Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and Terrific
Review: In Schlock! The Secret History Of American Movies, Ray Greene brings us up close and personal with the seamier side of film presenting, in great detail, the history of the exploitation film genre that thrived on the fringes of Hollywood.

From road shows presenting 'educational' films, nudie cuties, grind house fair, roughies, and most any kind of exploitation genre you can name, we get up close and personal with the people involved in making and starring in these films. Greene talks to such notable figures as Roger Corman, David F. Friedman, Dick Miller, Samual Z. Zarkoff, Forry J. Ackerman, Harry H. Novak, Doris Wishmen, Vampira, and many more.

We learn how these films came about, how they evolved in reference to society, and how mainstream Hollywood eventually co-opted the format. We also learn interesting details about financing of the films, the film makers experiences with censorship, and how these small, low or no budget films actually outpaced Hollywood releases at times in drawing attendees. What I found really interesting was how, these directors and producers really zeroed in on what the public wanted, what the public wasn't getting from mainstream movies, and made heaping mounds of money doing it. Once the mainstream industry saw the kind of money being made, they would begin to incorporate the material presented in these seedy, little movies, forcing the exploitioneers to find even more shocking and enticing material to release on an unsuspecting public.

At a running time of about 90 minutes, this documentary certainly doesn't cover everything, but what it does cover, it does very well, between the interviews and rare film clips, and provides a fascinating glimpse into a world few get to see. It's not always a pretty journey, but I was entertained and even learned a few things.

Special features include a nuclear propaganda short titled "The Atom and Eve", behind the scenes footage with some of the directors listed above, an art gallery of exploitation promotional materials, and an audio commentary with the director Greene and a co-producer.

Rating:
Summary: The greasy underbelly of Hollywood
Review: In Schlock! The Secret History Of American Movies, Ray Greene brings us up close and personal with the seamier side of film presenting, in great detail, the history of the exploitation film genre that thrived on the fringes of Hollywood.

From road shows presenting 'educational' films, nudie cuties, grind house fair, roughies, and most any kind of exploitation genre you can name, we get up close and personal with the people involved in making and starring in these films. Greene talks to such notable figures as Roger Corman, David F. Friedman, Dick Miller, Samual Z. Zarkoff, Forry J. Ackerman, Harry H. Novak, Doris Wishmen, Vampira, and many more.

We learn how these films came about, how they evolved in reference to society, and how mainstream Hollywood eventually co-opted the format. We also learn interesting details about financing of the films, the film makers experiences with censorship, and how these small, low or no budget films actually outpaced Hollywood releases at times in drawing attendees. What I found really interesting was how, these directors and producers really zeroed in on what the public wanted, what the public wasn't getting from mainstream movies, and made heaping mounds of money doing it. Once the mainstream industry saw the kind of money being made, they would begin to incorporate the material presented in these seedy, little movies, forcing the exploitioneers to find even more shocking and enticing material to release on an unsuspecting public.

At a running time of about 90 minutes, this documentary certainly doesn't cover everything, but what it does cover, it does very well, between the interviews and rare film clips, and provides a fascinating glimpse into a world few get to see. It's not always a pretty journey, but I was entertained and even learned a few things.

Special features include a nuclear propaganda short titled "The Atom and Eve", behind the scenes footage with some of the directors listed above, an art gallery of exploitation promotional materials, and an audio commentary with the director Greene and a co-producer.

Rating:
Summary: ballyhoo babylon
Review: Trying to encapsulate the entire history of "shlock" cinema (and what's with that misspelled title?) within a 90-minute documentary is a fool's errand at best but this ambitious effort, while biting off far more than it can chew, earns points for even taking a stab.

That said, SCHLOCK will probably disappoint its target audience (hardcore shlock buffs) whose initial fascination will ultimately turn to frustration as entire sub-genres (mondo flicks, blaxploitation, Ed Wood, Albert Zugsmith's big-studio B-unit) are either ignored or given the once-over-lightly treatment. More than a primer than a definite work, SCHLOCK should nevertheless satisfy newbies to the scene.

B-movie czar Roger Corman inadvertantly puts his finger on one of this docu's big problems early on, when, in the course of an on-camera interview, he points out the difficulty of even defining what an exploitation picture is. (Later, nudist-camp auteur Doris Wishman further muddies the water when she argues that ANY movie that's advertised is exploitation fodder.)

But a far bigger hurdle facing the producers of this frugally-financed opus was apparently limited access to a wider range of film clips. While still fun to watch, excerpts from old public domain titles like REEFER MADNESS and MOM AND DAD (as well as 1950's civil defense featurettes) have been over-exposed on cable and in other documentaries. As a result, the financially-strapped producers were forced to creatively pad, making liberal use of old newsreels and commercials (which, though interesting, have no real bearing on the subject at hand) while misleading viewers into believing that unidentified sequences from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is actually archival material from old Vampira (Maila Nurmi) kinescopes. Meanwhile, Russ Meyer's immeasurable contributions to the genre are dismissed with a few laudatory sentences (but no clips), while endless samples from Wishman's ouevre present practically suggest that nudist camp flicks were the backbone of the exploitation industry. In a similar vein, Corman's A BUCKET OF BLOOD rates a lengthy segment thats recaps highlights from entire film, presumably for no other reason than that rights were available.

Pic's puzzling pacing may also be the result of budget strait-jacket. Instead of getting the show off to a bang with, say, a montage of explo highlights (think of the dynamite teaser leads to SOMETHING WEIRD's video catalog), SCHLOCK begins with plodding footage of a painfully campy new stage musical based on REEFER MADNESS (!)--certainly an odd way to open a film celebrating "bad" movies, particularly when samples of that far-ranging genre are under-represented onscreen.

Insightful interviews with exploitation stalwarts Dick Miller and David J. Friedman (as well as Corman, Wishman and the elfin Nurmi, the latter two particularly delightful) help pick up the slack.

But the real scene-stealer of this piece? The kid who pops out of Mom's womb during the jaw-dropping birth-of-a-baby reel. A star is born, indeed!

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive and Terrific
Review: What a fun, cool, interesting and humorous movie! It takes exploitation films and presents them in a way that increases their significance and makes them accessible to everybody, not just the hardcore fans. The interviews are fascinating (yay Vampira!), and the many, many clips blow the mind. There are dozens of rare exploitation movie posters displayed, which is also cool because the poster art itself communicates a lot about what's scarey and great about exploitation. And the DVD extras are PRICELESS, especially the hilarious Harry Novak short and David Friedman's carny book pitch segment. But howcome no more Vampira?

The main contibution this film has to make is that it very carefully positions the exploitation film in a wide social context as an index of American culture in the 50s and 60s, and it does so by TAKING THE FILMS SERIOUSLY which almost nobody who loves these movies ever does. Cult movie geeks being what they are, almost everybody who watches "SCHLOCK!" will have a desire to see something else represented (I always think Allied Artists films like "Not of This Earth" get the shaft in these movies -- nobody seems to remember the main competitor to AIP). But I think that's a sign of the success of this picture, because it engages you in the history and lore of the exploitation "golden era," so much so that, despite a ton of material, you end up wanting more.

Rating:
Summary: You gotta love it...
Review: You gotta love a film that starts off with scenes from Reefer Madness: the Musical and that's just how this fantastic new documentary Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies begins. Directed by film maker and journalist Ray Greene this is a very thorough look at exploitation films and filmmakers between the forties to the early seventies starting with the road show days and ending with mainstream acceptance of exploitation. It's full of rare film clips, interviews and artwork.

The film tracks the many phases of exploitation films spawned through the years from early roots of drug, sex, hygiene and birthing road shows to nudist and nudie cutie films, the Roughies, Gore films of H.G. Lewis, AIP films to the end of the golden age of exploitation when Hollywood started to make the same kind of films with bigger budgets. It's all covered in way to enlighten the viewer rather than ridicule the films for any perceived shortcomings.

Besides the wealth of information to be garnered from the films collection of movie clips it also features a multitude of insightful interviews with many of the key figures of the exploitation film era including sexploitation king Harry Novak, the late Doris Wishman (one of America's most prolific female directors) Sam Z Arkoff of AIP (who sadly has passed away) Roger Corman one of the most successful men in Hollywood, and David Friedman who started with road shows and is still hawking films to this day. These interviews paint an interesting picture of a time when filmmakers made films to please a core audience and make their own mark rather than please the whole world.

The only disappointment for me was the lack of coverage of blaxploitation, zombie (and cannibal) and Ilsa films. Other than that it's a great film for those with an interest in exploitation films or a good introduction for those unfamiliar with the subject matter.