Paramount Exploitation

This week was one of the weeks I was looking forward to after first hearing of it from one of the first weeks. This is because of the Paramount decision. The decision was rendered in 1948. It was filed as anti-trust legislation and addressed the evident monopoly that made it impossible for individual filmmakers to have their films shown to the audiences they desired. The direct cause of this legislation was the vertical integration that the big 5 and the minor 3 were using to make sure that their films were the only ones exhibited to the viewing public.

The tactic often used by these studios was called “block booking.” This process included selling or leasing large packages of films to theaters. For every high dollar film, the studious would also put lower ranking films in the package. This tactic prohibited other companies or smaller studios to exhibit their films.

Once the Paramount decision was put into action, it allowed for many independent film makers to finally have a platform to show their films.

During this period, a common act that the studios would do when exhibiting films would be to pair films of higher accolade, with lower received early Euro-horror films. This can be described as a “weird hybrid of high culture with low culture or high art and low art. This blending of cultures and art forms created one lane of culture that everyone who experienced it could view something that had never been done before. An example of this would be Wild Strawberries, and Black Sunday.

I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary on AIP. American International Pictures was founded by Jack and Sam, who where two of the most influential artists during the aftermath of the Paramount decision. They founded the very notion of exploitation films.

Exploitations films come in many shapes and sizes. The initial target for the exploitation films were teenagers. AIP had discovered that teenagers had never had films made and catered toward them. The film that caught my attention during the montage of their impressive 500 films put out was titled “I was a teenage werewolf.” I thought that this was a perfect example of the exploitation AIP was trying to accomplish. These films became wildly successful. Most thanks to the success of AIP was due to the director, and producer Rodger Corman.

Rodger was and is a very influential and pertinent figure in the field of exploitation films. He was able to produce films on a very tight budget within a very short period of time. Rodger often could not find someone he believed was capable of directing a film adequately, so he would do it himself.

Another aspect of AIP, and Rodger Corman that I found fantastically interesting was their tactic of creating artwork as advertisement for films, and pitch them to theatres to see if they would book the films. The interesting part of this was that the films weren’t even made yet. This business tactic not only was not only cost effective, because if a movie would not be booked, then it would save them making it, but it was genius because they would often bait and switch; not necessarily delivering on their promises of the posters, but the teenagers would still receive the films extremely well.