In Defense of Fantasy and Sci-Fi B-Movies

In which I opine on the merits of B-movies of yesteryear, their decline, and how they haven’t really gone extinct.

Being a child of the 1970s, I was fortunate to grow up during a transitional period in cinema and before VCRs (along with cable television) changed how we see movies. The only places to see movies were at the theater and on broadcast, so a lot of very old movies were my main diet. Hey, movie tickets cost money even at the third run small town theater. Unlike other kids, it was rare to go out to see a badly faded and scratched print.

So I got to watch the badly faded and scratched prints cropped to television box format via the miracle of pan and scan. Most of the movies were much older than I was, so black and white flicks were watched nearly as much as color. Do not get me started on Ted Turner’s colorizing old films in the 1980s. The words “brain dead” would be the beginning of the rant which would veer into zombie killing at some point.

So what is a B-movie?

I suppose I should define what B-movies are in the first place. Back in the hey day of film, most movies were shown in a double billing. The quality one everybody was supposed to go see was the A list film and the second was the B movie. Over time, that kind of booking ended and the cheaply made films were left on their own to survive.

Second run theaters and matinees became their destination in the 1950s, so the topics changed quite a bit. Science fiction and fantasy headed for the matinees so the kids would come. Exploitation films filled with sex, violence, and gory horror went to the lesser theaters and drive-ins. I can remember the salacious newspaper ads for those films as a kid. They went the way of the dodo along with drive-in and sleazy theaters when home video exploded.

It should be no surprise that these genres were the ones that survived over the years, since they were long relegated to the low budget end of film making. Quality films in other categories eventually buried the B-movie westerns and gangster movies, while the exploitation films found a home on direct to video and made for cable.

So what makes a B-movie a B-movie in more recent times? I will get to that a bit later and my analysis may raise some eyebrows. For the moment, an abridged history of science fiction and fantasy B-movies over the decades will take up the slack.

SHOCK! TERROR!! SUSPENSE!!!

YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!!!!

It seems like all the 1950’s B-movie posters and trailers employed hyperbole like that to sell tickets. These day we consider that cheesy, but it worked very well for at least two decades. When you mention B-movies, it is the dreadful black and white films with robots carrying women and mutants running amok that usually come to mind.

Yet if you talk to a true film buff, the conversation will turn to the higher quality B-movies.  I personally have a deeply held affection for these pulpy films. Philip Jose Farmer once wrote about Tarzan, Doc Savage, Conan the Barbarian, and The Shadow stories being “elegant trash.” Ever since I read that description, it embedded itself in my consciousness and I have applied it to many other mediums since.

No B-movie studio embodied that more to me than Hammer Films. Good acting, wonderful sets, and a serious approach to the fantastic made their films great romps that never made you feel your intelligence had been insulted. Those imports from across the pond had that veneer of class that could only be supplied by British accents, yet they were still in that vein of ripping good yarns. With stories featuring Dracula to the Mummy to Professor Quatermass, you were guaranteed to see something very cool every time.

Here in the States, we had the wonderful films of Ray Harryhausen and George Pal providing much the same quality. From invading Martian war machines to Talos turning his giant bronze head, kids and adults were entertained by these lower budget films. One thing they had over the Hammer movies is that these could be enjoyed safely by the entire family more often than not.

Those films continued well into the 1970s, but by then they were no longer alone in captivating young audiences. The Japanese giant monster movies got rolling in the 1960s after a delay with films in the Godzilla and Gamera series, plus many other flicks featuring men in rubber monster suits. What a glorious time it was for kids who loved B-movies.

Then the 1970s came and things began to change. Once again, I have to tease about where the post is going, because I have to omit something very big that happened. But before I get there, I will note that B-movies had begun to decline in quality at this point.

Don’t get me wrong, there plenty of fun ones and even good ones, but the plots had begun to lose their novelty and the budgets had shrunk drastically. In Japan, the entire film industry suffered a drastic contraction and diehard Godzilla fans will point out the dramatic downturn in that series. By the middle of the decade, Gamera and Godzilla films were kaput. B-movies kept coming out, but the magic was fading.

Fortunately, the older films were still being shown on midnight shows, another now lost relic of the era. I can remember eagerly staying up until midnight on Saturdays hoping to stay awake for whatever was showing on Channel 8. Cable channels also relied heavily on older films during their initial years.

In the 1980s, there was something of a renaissance in B-movies. Movies such as The Last Starfighter, Krull, Spacehunter, Buckaroo Banzai, Clash of the Titans, and others kept fantasy and science fiction B-movies going. Most of them could be shown to all but the youngest kids, but making money from them was another question. The tried and true formula of the past decades just wasn’t working anymore.

There was a very good reason for that. The ultimate B-movie came out in 1977 and changed everything about how movies were made.

When the giant Star Destroyer appeared on movie screens around the world, it heralded a new era: that of the Hollywood blockbuster. Thoroughly B-movie in plot, writing, and acting, it had one advantage -- a large budget. George Lucas turned his love of old movie serials, samurai flicks, and B-movies into a true cultural phenomenon with the release of Star Wars.

Right now, I can imagine the outrage of would be Jedi around the world, but the reality is that they are B-movies with outrageous budgets. Beginning with this series of movies, the whole nature of B-films began to change. They had been promoted from the minor leagues to the big leagues.

That did not mean all of them graduated, however. In the 80s, there was still room for the B-movie, though they were tending to get self parodying by this point. Big Trouble in Little China was a good example of this and the very R rated Troma films took it even further. Also fitting this ironic style were the Evil Dead movies which culminated in Army of Darkness, one of the most quoted films in filmdom.

Changing public tastes and the realization that there was gold in them thar fantasy and sci-fi films combined with the rising technology of computer generated effects to elevate B-movies of the genre to the A list by 2000. Once the new century began, the box office was totally dominated by such films.

Comic book adaptations including Batman Begins, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The X-Men were part of that wave. This year’s The Avengers is proof of how things have changed in movies. What would have been a B-movie plot in previous decades is now a billion dollar grossing triumph.

Children have not been forgotten as an audience during this change. Harry Potter, whether it be the books or movies, is a classic example of the new “elegant trash” of our era. In many ways it reminds me of Harryhausen’s wonderful Sinbad movies, for it captures the wonders of magic from a child’s view.

It may upset some that I call these films B-movies, but I do not do so to belittle them. If you check my movie reviews, it will become clear just how much I love the genre movies. But there is a huge difference between movies such as Citizen Kane and Transformers, you must admit. One is high art and the other is entertainment.

Then there are movies that straddle the line and become problematic to categorize, such as The Dark Knight or The Lord of the Rings trilogy. While the blood of B-movies may be in their ancestry, they have clearly risen to become something far more. Yet they owe so much to the old films so casually derided by critics and audiences alike.

Now to get to the meat of my argument, which is defending B-movies as having a legitimate reason for being other than making a quick buck.

This post was sparked by watching old Godzilla films with a five year old and finding out what effect they had made upon him. His parents informed me that these movies have become everything to the little boy and sure enough he was unable to stop talking about them the last time I visited. Watching the giant monsters stomp around and fight had triggered his imagination in ways I never expected. His daycare workers have been impressed with how the boy is using his imagination to play, which was something new.

It was then I found out that most kids in the daycare center do not use their imaginations to play. This shocked me in a very disappointed way. When I was growing up, my imagination made up for a friendless existence in the Lord of the Flies like small town I grew up in. So I knew the value of having an imagination, but never expected to hear kids didn’t use theirs anymore. I will admit that I have seen evidence of this with people in their teens and twenties, but I thought at least childhood was still safe!

Looking back, I realize how much those silly B-movies sparked my imagination and that of others. There are multiple websites devoted to discussing, reviewing, and paying tribute to B-movies, showing how much they mattered to many people. But when you read interviews with authors and film makers, that is where you find out how important the movies were. Many of them wax nostalgic about the movies they used to watch and how they influenced them in their lives.

The death of the imagination is a dangerous thing for any society, so I think B-movies deserve more respect than has been given them. Yes, they are often juvenile, but it is kids who use their imaginations the most. Anything that gets the mind going in creative and fantastic directions is good for people.  If King Kong vs. Godzilla can awaken the dormant imagination in a kid, what could the other ones do for the rest of us?

If you cannot embrace your inner child, there is the fun of making fun of them while watching, ala Mystery Science Theater 3000 or RiffTrax. They keep entertaining us adults that way too. B-movies will always have a place somewhere in our culture, I think.