B-Movies

B-Movies, low-budget films made from the 1930s to the 1950s to fill slots in double-feature cinema programmes. During the Great Depression, American exhibitors started to show two features in each programme (along with cartoons, short films, and a newsreel) to lure viewers back into the cinemas. These would usually be a “main feature”, with a large budget and major stars, and a “supporting feature”, or B-movie, shot more cheaply with lesser-known actors. Exhibitors in other countries followed suit.

Initially, the major studios made their own B-movies, often using them as training grounds for new talent (or stopping-places for talent on the way down). But low-budget studios, specializing in producing B-features, sprang up to meet the demand. Among these cut-price outfits, often known collectively as “Poverty Row“, were such studios as Republic, Monogram, and PRC.

B-movies covered all genres, but Westerns and gangster thrillers, with their often interchangeable plots, were the most common. Many directors who later became prominent, such as Don Siegel and Anthony Mann, began their careers on the Bs. Some film-makers, now raised to cult status, stuck to making B-movies throughout their working life, among them Joseph H. Lewis and Edgar Ulmer.

Many B-movies were ill-made rubbish, but some turned their minimal resources into a virtue, with fast, lean plots, stark lighting, and uncluttered sets, and have lasted better than the plusher main features they were meant to support. Quite a few of these have become cult films. Certain B-movie techniques were absorbed into the conventions of film noir. On a more kitsch, tongue-in-cheek level, their successors were the drive-in exploitation movies of maverick film-makers such as Roger Corman.