Exploitation Film: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{page should be category}}
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{{quote|''It's almost as if this movie is some kind of exploitative piece, that likes showing violence and naked women for no reason whatsoever. There really should be a name for this genre. Exploit...? Exploitate...? Ahh, I'll think of it later.''|'''[[The Cinema Snob]]'''}}
A film which focuses on morbid elements a lot, the type of morbid elements that fascinate or excite people. For example, a crime movie which focuses more on the details of committing the crime or its effects on the victim, rather than the efforts to solve it. Or a movie that's excessively violent for no real reason. In fact, that - excessive violence or sexuality - seems to be the main definition of an exploitation film. Sometimes called a "grindhouse film", after a name given to theaters that specialized in showing them.
In the past, such films were sometimes made featuring lurid scenes with the supposed intent to be educational, such as ''[[Reefer Madness]]''. However, the lurid scenes were often meant to be the main source of entertainment.
It's sometimes debatable as to whether a given film is an
That's part of the dividing line. Is the violence or sexuality contained within a movie gratuitous, meant largely for entertainment? Or is it used to enhance the plot or theme? Since ''The Girl Next Door'' is a fictionalized story based on a true crime involving a real girl who was systematically abused by her family, what is it? Is it exploitation because the story itself is fictionalized and involves made-up characters instead of literally retelling the story of the crime? And even if it did retell the story of actual crime, would it still be exploitation?
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Most exploitation films, by their nature, tend to be [[B-Movie|B-movies]]. [[Blaxploitation]], [[Mondo]], and [[Nazisploitation]] are sub-genres. See also [[Gorn]] for movies that don't bother pretending, and [[Euroshlock]], which is commonly accused of this.
{{examples|Examples will be subjective:}}▼
▲{{examples|Examples will be subjective:}}
* ''[[Cannibal Holocaust]]'' is a film within a film featuring a documentary team's ill fated journey into the "Green Inferno" of South America. It sparked murder charges in Italy when it was released due to the graphic portrayals of violence onscreen leading to accusations of being a [[Snuff Film]], as well as charges for animal cruelty due to the onscreen deaths of real animals. It also was banned as one of the [[Video Nasties]].
* ''The Candy Snatchers'' is a crime movie about the kidnapping of a Catholic schoolgirl. The movie focuses heavily on her plight, and the things that go wrong with the kidnapping. Meanwhile, the poor kidnap victim is seen [[Bound and Gagged]] an awful lot throughout the entire movie.
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* ''[[Men Behind the Sun]]'', a Chinese film about the war crimes of [[Imperial Japan]]'s infamous Unit 731, which blurs the lines between exploitation & docudrama. Which is quite appropriate, considering it's about a bunch of people who made their living not so much blurring the line between scientific research & sadistic torture, as [[Metaphorgotten|injecting horse urine into its kidneys & feeding it to its cellmate...]]
* ''[[Tokyo Gore Police]]''. The main page says it all: "What ensues is almost two hours-worth of decapitations, dismemberments, disembowelments, katanas, chainsaw duels, penises that double as guns, vagina monsters that eat people, breasts that squirt acid and people propelling themselves into the air with gouts of blood among other things."
* A lot of the [[Spaghetti Western
* [[Sin City]] is exploitation-noir, which is probably a bit of a rarity.
** It may be that exploitation films are what [[Film Noir]] evolved into, since Noir represented the first push against the restrictions of the [[Hays Code]], and exploitation films broke the Hays Code down completely. Exploitation films tended to deal with material [[Incredibly Lame Pun|much darker even than Noir]].
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