, terrorizing humans while another group of humans tries to fight back. This genre began in

3201-560: The Thunder Warrior trilogy, Johnny Firecloud , Angry Joe Bass , The Manitou , Prophecy , Avenged (aka Savaged ), Scalps , Clearcut and The Ghost Dance . Sexploitation films resemble softcore pornography and often include scenes involving nude or semi-nude women. They typically have sex scenes that are more graphic sex than mainstream films. The plots of sexploitation films include pulp fiction elements such as killers, slavery, female domination , martial arts,

3298-657: The Asian Academy of Film & Television . Mundhra is the father of Academy Award -nominated director/producer Smriti Mundhra . Mundhra died in Mumbai on 4 September 2011, aged 62, from pneumonia and multiple organ failure. Exploitation film An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content . Exploitation films are generally low-quality " B movies ", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain

3395-487: The Hitman franchise to be the first and last great Hitman game, despite its outdated controls and gameplay, and not receiving deserved acclaim at the time, Alan Wake (2010), an action-adventure game whose story is modeled similar to a thriller television series format and has gained loyal followings despite its underselling, Spec Ops: The Line (2012), a critically acclaimed third-person shooter known for its portrayal of

3492-613: The UK Albums Chart , but only 105 in the US. The Man Who Sold the World ' s influence on future musicians, such as The Cure , Siouxsie and the Banshees , and Gary Numan , as well as the dark wave genre, lent it a cult following in the music scene. Punk rock has produced several albums with cult followings. The Ramones ' 1976 self-titled debut album sold poorly, but was hugely influential on

3589-1165: The Winter War in Finland, the Korean War and the Vietnam War before the major studios showed interest. When Orson Welles ' radio production of The War of the Worlds from The Mercury Theatre on the Air for Halloween in 1938 shocked many Americans and made news, Universal Pictures edited their serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars into a short feature called Mars Attacks the World for release in November of that year. Some Poverty Row low-budget B movies often exploit major studio projects. Their rapid production schedule allows them to take advantage of publicity attached to major studio films. For example, Edward L. Alperson produced William Cameron Menzies ' film Invaders from Mars to beat Paramount Pictures ' production of director George Pal 's The War of

3686-669: The ocker male), male attitudes towards women, attitudes towards and treatment of Indigenous Australians , violence, alcohol and environmental exploitation and destruction. The films typically have rural or outback settings, depicting the Australian landscape and environment as an almost spiritually malign force that alienates white Australians, frustrating their personal ambitions and activities, and their attempts to subdue it. Notable examples include Mad Max , Alvin Purple , Patrick and Turkey Shoot . This genre contains films in which

3783-423: The " horrors of war " and the deep psychological impact of armed conflict on soldiers , and Dwarf Fortress (2006), a construction and management simulation and roguelike indie video game known for its roguelike cuboidal-grid world model and sometimes difficult text-based interface , rich and complex simulation gameplay, similarly rich procedural world generation and history of continuous development by

3880-415: The "nudie-cutie", which featured nudity but no touching, and the "roughie", which included nudity and violent, antisocial behavior. Nudist films were marked by self-contradictory qualities. They presented themselves as educational films, but exploited their subject matter by focusing mainly on the nudist camps ' most beautiful female residents, while denying the existence of such exploitation. They depicted

3977-488: The "tax shelter" era emerged as among Canada's most important and influential filmmakers of the era, including David Cronenberg , William Fruet , Ivan Reitman and Bob Clark , the new regulations also had an entirely unforeseen side effect: a sudden rush of low-budget horror and genre films, intended as pure tax shelters since they were designed not to turn a conventional profit. Many of the films, in fact, were made by American filmmakers, whose projects had been rejected by

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4074-530: The "tax-shelter era". The phenomenon emerged in 1974, when the government of Canada introduced new regulations to jumpstart the then-underdeveloped Canadian film industry, increasing the Capital Cost Allowance tax credit from 60 per cent to 100 per cent. While some important and noteworthy films were made under the program, including The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Lies My Father Told Me , and some film directors who cut their teeth in

4171-767: The 1933 film Ecstasy , included nude scenes featuring the Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr . The film proved popular at the box office but caused concern for the American cinema trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The organisation, which applied the Hays Code for film censorship, also disapproved of the work of Dwain Esper , the director responsible for exploitation movies such as Marihuana (1936) and Maniac (1934). The Motion Picture Association of America (and its predecessor,

4268-434: The 1950s, when concern over nuclear weapons testing made movies about giant monsters popular. These were typically either giant prehistoric creatures awakened by atomic explosions or ordinary animals mutated by radiation. Among them were Godzilla , Them! and Tarantula . The trend was revived in the 1970s as awareness of pollution increased and corporate greed and military irresponsibility were blamed for destruction of

4365-466: The 1960s with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman , whose most famous films include Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), Color Me Blood Red (1965), The Gruesome Twosome (1967) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). Cult following A common component of cult followings is the emotional attachment the fans have to the object of the cult following, often identifying themselves and other fans as members of

4462-409: The 1960s, Roger Corman directed Edgar Allan Poe B horror movies with well-known horror veteran movie actors with Boris Karloff , Peter Lorre , Vincent Price and a young, unknown Jack Nicholson . He turned down directing Easy Rider , which was directed by Dennis Hopper . Black exploitation films, or "blaxploitation" films, are made with black actors, ostensibly for black audiences, often in

4559-491: The 1970s, with Starcrash and the Turkish Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam and Süpermen dönüyor . The latter two used scenes from Star Wars and unauthorized excerpts from John Williams ' score. Mondo films, often called shockumentaries, are quasi-documentary films about sensationalized topics like exotic customs from around the world or gruesome death footage. The goal of mondo films, as of shock exploitation,

4656-448: The American hardcore punk band Bad Brains released their self-titled debut exclusively on cassette, struggling to gain an audience in the vinyl-dominated marketplace. The appearance of the single " Pay to Cum " on the compilation album Let Them Eat Jellybeans! (1981) helped Bad Brains develop a following in the UK, while the album's musical innovation and growing influence later ensured it

4753-517: The Asylum with a cease and desist order to try to prevent them from releasing The Day the Earth Stopped to video stores in advance of the release of The Day the Earth Stood Still to theaters. The term mockbuster was used as early as the 1950s (when The Monster of Piedras Blancas was a clear derivative of Creature From The Black Lagoon ). The term did not become popular until

4850-593: The Australian soap opera Prisoner: Cell Block H , the Indian soap opera that ran for eight years Kasautii Zindagii Kay and the mock animated talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast aired on Cartoon Network , which then spawned many spin-offs and other shows that had a similar sense of humor as Coast to Coast when Adult Swim became a block on the network. A large proportion of the titles aforementioned within this article might not be considered cult classics due to their wide saturation within contemporary audiences, though

4947-487: The Capital Cost Allowance was reduced to 50 per cent, although films that had entered production under the program continued to be released for another few years afterward. However, at least one Canadian film blog extends the "Canuxploitation" term to refer to any Canadian horror, thriller or science fiction film made up to the present day. Carsploitation films feature scenes of cars racing and crashing, featuring

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5044-628: The Devil (1975), Cannonball (1976), Mad Max (1979), Safari 3000 (1982), Dead End Drive-In (1986) and Black Moon Rising (1986). Quentin Tarantino directed a tribute to the genre, Death Proof (2007). In the 1970s, a revisionist, non-traditional style of samurai film achieved some popularity in Japan. It became known as chambara , an onomatopoeia describing the clash of swords. Its origins can be traced as far back as Akira Kurosawa , whose films feature moral grayness and exaggerated violence, but

5141-454: The Door , Sugar Hill , Super Fly , T.N.T. Jackson , The Thing with Two Heads , Truck Turner , Willie Dynamite and Cleopatra Jones . In blaxploitation horror movies back in the 1970s, despite the leading stars in those movies being black, some of these movies were either produced, edited, or directed by white filmmakers.  Blacula , a well-known blaxploitation horror movie,

5238-991: The Hollywood studio system as not commercially viable, giving rise to the Hollywood North phenomenon. Variety dubbed the genre "maple syrup porno". Notable examples of the genre include Cannibal Girls , Deathdream , Deranged , The Corpse Eaters , Black Christmas , Shivers , Death Weekend , The Clown Murders , Rituals , Cathy's Curse , Deadly Harvest , Starship Invasions , Rabid , I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses , The Brood , Funeral Home , Terror Train , The Changeling , Death Ship , My Bloody Valentine , Prom Night , Happy Birthday to Me , Scanners , Ghostkeeper , Visiting Hours , Highpoint , Humongous , Deadly Eyes , Class of 1984 , Videodrome , Curtains , American Nightmare , Self Defense , Spasms and Def-Con 4 . The period officially ended in 1982, when

5335-485: The MPPDA) cooperated with censorship boards and grassroots organizations in the hope of preserving the image of a "clean" Hollywood, but the distributors of exploitation film operated outside of this system and often welcomed controversy as a form of free promotion. Their producers used sensational elements to attract audiences lost to television. Since the 1990s, this genre has also received attention in academic circles, where it

5432-628: The Modern Horror Film examines the implications of its reversals of cinema's traditional gender roles. This type of film can be seen as an offshoot of the vigilante film, with the victim's transformation into avenger as the key scene. Author Jacinda Read and others believe that rape–revenge should be categorized as a narrative structure rather than a true subgenre, because its plot can be found in films of many different genres, such as thrillers ( Ms. 45 ), dramas ( Lipstick ), westerns ( Hannie Caulder ) and art films ( Memento ). One instance of

5529-458: The S.S. Last Days ), Gestapo's Last Orgy , or Last Orgy of The Third Reich , or Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler , Salon Kitty and SS Experiment Camp . Many Nazisploitation films were influenced by art films such as Pier Paolo Pasolini 's infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and Liliana Cavani's Il portiere di notte ( The Night Porter ). Inglourious Basterds (2009) and The Devil's Rock (2011) are modern homages to

5626-508: The Scorpion's Tail , A Lizard in a Woman's Skin , Black Belly of the Tarantula , The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh , Blood and Black Lace , Phenomena , Opera and Tenebrae . Dario Argento , Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava are the best-known directors of this genre. The 2013 Argentinian film Sonno Profondo is a modern tribute to the genre. In Italy, when you bring a script to

5723-539: The Season " becoming a surprise hit the following year. While the Zombies disbanded just before its release, the album's status grew as a cult classic in the following decades. David Bowie 's 1970 album The Man Who Sold the World also did not impact the record charts on its original release while receiving mixed reviews from critics. After Bowie achieved mainstream success in the early 1970s, its 1972 reissue reached number 24 on

5820-625: The Worlds to the cinemas, and Pal's The Time Machine was beaten to the cinemas by Edgar G. Ulmer 's film Beyond the Time Barrier . As a result, many major studios, producers, and stars keep their projects secret. Grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly showed exploitation films. These theatres were most popular throughout the 1970s and early 1980s in New York City and other urban centers, mainly in North America, but began

5917-470: The album more popular. The Beatles ' self-titled album known as The White Album at first received mixed reviews from music critics who considered its satirical songs unimportant and apolitical amid the turbulent political and social climate of 1968, but later attracted acclaim, and has since become a cult classic. The Zombies ' 1968 album Odessey and Oracle was also originally a critical and commercial flop, failing to chart despite its single " Time of

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6014-498: The border to camp followings. Fans may become involved in a subculture of fandom , either via conventions , online communities or through activities such as writing series-related fiction , costume creation, replica prop and model building, or creating their own audio or video productions from the formats and characters. There is not always a clear difference between cult and mainstream media . Professors Xavier Mendik and Ernest Mathijs, authors of 100 Cult Films , argue that

6111-587: The creation of a "cottage industry" selling memorabilia to the EarthBound fandom , Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), an unusually mature 3D platform game for the Nintendo 64 celebrated for its dark humor and story, Yume Nikki (2004), a surreal free-to-play Japanese horror game , Psychonauts (2005), an initially unsuccessful platformer that has consistently kept one of the strongest fan followings, Hitman: Blood Money (2006), considered to many long-time fans of

6208-516: The dangers of venereal disease from premarital sex. Mom and Dad , a 1945 film about pregnancy and childbirth, was promoted in lurid terms. She Shoulda Said No! (1949) combined the themes of drug use and promiscuous sex. In the early days of film, when exploitation films relied on such sensational subjects as these, they had to present a very conservative moral viewpoint to avoid censorship, as movies then were not considered to enjoy First Amendment protection. Several war films were made about

6305-437: The design of later video games. An example of a cult video game is Ico (2001), an initial commercial flop that gained a large following for its unique gameplay and minimalist aesthetics, and was noted as influencing the design of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013) and Rime (2017), among other games. Other games that have cult followings include EarthBound (1994), another unsuccessful game that later resulted in

6402-430: The devoted following among these films make them cult classics. In many cases, films that have cult followings may have been financial flops during their theatrical box office run, and even received mixed or mostly negative reviews by mainstream media, but are still considered a major success by small core groups or communities of fans. Some cults are only popular within a certain subculture . The film Woodstock (1970)

6499-402: The distinctions between genres by containing elements of two or more genres at a time. Their subgenres are identifiable by the characteristics they use. For example, Doris Wishman's Let Me Die A Woman contains elements of both shock documentary and sexploitation. Although they featured lurid subject matter, exploitation films of the 1930s and 1940s evaded the strict censorship and scrutiny of

6596-485: The early 1970s to the late 1980s, primarily made by Italian and Spanish moviemakers. They focus on cannibalism by tribes deep in the South American or Asian rainforests. This cannibalism is usually perpetrated against Westerners that the tribes held prisoner. As with mondo films , the main draw of cannibal films was the promise of exotic locales and graphic gore involving living creatures. The best-known film of this genre

6693-685: The environment. Night of the Lepus , Frogs , and Godzilla vs. Hedorah are examples. After Steven Spielberg 's 1975 film Jaws , a number of very similar films (sometimes regarded as outright rip-offs) were produced in the hope of cashing in on its success. Examples are Alligator , Cujo , Day of the Animals , Great White , Grizzly , Humanoids from the Deep , Monster Shark , Orca , The Pack , Piranha , Prophecy , Razorback , Blood Feast , Tentacles and Tintorera . Roger Corman

6790-420: The era by claiming to be educational. They were generally cautionary tales about the alleged dangers of premarital sexual intercourse and the use of recreational drugs. Examples include Marihuana (1936), Reefer Madness (1936), Sex Madness (1938), Child Bride (1938), Mom and Dad (1945) and She Shoulda Said No! (1949). An exploitation film about homosexuality, Children of Loneliness (1937),

6887-456: The fearlessness of acclaimed transgressive European directors such as Derek Jarman , Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard in handling "disreputable" content. Many films recognized as classics contain levels of sex, violence and shock typically associated with exploitation films. Examples include Stanley Kubrick 's A Clockwork Orange , Tod Browning's Freaks and Roman Polanski 's Repulsion . Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou contains elements of

6984-422: The first film to place its exploitation elements unapologetically at the forefront instead of pretending to carry a moral or educational message. This development paved the way for the more explicit exploitation films of the 1960s and 1970s and made the nudist genre obsolete—ironically, since the nudist film Garden of Eden was the subject of the court case. After this, the nudist genre split into subgenres such as

7081-516: The first independently released albums to accomplish the feat. Also in 1989, Nirvana 's debut album Bleach was released to some positive notice from critics, but failed to impact record charts, until the band's massively successful 1991 album Nevermind drew further interest to it. Radiohead 's albums Kid A and Amnesiac both received mixed reviews from fans and critics, but later attracted some praise and became cult classics. The R&B singer Bilal 's second album, Love for Sale , became

7178-399: The genre is mostly associated with 1970s samurai manga by Kazuo Koike , on whose work many later films would be based. Chambara features few of the stoic, formal sensibilities of earlier jidaigeki films – the new chambara featured revenge-driven antihero protagonists, nudity, sex scenes, swordplay and blood. Giallo films are Italian-made slasher films that focus on cruel murders and

7275-553: The genre, the original version of The Last House on the Left , was an uncredited remake of Ingmar Bergman 's The Virgin Spring , recast as a horror film featuring extreme violence. Deliverance , in which the rape is perpetrated on a man, has been credited as the originator of the genre. Clover, who restricts her definition of the genre to movies in which a woman is raped and gains her own revenge, praises rape–revenge exploitation films for

7372-460: The late 1980s and the 1990s, a string of horror and erotic thriller movies for theatrical distribution and direct to video , including The Jigsaw Murders (1988), Hack-O-Lantern (1988), Night Eyes (1990), The Other Women (1992), L.A. Goddess (1993), Sexual Malice (1994), Tales of The Kama Sutra: The Perfumed Garden (2000), and Tales of The Kama Sutra 2: Monsoon (2001). Beginning with Bawandar (2000), which he directed under

7469-507: The mid-1960s. They were more violent and amoral than typical Hollywood westerns. These films also often eschewed the conventions of Hollywood studio Westerns, which were primarily for consumption by conservative, mainstream American audiences. Examples of the genre include Death Rides a Horse ; Django ; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ; Navajo Joe ; The Grand Duel ; The Great Silence ; For

7566-492: The modern splatter film. It has been suggested that if Carnival of Souls had been made in Europe, it would be considered an art film, while if Eyes Without a Face had been made in the U.S., it would have been categorized as a low-budget horror film. The audiences of art and exploitation film are both considered to have tastes that reject the mainstream Hollywood offerings. Exploitation films have often exploited news events in

7663-496: The name Jagmohan, Mundhra was back to issue-oriented films. Bawandar is about the fight of a poor woman for justice and was based on the story of a Rajasthani woman, Bhanwari Devi . After the film's release, Ashok Gehlot , the Chief Minister of Rajasthan , called Mundhra and said, "Aapke bawandar ne bada bawander machaya hai." He gave Rs 50,000 and land to Bhanwari Devi and also money for her son's education. To Mundhra, "It's not

7760-399: The origin of the word: that the producers would "grind"-out films. Many of them were violent action films that some called "drive-in" films. Exploitation films may adopt the subject matter and styling of regular film genres, particularly horror films and documentary films, and their themes are sometimes influenced by other so-called exploitative media, such as pulp magazines . They often blur

7857-681: The prisoners, who are often female, are nude. The progenitor of this subgenre was Love Camp 7 (1969). The archetype of the genre, which established its popularity and its typical themes, was Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974), about the buxom, nymphomaniacal dominatrix Ilsa torturing prisoners in a Stalag . Others include Fräulein Devil ( Captive Women 4 , or Elsa: Fraulein SS , or Fraulein Kitty ), La Bestia in calore ( SS Hell Camp , or SS Experiment Part 2 , or The Beast in Heat , or Horrifying Experiments of

7954-537: The reveal of Laura Palmer 's murderer, who was left intentionally unknown by Lynch. Eventually, the show was canceled, ending on a cliffhanger. It was not until 2017 that Twin Peaks returned as a limited series on Showtime , ending one of the longest hiatuses in television history. Series often considered cult classics include the long-running BBC science fiction series Doctor Who , the ITC sci-fi thriller series The Prisoner ,

8051-454: The series would be renewed for 20 additional episodes (released weekly) on the streaming service Hulu . Star Trek was cancelled after three seasons, but in broadcast syndication it gained a more substantial following, ultimately spawning a successful media franchise . David Lynch 's Twin Peaks ran on ABC for two seasons from 1990 to 1991, initially garnering high ratings and critical acclaim. Ratings and reception declined following

8148-673: The short-term public consciousness that a major film studio may avoid because of the time required to produce a major film. Child Bride (1938), for example, tackled the issue of older men marrying young girls in the Ozarks . Other issues, such as drug use in films like Reefer Madness (1936), attracted audiences that major film studios would usually avoid to keep their respectable, mainstream reputations. With enough incentive, however, major studios might become involved, as Warner Bros. did in their 1969 anti- LSD , anti- counterculture film The Big Cube . The film Sex Madness (1938) portrayed

8245-463: The sports cars, muscle cars , and car wrecks that were popular in the 1970s and 1980s. They were produced mainly in the United States and Australia. The quintessential film of this genre is Vanishing Point (1971). Others include Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), Gone in 60 Seconds (1974), Death Race 2000 (1975), Race with

8342-603: The subgenre. Nudist films originated in the 1930s as films that skirted the Hays Code restrictions on nudity by purportedly depicting the naturist lifestyle. They existed through the late 1950s, when the New York State Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Excelsior Pictures vs. New York Board of Regents that onscreen nudity is not obscene. This opened the door to more open depictions of nudity, starting with Russ Meyer's 1959 The Immoral Mr. Teas , which has been credited as

8439-535: The subsequent search for the killers. They are named for the Italian word for yellow, giallo , the background color featured on the covers of the pulp novels by which these movies were inspired. The progenitor of this genre was The Girl Who Knew Too Much . Other examples of Giallo films include Four Flies on Grey Velvet , Deep Red , The Cat o' Nine Tails , The Bird with the Crystal Plumage , The Case of

8536-399: The term cult classics may have loose classifications such as an initially unsuccessful release or large number of cliches (intentional or otherwise) leading to such a broad range of classification relative to personal experiences of its assigner. Some video games, often those with unique concepts that fail to gain traction with the mainstream audience, attract cult followings and can influence

8633-402: The then-young punk movement, and eventually sold well enough to earn a gold sales certification in 2014. The British post-punk band Magazine also released their debut, Real Life (1978), to little popular success, reaching only number 29 in the UK. Its subsequent acclaim as an innovative and influential work in the burgeoning post-punk genre earned it a reputation as a cult classic. In 1982,

8730-482: The use of stylistic devices and dialogue associated with screwball comedies, love interests and flirtation akin to romance films , over-the-top direction, cheeky homages, fan-pleasing content and caricatures, and performances that contain sleazy teasing alluding to foreplay or kink. The use of extended scenes and the showing of full frontal nudity are typical genre techniques. Sexploitation films include Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Supervixens by Russ Meyer ,

8827-486: The way in which their protagonists fight their abuse directly, rather than preserve the status quo by depending on an unresponsive legal system, as in rape–revenge movies from major studios such as The Accused . The redsploitation genre concerns Native American characters almost always played by white actors, usually exacting their revenge on their white tormentors. Examples are the Billy Jack tetralogy, The Ransom ,

8924-508: The work of Armando Bó with Isabel Sarli , the Emmanuelle series, Showgirls and Caligula . Caligula is unusual among exploitation films in that it was made with a large budget and well-known actors ( Malcolm McDowell , John Gielgud , Peter O'Toole and Helen Mirren ). Lesbian sex scenes of the 1970s have been studied in the context of the political and social implications of lesbianism and women's sexuality, something that remains

9021-676: Was a major producer of these films in both decades. The genre has experienced a revival in recent years, as films like Mulberry Street and Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter reflected concerns about global warming and overpopulation. The Sci-Fi Channel (now known as SyFy ) has produced several films about giant or hybrid mutations whose titles are sensationalized portmanteaus of the two species; examples include Sharktopus and Dinoshark . Nazi exploitation films, also called "Nazisploitation" films, or "il sadiconazista", focus on Nazis torturing prisoners in death camps and brothels during World War II . The tortures are often sexual, and

9118-465: Was a tough one, counting pennies for the tram that rode to the other, affluent side of the city, and withstanding his family's strict traditions. According to Mundhra, "The family was very conservative and my grand mother was very strict and we were allowed to see maybe a couple of films a year and that too of the Har Har Mahadev variety. ... Even as a child I never saw myself as a young Marwari boy but

9215-744: Was directed by an African American filmmaker named William Crain .  Blacula was one of the first early successful blaxploitation horror movies. Ganja & Hess stars Duane Jones , who played Ben in Night of the Living Dead . This movie has political and social commentary in which the vampires are a metaphor for capitalism , according to Harry M. Benshoff . Modern homages of this genre include Jackie Brown , Pootie Tang , Undercover Brother , Black Dynamite , Proud Mary and BlacKkKlansman . The 1973 Bond film Live and Let Die uses blaxploitation themes. Cannibal films are graphic movies from

9312-615: Was inspired by Bob Clark 's Black Christmas . The genre continued into and peaked in the 1980s with well-known films like Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Many 1980s slasher films used the basic format of Halloween , for example My Bloody Valentine (1981), Prom Night (1980), The Funhouse (1981), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) and Sleepaway Camp (1983), many of which also used elements from Black Christmas . A subtype featuring space , science fiction and horror in film . Despite ambitious literary works that depicted space travel as

9409-439: Was not for me. I would be very unhappy if I was to live my life being an engineer, but I stuck it out because I didn't want to let my parents down". He pursued a master's degree in electrical engineering but switched to a PhD program in motion pictures at University of Michigan , before embarking on his film career. After his first dramas, Suraag (1982), and the socially-relevant film, Kamla (1984), Mundhra directed, in

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