B movie - Wikipedia. A B movie is a low- budget commercial movie, but one that is not an arthouse film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less- publicized bottom half of a double feature. Although the U. S. In its post–Golden Age usage, there is ambiguity on both sides of the definition: on the one hand, the primary interest of many inexpensive exploitation films is prurient; on the other, many B movies display a high degree of craft and aesthetic ingenuity. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low- budget science- fiction and horror films became more popular in the 1. Early B movies were often part of series in which the star repeatedly played the same character. Almost always shorter than the top- billed films they were paired with, many had running times of 7. The term connoted a general perception that B movies were inferior to the more handsomely budgeted headliners; individual B films were often ignored by critics. Latter- day B movies still sometimes inspire multiple sequels, but series are less common. As the average running time of top- of- the- line films increased, so did that of B pictures. In its current usage, the term has somewhat contradictory connotations: it may signal an opinion that a certain movie is (a) a genre film with minimal artistic ambitions or (b) a lively, energetic film uninhibited by the constraints imposed on more expensive projects and unburdened by the conventions of putatively . The term is also now used loosely to refer to some higher- budgeted, mainstream films with exploitation- style content, usually in genres traditionally associated with the B movie. From their beginnings to the present day, B movies have provided opportunities both for those coming up in the profession and others whose careers are waning. ![]() Westerns on the Web Watch Westerns Movies online free. Full length Western Movies, Western TV shows, Western Films and Original Western Webisodes. Watch 1,150 movies free online. Includes classics, indies, film noir, documentaries and other films, created by some of our greatest actors, actresses and directors. Pennsylvania oldies and rarities label. Boxed sets, special collections and classic album reissues. Catalog, discography, and online ordering. Celebrated filmmakers such as Anthony Mann and Jonathan Demme learned their craft in B movies. They are where actors such as John Wayne and Jack Nicholson first became established, and they have provided work for former A movie actors, such as Vincent Price and Karen Black. Some actors, such as Bela Lugosi, Eddie Constantine and Pam Grier, worked in B movies for most of their careers. The term B actor is sometimes used to refer to a performer who finds work primarily or exclusively in B pictures. History. Soon, director Frank Capra's association with Columbia would help vault the studio toward Hollywood's major leagues. That average reflected both . These cheaper films (not yet called B movies) allowed the studios to derive maximum value from facilities and contracted staff in between a studio's more important productions, while also breaking in new personnel. Their movies, with relatively short running times, targeted theaters that had to economize on rental and operating costs, particularly small- town and urban neighborhood venues, or . Even smaller production houses, known as Poverty Row studios, made films whose costs might run as low as $3,0. A new programming scheme developed that would soon become standard practice: a newsreel, a short and/or serial, and a cartoon, followed by a double feature. The second feature, which actually screened before the main event, cost the exhibitor less per minute than the equivalent running time in shorts. The majors' . The low- budget picture of the 1. B movie, of Hollywood's Golden Age. Soon, director Bryan Foy's association with Vitaphone would help vault the studio toward Hollywood's major leagues. All established B units to provide films for the expanding second- feature market. Block booking became standard practice: to get access to a studio's attractive A pictures, many theaters were obliged to rent the company's entire output for a season. Back in October, we posted about Paramount Pictures' making available more than a hundred movies free to watch on Youtube. They call the project The Paramount Vault.With the B films rented at a flat fee (rather than the box office percentage basis of A films), rates could be set virtually guaranteeing the profitability of every B movie. The parallel practice of blind bidding largely freed the majors from worrying about their Bs' quality—even when booking in less than seasonal blocks, exhibitors had to buy most pictures sight unseen. The five largest studios—Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation (2. Century Fox as of 1. Warner Bros., and RKO Radio Pictures (descendant of FBO)—also belonged to companies with sizable theater chains, further securing the bottom line. In no position to directly block book, they mostly sold regional distribution exclusivity to . Watch Free Movie Youtube - Find Watch Free Movie Youtube. Look Up Quick Results. Western movies full length. Westerns TV Western TV Shows Watch Free Online. Full Length series episodes, black and white and color complete television westerns. Watch classic western b-movies streaming online for free. These old westerns are the stuff that the late, late show and saturday matinees were made of. In contrast to the Big Five majors, Universal and Columbia had few or no theaters, though they did have top- rank film distribution exchanges. Double features were not the rule at these prestigious venues. As described by historian Edward Jay Epstein, . At the larger local venues controlled by the majors, movies might turn over on a weekly basis. At the thousands of smaller, independent theaters, programs often changed two or three times a week. To meet the constant demand for new B product, the low end of Poverty Row turned out a stream of micro- budget movies rarely much more than sixty minutes long; these were known as . Millions of Americans went to their local theaters as a matter of course: for an A picture, along with the trailers, or screen previews, that presaged its arrival, . The leading studios made not only clear- cut A and B films, but also movies classifiable as . As Taves describes, . In 1. 93. 5, B movie production at Warner Bros. The unit was headed by Bryan Foy, known as the . ![]() Wurtzel was similarly in charge of more than twenty movies a year during the late 1. In 1. 93. 5, Monogram, Mascot, and several smaller studios merged to establish Republic Pictures. The former heads of Monogram soon sold off their Republic shares and set up a new Monogram production house. Less sturdy Poverty Row concerns—with a penchant for grand sobriquets like Conquest, Empire, Imperial, and Peerless—continued to churn out dirt- cheap quickies. Calculating in the three hundred or so films made annually by the many Poverty Row firms, approximately 7. Hollywood movies from the decade, more than four thousand pictures, are classifiable as Bs. The Weiss outfit had the Range Rider series, the American Rough Rider series, and the Morton of the Mounted . Fox's many B series, for instance, included Charlie Chan mysteries, Ritz Brothers comedies, and musicals with child star Jane Withers. As with serials, however, many series were intended to attract young people—a theater that twin- billed part- time might run a . In the words of one industry report, afternoon moviegoers, . The double feature, never universal, was still the prevailing exhibition model: in 1. Restrictions were also placed on the majors' ability to enforce blind bidding. Genre pictures made at very low cost remained the backbone of Poverty Row, with even Republic's and Monogram's budgets rarely climbing over $2. Many smaller Poverty Row firms folded as the eight majors, with their proprietary distribution exchanges, now commanded about 9. U. S. Selznick brought his bloated- budget spectacle Duel in the Sun to market with heavy nationwide promotion and wide release. The distribution strategy was a major success, despite what was widely perceived as the movie's poor quality. Films shot on B- level budgets were occasionally marketed as A pictures or emerged as sleeper hits: one of 1. Hitler's Children, an RKO thriller made for a fraction over $2. It earned more than $3 million in rentals, industry language for a distributor's share of gross box office receipts. Programmers, with their flexible exhibition role, were ambiguous by definition. As late as 1. 94. Around the same time, Republic launched a similar effort under the . Warners' former . Raw Deal (1. 94. 8), writes scholar Robert Smith, is . Lewton produced such moody, mysterious films as Cat People (1. I Walked with a Zombie (1. The Body Snatcher (1. Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, and others who would become renowned only later in their careers or entirely in retrospect. Though many of the best- known film noirs were A- level productions, most 1. In the decades since, these cheap entertainments, generally dismissed at the time, have become some of the most treasured products of Hollywood's Golden Age. Three majors beside RKO contributed a total of five more. Along with these eighteen unambiguous B noirs, an additional dozen or so noir programmers came out of Hollywood. RKO's representative output included the Mexican Spitfire and Lum and Abner comedy series, thrillers featuring the Saint and the Falcon, Westerns starring Tim Holt, and Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller. Jean Hersholt played Dr. Christian in six films between 1. Christian (1. 94. Republic aspired to major- league respectability while making many cheap and modestly budgeted Westerns, but there was not much from the bigger studios that compared with Monogram ? The little studio had its own house auteur: with his own crew and relatively free rein, director Edgar G. Ulmer was known as . With audiences draining away to television and studios scaling back production schedules, the classic double feature vanished from many American theaters during the 1. The major studios promoted the benefits of recycling, offering former headlining movies as second features in the place of traditional B films. After barely inching forward in the 1. U. S. By 1. 95. 3, the old Monogram brand had disappeared, the company having adopted the identity of its higher- end subsidiary, Allied Artists. The following year, Allied released Hollywood's last B series Westerns. Non- series B Westerns continued to appear for a few more years, but Republic Pictures, long associated with cheap sagebrush sagas, was out of the filmmaking business by decade's end. In other genres, Universal kept its Ma and Pa Kettle series going through 1. Allied Artists stuck with the Bowery Boys until 1. The age of the hour- long feature film was past; 7.
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