I don’t understand why they no longer make good B-movies, something low budget but still enjoyable. There were a TON of them in the 70s-80s and they started thinning out in the 90s, now they seem gone.
You have either big budget stuff, low budget serious indie stuff, or low budget self aware B-movie imitations like Sharktopus 2 basically Sci Fi channel stuff.
Hell it seems now with modern sensibilities you’d be able to get away with more risque stuff in a B-movie, which was part of their fun.
Well, I’d do a search for “straight to DVD” and the world is your B-movie oyster.
Like I said they are all self aware SyFy crap, like failed parodies of actual B-movies. They don’t have any of the fun or wit or even boundary pushing the older ones did, they don’t even have any harsh language usually.:rolleyes:
Well, fuck, I mean, you’ve got the fucking mainstream movies where they fucking use all the fucking harsh language you can fucking image - fuck, that South Park movie had harsher language than all the fuckin’ B-movies of the last fucking decade, and even it got fuckin’ beat by Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back for fuck’s sake.
How’s a fuckin’ B-movie to fuckin’ compete, fuck?
There are still plenty of entertaining B grade cinema. Or Z grade. You just have to look for it and wade through the schlock. Always been the case though, which of the older ones are good is just better known now because more people have tested them since they came out.
But then again I don’t have a problem with a B movie being aware that it’s a B movie and having fun with it. As long as it’s still entertaining.
When a movie knows its a B-movie and has fun with it thats great, plenty used to do that. More recently though its different, almost like being aware its a B-movie sucks the fun out of it. I don’t really know how to describe it.
The “B-Movie” slowly moved. First it went to TV, as “TV Movie of the Week.” Then in the 80s and 90s, it moved from over the air to cable channels. As on TNT, Lifetime and so forth. And as others noted, straight to DVD
There are some fun B-movie homages out there to carry the torch, though. Piranha 3D, for one, or Slither - From IMDB: “In this blend of the B movie classic Blob, The (1958) and some Romero’s zombies film, a meteorite collides in a small town. Grant finds it, and is infected by a parasite worm, which installs in his brain and causes him a creepy transformation into a monster. Starla, his wife, and Bill, a policeman, will try to stop him and the plague of worms generated by the creature.” Watched it for Nathan Fillion, stayed for the awesome.
You might want to invest in a couple of premium channels on cable for a few months.
Try IFC or Sundance - they offer lots of smaller films by first time film makers that can sometimes be very good, but practically unheard of except by a few film buffs who go to film festivals.
Also, HBO, Starz and Showtime have alternate channels where they show the occasional off-beat films, usually late at night mid-week but often worth cranking up the DVR and taping. I have found quite a few films like you describe. Sometimes I will tape a movie and watch 10 minutes and delete it immediately, but just as often I will find a quirky film that is worth watching.
You just have to start looking in the right places.
So it’s like new music. You have to actively search and search and search for it.
I think other than the top three rentals, the Redboxes are crammed with B-or lower stuff. I’ve never heard of most of the movies in the things, and the pictures advertising said movies just scream “B” (or lower).
Part of it is that because of technology and changes in the industry, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to make films at a basic level of competency. In the 70’s and earlier, if you were making a film without studio support you basically had to do everything from writing to props to special effects to editing, etc, yourself. That is a huge part of why old B-movies are sometimes so laughably poorly made, but also what gave them the sort of outsider art charm that you find lacking in newer B-movies. These days, though, even big-budget movies are largely made by subcontractors. Even if your small-budget picture can’t afford the same guy Steve Spielberg uses, you can still hire someone who has the right equipment and basically knows what they’re doing for way cheaper than you could do it yourself.
I would however take issue with the idea that modern B-movies are “self aware” but that the old ones weren’t. There were a few people like Ed Wood who apparently thought they were making some sort of great art, but the vast majority were well aware they were making low-budget exploitation films and certainly weren’t above playing up the “so bad it’s good” angle.
The Rob Lowe as Drew Peterson Lifetime movie was literally blowing up Twitter last night. Does that count? 
Wikipedia’s article on B movies is interesting, and from it I get the impression that the beginning of the decline was when movie theaters stopped showing double features (when a B movie was somewhat analogous to the B side of a record). (Actually, there’s a whole series of articles; B movies (1980s to the present) may be most relevant to this thread.)