First published in Rue Morgue #25 Jan/Feb 2002
Critics, eggheads and yes, even closet horror fans like to justify their taste for the genre by qualifying the content. In Dawn of the Dead, for example, a zombie horde feasts on the flesh of the living, but the fact that it happens in a shopping mall makes for some pretty nifty commentary on the nature of consumerism. Ditto for The Shining, where axe-wielding Jack Torrance chases his son into a garden labyrinth that just happens to symbolically represent the mother’s womb and the complexities of mother/son relationships.
That’s all good and well, but then there’s exploitation horror. The exploitation movie, by the way, has absolutely no social or political aspirations outside of showing you something simply because you’ll watch it.
Although exploitation has clearly left its mark on the genre, exploitation films per se haven’t changed all that much. They’re not that different than they were back in 1962, when Herschell “The Godfather of Gore” Lewis and David “The Sultan of Sleaze” Friedman were putting them out. Their legacy: Scum of the Earth, Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs, Color Me Blood Red – movies that stitched together a grim collage of rape, murder, mutilation and dismemberment, all for the sheer thrill of it, no strings attached. Most people – exploitation filmmakers included – call this stuff junk, only some say it with distaste where others say it with fondness.
The interesting thing about it, of course, is that no junk is truly worthless, no matter how much it tries to be. Exploitation filmmaking, it turns out, has some hidden worth of its own, and is actually one of the genre’s greatest assets. Not least among the benefits of exploitation is that it presents a pure and wholehearted rebellion against the monolithic entity we call the mainstream.
Although it’s a good catch phrase for populist thinking on any level, today “mainstream” refers to a set of values that our culture embraces and idealizes. No matter what dramatic guise they take, mainstream movies are essentially about re-emphasizing these values: good deeds don’t go unrewarded; true love is forever; life is precious; truth and justice triumph in the end. That’s why a mainstream film like Shallow Hal bears an uncanny resemblance to a McDonald’s commercial; both reiterate gospel truths already embraced by their audiences: true beauty is never skin deep, and a morning smile is conducive to good living.
That’s not quite the way it goes in an exploitation film. Love, nobility, truth and justice are usually objects of derision, while evil, murder, rape and dismemberment are fun and funny. Only the most culturally obtuse could take these films at face value and somehow conclude that they are the breeding ground for sickos and killers. People who say that don’t understand the concept of irony, the real reason why exploitation movies – with all of their vile and depraved plotlines – are continually viewed and enjoyed. In a sense, it takes a certain amount of moral maturity to enjoy a morally irresponsible film.
That’s the kind of maturity that isn’t much a part of the mainstream, which at the best of times resembles a running commercial for the attitudes of the status quo. By ridiculing them, exploitation films become a kind of countercurrent – the heckler on the balcony who blurts out in the middle of the performance. Whether you agree with him or not, the performance has been irrevocably changed.
Most people who rally against “junk” like Blood Feast, The Defilers and Blood Orgy of the She-Devils don’t realize that without them, the mainstream “message” is just one long monologue. And no matter how worthy or valuable that message is, it’s always more valuable when someone else comments on it, irrespective of what that comment is.
That the mainstream has changed so much over the past quarter century is a testament to the value of the work begun by Herschell Lewis and David Friedman all those years ago. Without them, people like Quentin Tarantino, the Cohen Brothers and David Cronenberg would never have been possible. So enjoy Blood Feast. And if anybody asks you what you see in that junk, tell them to go to hell.