Garbage In: Loving Exploitation Cinema

            Picture it: A little person in red flannel with a limp running an underground house of ill-repute posing as a landlord for a rundown flat. Abductions of teenage girls played by actresses in their 30’s, a toy shop dealing heroin, impromptu performances of off-pitch cabaret, and disemboweled – err, fluffed – teddy bears ensue… Such are the dubious experiences of The Sinful Dwarf (1973), a curiously depraved little picture also known as The Abducted Bride in the United States and Dvaergen in its home country of Denmark. The film is but one trippy example of an entire genre of film that spans the globe: Exploitation.

            Many have never heard of exploitation, or perhaps the closest they’ve come to it is seeing the Tarantino-Rodriguez collaboration Grindhouse (2007) that paid homage to the rugged, scratchy prints of yesteryear that played in double-billed loops at drive-ins and theatres in the scuzzier side of town throughout the 1970’s and early 1980’s. Simply put, exploitation casts a wide net over many other genres but often finds itself limited to an audience that seems doomed to having to explain themselves to their friends and family over and again as to why they love these films so darned much.

            Exploitation is not a polite or decent realm of filmmaking in the least. These are the films that teenagers sneak off to watch while their parents are out or asleep. Usually the image conjured up when the term ‘grindhouse’ is said is that of figure in a trench coat and shifty eyes ducking into a worn down theatre with sticky floors and musty seats. The truth is, the majority of modern Hollywood fair, from The Hunger Games (2011) to the Harry Potter series, has its roots in the seedy tropes of exploitation.

Film, in the classical sense, has been just as artistic a medium as paint and canvas, music, or the written word. Society reveres master directors such as Jean Renoir, Akira Kurosawa, and Stanley Kubrick as artists. Films from these greats are usually labeled art cinema today, but for the majority of the 20^th Century, they were the respectable and highly-anticipated output of the Cineplex.

These features showcased high-minded ideas and deliberate art direction. Often they conformed to guidelines set by censorship organizations, such as the Hays Code, MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), or the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors). If they pushed the envelope, and films such as Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1932) certainly did, it was done subversively.

The easiest way to describe exploitation is to say that it is the exact opposite. It isn’t about art. It has no sense of propriety whatsoever. That might be the kind way to explain it, since many would use the terms sleazy, dirty, or at the very least low-budget and B-movie. Certainly there have been times where art film and exploitation have crossed paths. Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) obviously comes to mind, and another glaring piece underground skullduggery – Curt McDowell’s Thundercrack! (1975) which combined explicit adult entertainment with exaggerated high-theatre hysterics in a classic gothic haunted house.

Exploitation itself takes its name from its very intent: to exploit for financial gain. One of the threads that ties together the many subgenres of this niche of filmmaking is the need to make a buck. Often times the exploited themes would be sexuality, violence of all kinds, or ripped-from-the-headlines current events such as drugs, prostitution, or even social justice issues. Necessarily, many of these films were marketed for adults (though they definitely played to teenagers rebellious and daring enough to sneak in).

The wide variety of topics available to be exploited resulted in grindhouse cinema becoming perhaps the most diverse genre of film in history. Much like Metal in the music world, exploitation has literally hundreds of derivative subgenres, each subject denoted by a mash-up title such as sexploitation, blaxsploitation, nunsploitation, or even ozsploitation – which is simply the entirety of exploitation films from Australia such as Mad Max (1979) or Turkey Shoot (1982). One of the reasons for such a large canon is perhaps that the genre has been around for quite a long time.

In point of fact, the genre itself has proliferated conceivably since the advent of cinema. From one-reel nudie shorts shown at carnivals and travelling shows at the turn of the 20^th Century, to the mega-hit television show The Walking Dead, exploitation (also called paracinema) has nearly always been with us since the medium was invented. Though the films come in all kinds, there is one thing that is has always stayed the same: the lurid, wide-eyed gleefulness of the less-than proper subject matter.

Two ingredients in particular have been necessary to fulfill a proper exploitation flick: sex and violence. Sex easily came first, being easier to justify in so-called ‘educational’ films that were trucked from town to town in the name of moral superiority. Titles such as Reefer Madness (1938) and Mom and Dad (1945) showcased fornication and drug use under the guise of ‘spreading awareness’. Violence emerged early in the form of horror films that dealt with the grotesqueries of World War I such as the hollowed eyes of Lon Chaney Sr. in The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and later Universal monster pictures like Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931).

The sci-fi B-movies of the 1950’s, such as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), It Conquered the World (1956), and The Blob (1958) exploited the public fears of technology and the repercussions of nuclear power. The turmoil of the 1960’s yielded grittier pictures that made good use of the new MPAA ratings system and sported true adult content for the first time in films like Blood Feast (1963) – often considered the first true American gore film – and The Undertaker and His Pals (1966). But it wasn’t until the 70’s that exploitation as we commonly think of it really began to hit its stride.

If we are to accept the oft-stated belief that art imitates life, then we can be reasonably sure of the 1970’s being a time of cultural disillusionment. Especially in the United States, where economic recession combined with rapid inflation existed alongside a country coping with a long and failed military conflict and the revelation of corruption at the highest levels of government. The art films of the time are darker and heavier, but the true explosion of paracinema begins here.

Taking a cue from many of the prison dramas of the 40’s and 50’s, Roger Corman with his brand new production company New World Pictures released several Women-in-Prison pictures to wild success. The biggest of these were director Jack Hill’s bawdy, good-time hits The Big Doll House (1971) – which brought the world ebony bombshell Pam Grier – and its sequel The Big Bird Cage (1972). Watching these films today is impossibly great fun and it’s not hard to see why they have achieved cult status. Tough babes in scant clothing busting out of a jungle prison with machine guns and beating men at their own game? What’s not to like? There’s something for everyone.

Grindhouse favorites proliferated everywhere and funding could come from anywhere. Tobe Hooper’s infamous The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) was bankrolled by a company that turned out to be a front for organized crime and when John Carpenter made Halloween (1978) he did it with barely $300,000 scraped together on a bet producer Irwin Yablans made with financier Malek Akkad. The shoe-string budget was simply part of the deal with exploitation. Spend a little, make a lot.

As with any money-making venture, selling the product is a major piece of the puzzle. Often times the content of the films barely matched the lurid brilliance of the posters, taglines, and trailers released to promote the low-budget trash to the masses. Imagine yourself on New York’s famous 42^nd Street. The year is 1982 and you are strolling in to an afternoon matinee of something called Dr. Butcher, MD (Medical Deviate). Over in Italy, where it was made, it was titled Zombie Holocaust. You see a poster for an upcoming euro-import attraction titled Pieces. On it is a silhouetted figure with a chainsaw, and below that the image of a naked, dead girl apparently stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster. The tagline reads, “You don’t have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!” and at the bottom, “Pieces – it’s exactly what you think it is”.

Most marketing campaigns for exploitation films hard-sold the lewd, crude, and nude aspects of their productions, often far over-hyping what the audience got to see. With director Juan Piquer Simón’s Pieces (aka Mil gritos tiene la noche) [1982], the American release struck brilliance by neither over nor underselling the product. It’s exactly what you think it is. Nevertheless, the taboo nature of forbidden pleasures has always been the hook to bring audiences into the theatre. Even today movies are sold to the public with lines like “The biggest action movie of the year!” so this is simply nothing new.

Exploitation movies became mainstream fair with the unprecedented success of one particular aquatic nightmare: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). Prior to that, any film about a rampaging carnivorous creature was relegated directly to B-movie status. Jaws was so massively popular that the term blockbuster was coined to describe its box-office crushing numbers. Shortly thereafter the Great White was followed by dozens of exploitation films masquerading as respectable art. Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), and Spielberg’s own Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) are just a few of the flood of mainstream thrills, chills, and spills that soldiered on to this very day in the form of Transformers (2007), Twilight (2008), and even The Lord of the Rings series.

So the next time you catch your friend or family member watching something like Cannibal Holocaust (1980) or Friday the 13^th (1980), before you jump to the usual, “Why do you like that stuff? Garbage in, garbage out…” remember that your favorite movie is Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) in which a bunch of very good looking and scantily clad men and women fight off a cursed, undead horde on the high seas. Or The Avengers (2012), which revolves around a group of freaks led by a man made powerful by a sci-fi super soldier serum who fight off an alien invasion.

The point is, you like that stuff too. Happy viewing!

The Witch: A New England Folktale

            “What dost thou want from me?”

            “What canst thou give?”

            “Wouldst thou like the taste of butter, or a beautiful dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”  

Robert Eggers’ first time in the director’s chair brings us The Witch (2016), a film that is perhaps the most unsettling, if not the scariest, in recent memory. Not scary in the way that The Conjuring (2013) was, mind you. This is a more deep-seated, paranoid sort of fear – an unnerving dread that settles like a fog over the entire picture that doesn’t even let up once the credits roll. It is fear as you actually feel it in real life, not the haphazard jolts and bumps in the night that one is accustomed to receiving at the local multiplex.

            The Witch centers upon a Puritan family in 1630’s New England. The father, William, is judged to be heretical by the standards of his colony, though the circumstances of this are never quite clear, and is banished to the wilderness. As a result, he must take his wife Katherine, oldest daughter Thomasin, her sibling Caleb, twins Jonas and Mercy, and newborn Samuel with him to build and live in a new farm nearly a day’s ride from town.

            Once established there, however, things take a surreal turn for the worse when baby Samuel inexplicably disappears before Thomasin’s eyes during a game of peekaboo, and a grief-stricken Katherine blames her daughter and accuses her of witchcraft…

            The Witch is not a film that is easily understood if one’s cinematic experience is limited to giant fighting robots and superheroes. It is a masterpiece of atmosphere and simplicity. Beyond the muted, natural light used to film the bleak woods and the deliberately slow-moving plot, the entirety of the dialogue is spoken in period-accurate Middle English, complete with all forms of ‘thou’ and ‘thee’. This is not Shakespeare, however, and the cast do an admirable job of speaking what nearly seems to be a foreign tongue with convincing earnest and no small amount of natural grace.

            Though the entire cast does an impressive job all around – fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones will recognize Kate Dickie as Katherine, who played Lady Lysa Stark in the series – the standout performances here come from the children. Harvey Scrimshaw steals many of his scenes as Caleb, the oldest boy in the family, but the true weight of this film rests on newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy as the teenaged oldest daughter Thomasin. Her story is slowly revealed as the center of the picture and she turns in what is certainly the finest performance of 2016.

            There are at least three distinct layers to The Witch that make it both an effectively simple film and yet a marvelously complex exploration of religious fervor, paranoia, and adolescence. Each of these layers work together simultaneously to form an interwoven story of dread where the worlds of fairy tales and history meet. And indeed, it is a fairy tale, as the subtitle A New England Folktale declares.

            The first layer is on the surface – a dogmatically puritan family in the grips of depression and isolation turns to ever-deepening religious superstition to explain their situation. When baby Samuel disappears, Katherine cannot handle it and spends days without sleep praying and weeping continuously. Even without the presence of the supernatural, this would be an effective psychological horror film. As the inexplicable events surrounding the family mount, they begin to accuse each other of witchcraft. With the darkness of the woods surrounding the farm, and the corn crop being eaten by a blight, the family becomes paranoid.

            Thomasin is accused by the younger twins Mercy and Jonas of being a witch. She knows she is not, but cannot convince her mother otherwise, while her father struggles to provide for all of them. With no one else to turn to, or blame, the family members turn on each other. Caleb earnestly asks his father if his baby brother is in Heaven or Hell, “What wrong could he hath done?” Often we hear William praying to God to save his family in spite of his own sins, but to no avail. When Katherine tells him she believes God has left them, the film seems inclined to agree.

           

The characters are so focused inward on the possible evil in their midst that they fail to notice the very real evil surrounding them. This second layer to The Witch revolves around a menacing foe lurking in the woods around the farm. We see this paranormal adversary in many different forms, including a black billygoat named ‘Black Phillip’, naked feral women, a seductress in a red cloak, and perhaps most menacingly a recurring large, brown hare. These images contribute to the overall atmosphere of unease that pervades the film.

            Early on, we may be forgiven for believing these figures exist only in the tortured dreams of the characters. By the end of this folktale though, they reveal themselves as all too real. There are many visual statements in the film that seem to suggest that evil often triumphs simply because many refuse to admit that it is there. Thomasin disregards Mercy’s claims of being able to talk with Black Phillip because she reasons that her sister is simply playing children’s games. Nevertheless, the goat somehow gets loose from its pen over and over again without explanation. By the time Thomasin, and the audience, begin to realize what is actually happening on the farm, it is too late.

            The final layer is much more discrete than the others. Mentioned only in passing by her parents in secret conversation, and in subtle visual references to her blossoming figure, Thomasin is a young teenage girl just coming of age. Her prayers are fraught with confessions of disobeying her parents, not caring about her chores, and shame of her growing body. She is becoming a young woman in a family where the very fact is considered a sin.

Caleb is confronted a number of times with his sister’s developing bosom and finds himself in a visibly distraught state of confusion. Her parents’ solution to the problem of their daughter’s puberty is to send her to live with a family in the colony so that she might be available to marry. Her burgeoning autonomy forces her, like many teenagers, into conflict with her mother and father, and it becomes easy to see that maybe the strange goings on could be somehow connected to her adolescence.

This thread of the young woman coming of age holds together both the paranoid dysfunction of the family and the supernatural evil emanating from the forest. Thomasin finds herself, through no fault of her own, the target of anger and blame for the disappearance of her baby brother, the blight destroying the crops, and even the misbehavior of the livestock. It then becomes more and more apparent that she may also be the ultimate target of whomever, or whatever, stalks the woods around the family farm.

Ultimately these three layers are woven together masterfully by Robert Eggers, a first-time director who reportedly spent nearly four years researching both the time period of his film, and the subject of witches and their craft in 17^th Century New England. All of the costuming and set design is painstakingly accurate. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find a more faithful recreation of early colony life than The Witch, which honestly makes it a pity that this film will most likely not be understood by the majority of filmgoers, or simply passed by in favor of Deadpool (2016) – a film that is funny, but The Witch is far better than – or Risen (2016) – a movie that does not explore religious devotion nearly so well as this one.

The Witch: A New England Folktale is a challenging, disturbing, beautiful film that deserves to be seen in the theatre. It is quite nearly a miracle that it has earned a wide release (one may have the unexpected success of It Follows (2015) to thank for that). However, if you don’t get around to watching it on the big screen, be sure to catch it on the small one. For those willing to brave it and take it in, this reviewer gives The Witch a 10/10.