Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Exploitation Films Work

Episode Date: August 19, 2017

In today's SYSK Select episode, we learn about exploitation films. During the 1930s-80s, the work of directors operating in the shadows of Hollywood led to explorations in sexuality and violence that mainstream cinema wouldn't touch. Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the seedy underbelly of grindhouse flicks. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Chuck, and welcome to this week's edition of the Stuff You Should Know Saturday Curated Selects. This week I decided to go with how exploitation films work from April 14th, 2011.

And this one was an easy pick because I like all of our movie episodes. And I think Josh might have put this one together way back in the day when we recorded it. And it was just a really cool one. Not only do we get to talk a lot about just some of the great exploitation films, but just a little bit about the history

and how they came about. So I just remember really enjoying recording this one and got great feedback on it, so give it a shot. And if you've already listened to it, give it another shot is what I suggest. Enjoy. I'll see you next week. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know

from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast, and kind of a special edition, frankly. I am a little excited, Chuck. I'm a little giddy.

Shut your mouth. That's, yeah, OK, sure. This is our first ever movie-centric podcast, right? Movie-centric, for sure, yeah. We've mentioned movies, of course, all the time, but this one is like, yeah. This is all about movies. So this is by popular request to an extent.

People want to see like, they want to hear us talk about movies and just do a movie podcast. So we decided to focus on exploitation films. That's right. This is also probably the first podcast that we're going to say, if you are a teacher of children in eighth grade or younger, and you're using this as a teaching tool, you

might want to go to the one before this or the one after. We don't generally try to alienate audiences. We're not attempting to now. It's just a natural byproduct of the exploitation film. Can't talk about exploitation films without talking about some lurid subject matter. Yeah, you can't say exploitation without ploy. Yeah, they weren't exploiting just people being nice.

Right. Nice ployation. So Chuck, I went and saw a movie the other day called I Saw the Devil. It's a Korean movie. It's by the guy who did A Tale of Two Sisters, I think. You said more violent than Old Boy? Yeah.

Old Boy is one of the main characters. And I've seen Old Boy. I've seen, what's the other one he did? The Vampire movie? Yeah. Thirst? I didn't see that one. I think it's pretty good.

It was OK. This one, it's the most violent thing I've ever seen in my life. It's the most graphically violent movie I've ever seen in my life. The only reason I was able to complete it is because I'm like, this is a movie. Right. But I walked out of it.

It's so over the top. It's so gory. It's clearly an exploitation film. Yeah, alive and well. Yeah, but the problem is, really, if you start to look around, John Hughes films technically are exploitation films. The Breakfast Club is technically an exploitation film.

Yeah, there was a big wave of teen exploitation films. And we'll get to that, but yeah, you're right. So one of the broader definitions of exploitation films is basically anything that's really over the top that is beyond reality or that maybe focuses on people's fears, their sexuality, and basically just serves it up in a larger-than-life manner. That's one way of looking at exploitation films.

Yeah, you're basically, they're exploiting some of the seedier aspects of humanity most times. Sure, like murder or sex, like weird sex, that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Sex, weird sex. Teenagers rebelling against parents. Sure, like weird science. Have you ever been to a party where a couch shot out

of the chimney and into the pond? I mean, it's a pretty nice party. I don't think it's ever really happened, you know? So that's the vast definition of exploitation. But you and I are kind of qualified to teach a cinema class at maybe a low-level community college at this point after the amount of research we've done in this.

And we found that academically, there's a much more distinct definition for exploitation, and it's seemingly interchangeable term, grindhouse, right? Yeah, what's the, is there a definition definition? It's more like a time frame. OK. So from like 1919, when they really first started making movies, to I think 1960, 1959,

when the Hayes Act went away, that was exploitation. And then after that, it became grindhouse. OK, gotcha. It's my understanding. OK, so let's do this. All right, well, that's the old joke was that in the awesome documentary, American Grindhouse, which documents this era of filmmaking,

the old joke one of the guys says is that exploitation films began five minutes after the camera was invented, the motion picture camera. Because the guy was like, the director was like, too, his girlfriend, hey, would you mind taking your clothes off for the camera? Exactly. So it says something about the human condition

that you invent the film camera and the first moving images were often lured. Edison's film, it showed clips of decapitations and violence and guys fighting and naked women as film tests. So that says a lot about people like, all right, now we know how to capture things. So let's capture sex and violence first. Right.

And although that really kind of jibed with public taste, or at least public fascination, it didn't jibed with the prevailing standards, the agreed upon standards, right? Right. I think he said 1919, but the first exploitation film was 1913. Oh, OK.

Traffic Insoles or While New York Sleeps. Right. And that, like you said, exploitation often plays into fears. That played into the fear at the time of the white slave trade budget of $57,000 and gross $450,000, which, 1913 is a lot of dough. That is a ton of dough. And that was universal pictures.

And they went, hey, come on to something here. Right. After that was released, the Hayes Code. Will Hayes was the postmaster general and Presbyterian elder. And he was making $100,000 a year during the Depression. It's unbelievable. Right? He basically said, look, we need to apply some moral standards

to filmmaking. There's decapitation. There's naked breasts. There's white slavery. Like, we need to pure this up. Right. Well, actually, there wasn't nudity yet, like those early test films there were.

But nudity, we'll get to that later. OK. But yes, that's what Hayes tried to do. And like prohibition didn't exactly quell drinking, the Hayes Code actually sort of gave rise to the exploitation movement. Yeah. It's just like prohibition, just like marijuana prohibition,

just like, well, any drug prohibition. Any time you say, you can't do this, you can't have something that you want, somebody else is going to operate in a black market. A black market's going to spring up simple economics. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. And that's where exploitation cinema came up.

It's like, you can't get this from Hollywood, because Hollywood has to play by the rules. But my production studio is my Model T. And let's go make this movie. Give me some money. I'm going to film a child being born, close up, and put it in the movies. Yes.

And you can do that. You can make your movies all day long. But if they're never exhibited, then what good are you doing? Or not like they were trying to do some good. But you're not making any scratch. So the 40 thieves they talk about in the documentary were these filmmakers and exhibitors, basically, that traveled around like carnies,

setting up these sort of guerrilla film screenings. And some places sort of out of the way where they can't get caught. And that was for the first time, they were taking films outside of the mainstream, different. Sometimes they weren't even theaters. They would show them in like VFW halls. If you want to go see the birth of a baby films,

apparently they were popular. Yeah, that was a whole genre, early genre of exploitation. Well, and so was early on a lot of the film centered around how to wear a condom and sex hygiene films. Yeah, because there was no information about that out there. And so exploitation filmmakers, whether disingenuously or genuinely, were presenting their stuff like, this is a public service.

People need to know this and making movies about it. But also, and people were going on that excuse as well, like, well, I need to know about this. But at the same time, it's like, I want to see the craziest thing I'll ever see in my life. Exactly. On screen. Or they argued a lot of times that they were cautionary tales

if they were about drugs or violence. They would say, hey, this could happen to you. So you should educate yourself. But what they really want to do is get their movie scene. And make some money. Exactly. Paramount decision of 1948, this is pretty big. The Supreme Court voted that movie studios could no longer

own their own movie theaters. At the time, there would be like the Paramount Theater in Hollywood from the Paramount Film Production Company. They would show their movies. Supreme Court said no more. And all of a sudden, exploitation films became a little bit more legit because the Haze Code kind of fell apart.

And this is post-World War II. People had seen a lot of death recently. Well, a lot of death. And then grown up a little more. They thought ladies in suggestive roles were good for morale. And there was a little bit of loosening on the sex thing a little bit post-World War II.

Enough. That led to another sub-genre of exploitation film, the nudist colony film, which were pawned off as documentaries. Most of these were pawned off as documentaries, which legitimized them. But really, it was maybe it actually was filmed at a news camp. Probably not.

Mostly there were actors and actresses just engaged in archery naked or long walks naked. There could be no sex still. That was still taboo. But it was just naked, pretty people at a nudist colony, which is interesting because you're not a nudist. So come learn about them. Exactly.

Yeah. After that, through the history, we had things like the teen rebellion of the 50s with the rebel thought of cause and Blackboard Jungle and movies like that all of a sudden were targeted specifically at teens, which was new. And then drive-in theaters were built so teenagers could see movies where their parents weren't going to be.

Apparently, the adults didn't go to drive-ins a lot at first. Oh, yeah. It was all kids. I didn't know that. So they showed exploitation films, and then later the beach films, which were marketed as a, it's silly, it's Frankie Avalon, but they were decidedly weird and overtly sexual sometimes.

And then Chuck, if you'll notice, we're kind of progressing along in this chronological order. And each thing is kind of being built on the last. It was very much a step process. Right. And apparently, that was kind of the form that exploitation filmmaking followed until 1960. It was just centered around drugs, violence, sex.

And in a lot of ways, they were presented as documentaries. They might not have a plot. Right. And basically, one person would make some film, and it would just break all the rules, and then a bunch of other people would make similar films. Right. And that was the way it went.

And then in the 1960s, things just started to go every which way, all sorts of directions. Right? So nudity films were a longstanding thread of exploitation films. And then they probably reached their pinnacle with Russ Myers, right? King of the Nudies is what he's called.

Yeah, he was the first guy to, he's significant, because he was the first director to have films featuring nudity that actually were dramatic narratives and had plots and characters, and they weren't classified as documentaries anymore. And then the roughies came along, and they offered up violence for the, not first time, but big time for the first time.

Right. And that has a lot to do with the fact that it was the 60s, and Kennedy was shot, and the United States was just becoming increasingly violent. America lost its innocence. Yeah. And the other thing that really happened in the 1960s was the Hays Code officially went away,

was replaced by the MPAA, and the, I guess, the longstanding prohibition on Hollywood producing exploitation films, it was lessened, decreased. And so studios were like, oh, we can make money over here too. Well, let's start making exploitation films. Right. And this is where Grindhouse was born. So my cinema professor definition of Grindhouse

is big-budget, studio-backed exploitation films. OK. OK? Yeah. That's mine. I like it. That's going to be a quiz question later. Yeah, I'll go with that.

Actually, back up one second, we got to mention Herschel Gordon-Lewis. He was a director who had a co-director. I can't remember the other guy's name, do you? Anyway, he was a co-director, and he was one of these exploitation guys that was getting frustrated because there weren't a lot of places to show your movie, so it

was a pretty crowded marketplace. Yeah. So he said, what's the one taboo that people will pay to see that you're allowed to show in theaters but that studios won't make? And it was gore. Oh, yeah. He was the first guy to start showing really disgusting,

bloody scenes in his movie. Blood Feast? Blood Feast, which actually was three years after Psycho. And Psycho also did a lot for the mainstream ushering in of a little bit of gore in that. But there was a shot of blood following Janet Lee's murder, which I imagine is pretty graphic for Hollywood. And that's what you think of.

You're like, oh, those stupid 60s. But that's, you know, they were so naive. That was controversial. Not really, though. If you step just slightly outside of Hollywood, you ran into things like Blood Feast or, you know. Last house on the left. Yes, well, that's 1972, I think.

Yeah, West Craven. So that was important because all of a sudden, A, drugs started, well, three things. Political themes started popping up. Sexual freedom, the youth generation. Drugs started popping up in movies for the first time. Drug use. Well, not for the first time.

We'll talk about reformatism. But teenagers were depicted as victims of violence for the first time. Last house on the left, I believe, is kind of regarded as the first teen slasher film. Yeah. West Craven. It was almost a snuff film.

It was almost regarded like that. It's pretty hardcore. But yeah, it definitely, Blood Feast definitely allowed Last House on the Left to come around. But it also probably more directly formed the foundation for slasher exploitation like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. Absolutely.

My Bloody Valentine's, another big one. The Crazees. The Crazees. The Crazees. Oh, yeah, that was an original, right? There's a remake now, I think. Yeah. Hey.

Yeah. Remakes. Remakes. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

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So that brings us, we're in the seventies, um, politically charged movies, uh, brought race into the, to the mix. And all of a sudden we had a black exploitation or black exploitation, uh, movement starting. Yeah. Exploiting the civil rights movement, basically. Yeah. But the cool thing about, uh, black exploitation films is for the first time you had African Americans as heroes.

Yeah. And not heroes in a typical sense, not even anti-heroes, but heroes that were like, they didn't ride into town on, on a white horse or wearing a white hat. Right. They very, um, clearly wore black hats if need be, like they would engage in crime. They would murder people if need be. They were, um, they, they were basically like the, um, face of black America coming out of the civil rights era, like we're ticked off.

Yeah. You know? And we're going to stick it to the white man. Stick it to the man. And we're going to do it in these movies. Chuck, I know the movie you're about to, um, to mention, let's, this is it. You keep the faith in me, I am my man, you're my favorite man, can you take it baby? So yes, that was, uh, a landmark film for a lot of reasons, one because it grossed four

million bucks and it made the major studio say, Hey, you know what, the black hero is marketable. Yeah. Well, you haven't said the title yet. Oh, I didn't. No. Okay. You got to say it right too.

Melvin Van Peebles film, uh, sweet, sweet backs, badass song. Nice. Yeah. That was well done. That was 1971. Melvin Van Peebles, whose last name may, uh, sound familiar. He's the father of Mario Van Peebles for you younger cats listening to this one. Um, cats are age actually younger cats because he's kind of like, okay.

So cats are aged. Watched off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, so Melvin Van Peebles made this movie. He produced it. He, he raised the money for it.

He wrote it. He directed it. He starred in it. And it was the beginning of the black exploitation subgenre, which is one of the most important genres of, uh, any American cinema. Absolutely. Ever. Absolutely.

And so considering how important that subgenre is this quote from Time Magazine's film critic Richard Corliss, um, should really hit home sweet, sweet back, uh, is quote, without question or competition, the most influential movie by a black filmmaker. So this is a really big deal, right? Yeah. And it was, it was just quickly on the plot. It was about a, uh, a black man who was a jiggalo who has a male prostitute for you younger cats.

And he had a deal worked out with the cops where he was, he said, you know, you can arrest me as much as you want, release me right afterward, fill your quota. It's all good. And then one day while the arrest is going down, they, um, the cops attack a black panther and a sweet, sweet back kills one of the cops. And then just, uh, he just goes on a rampage against the white man after that. Yep. So you've got, um, prostitution, um, tons and tons of nudity and sex, um, loss of violence,

um, and, uh, other crimes all wrapped up into a black power theme. That's right. Uh, and then, uh, to top it all off, you have what is arguably a child sex scene starring Mario van people's Melvin van people's son at I think age six. Yeah. He's a kid. And having sex, uh, as sweet, sweet back, it's his first sexual encounter with an older person.

Right. Um, and in the cold podcast, if he became a cult leader, he would have taken a younger bride. Remember? I know that's right. So, uh, if you're interested in, in that movie and you can't get enough of sweet, sweet back's bad ass song, um, you could also check out, um, bad ass exclamation point, which is Mario van people's bio pic about his father making that movie.

That's right. And I have not seen that, but, uh, wanted to at the time and it just sort of slipped through the cracks. There's always Netflix, baby. That's right. Uh, and, uh, what happened with, um, sweet, sweet back was that, like I said, that told the studios, Hey, that we can market this. And so they got a little more mainstream with movies like superfly, which were a little

safer shaft. Um, movies that wide audiences would enjoy as well. Yeah. The ones that didn't scare the man exactly like shaft's a good guy. He doesn't take any guff from the man, but the people he's not taking guff from are the cops who he's really on the same side as that's right. So Chuck, um, black exploitation, obviously huge. It affected everything from, um, you know, menace to society, to black illa.

All of that came from sweet, sweet back and, um, we mentioned the guy who directed this next movie, Russ Myers. This is probably a seminal work. Let's listen to this clip from the trailer. If you want what ladies and gentlemen, go, go for a wild, wild ride with the what to see cats. But beware the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claw for your own safety, see faster pussy cats, kill, kill, wild women, wild wheels, race the fastest pussy cats and they'll beat

you to death, so far, woman, fountain, wild and frozen. You're wasting yourself on this kid, then hanging it up for nothing, for nothing, you've got nothing to do with the money, she has the money. Jack and Jill, they make the mafia look like brownies. They make the mafia look like brownies. That's right. That says quite a bit about them. So, this, that was faster pussy cat, kill, kill, um, in 1965, Russ Myers, um, basically,

uh, women exploitation film, nudie film, so remember, Russ Myers is king of the nudies. He made 26 movies, but this is probably, at the very least, his best known, uh, if not like his masterpiece. Yeah, and he hatched a slew of, uh, I mean, not that he wasn't legit, he was, but what mainstream people would call legit filmmakers were, came up through the Russ Meyer, uh, film camp, basically. Yeah. So, it's pretty cool.

Yeah, um, and, uh, Russ Meyer also, little known fact, uh, another movie that's mentioned in this article, there's an article on the site, by the way, called 10 Noteworthy Exploitation Films that this is based on. Yeah. Written by you? Yeah. Um, which I strongly recommend going to read because it has a lot of extra stuff we're not going to cover in this one.

Yeah. Or at least extra movies. But, um, Russ Meyer directed a movie called Beyond the Valley of the Dolls 2, which was the bastard son of the legitimate film, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, is a jiggle fest written by none other than Roger Ebert. That's right. Yeah. The only movie Roger Ebert ever wrote.

Yeah. And he had a, um, yeah, it was a very brief career, but that's an illustrious one, really. Uh, yeah. So, if you're going to talk about the plot of Faster Pussycat, kill, kill, um, and I say that because there's three exclamation points, Faster Pussycat, and a comma. Exclamation point, kill. Oh, no. Is it three exclamation points?

Yeah. Okay. I thought it was a comma, then two. All right. Either way, that's a lot of punctuation for a film title. Right. And, uh, it was about three bisexual go-go dancers. They go on a crime spree out in the desert.

And, uh, what do they do? They end up killing a man, I don't know, they kill the man in a couple, keep them warm. And keep the girl, they basically empower her by murdering her boyfriend and she ends up on the crime spree with them. And they basically end up, uh, go into an isolated house with a wheelchair-bound old man and his sons. Oh, who's a lech? They're all leches.

Well, yeah. They want these women. Yeah, but they don't know that these women are tough. No. Tough ladies. And the men and his son, the man and his sons apparently, um, are allegedly have a large amount of cash stashed in this house, so it's kind of like a, a standoff of, of, um, gall to see who will come out on top, you know.

Well, and you know who comes out on top. Yeah. Uh, and this film was, uh, noteworthy, uh, for one big reason was that, uh, there was a lot of dualism toward gender. So on one hand, he's exploiting these women and apparently he got women in their first trimester of pregnancy, so they were more voluptuous. Yeah, not in this film, but in his other films, he would hire, um, I can't remember the lady's name, but the star of Fester Pussycat Kill Kill was in other Russ Meyers films.

And, um, he made sure that she was like well into her third first trimester to, to enhance her, um, natural bustiness. That's right. Yeah. Her bosom, if you will. Uh, but the script, like I said, it was dualism because while he did that, it also empowered women because the women in his films bowed to no man. No.

They were the champs. They were the, they were heroines really for the first time. They were, they were objectified very clearly, but at the same time, if you follow the script and really look at their characters, then yeah, they're, they're powerful women. And this, uh, kind of kicked off a big slew of women exploitation films, sex exploitation films, the women in prison movies. Yes. Which played sisters.

Very big at the time, uh, women were lead actors for the first time. They were aggressors for the first time, uh, still nude often while they were doing this stuff. Spawn the television show, The Facts of Life. But the interesting thing is they found that these movies appealed to men and women because men would go see it for obvious reasons. Women would go see it because it was empowering and, uh, they didn't mind, you know, looking at the naked ladies because women are much more grown up than men are.

But Josh, the seventies also got a little schlocky, which in a sense was true to the exploitation model. Yeah. They like, they really went over the top, no more political statements, no more advancing of, uh, women's gender or, or African Americans, it just got really schlocky and outrageous at that point. Well, what happened, starting in the sixties, it really took hold in the seventies and then from that point on was exploitation cinema early on showing a live birth, nudist camps.

These were all geared toward adults. In the sixties and then later on big time in the seventies, the audience became almost exclusively teenagers. Like those drive-in teenagers or, um, well, teenagers anywhere, who cares? But they, the, the audience was teenagers and the cast started to become teenagers. So it had a little more of a bent on what teenagers were having to deal with, like bullying, like the, the, the kid in, in this next clip, right? Which is, I have to say one of my favorite movies from way, way back.

Here we go with Toxic Avenger. Yeah. Little Melvin, he's a 90 pound weakling. Everyone hated Melvin. Yeah. I'm going to take this mop and shove it down your throat. They teased him. I want to do it with you.

Okay. They taunted him. They tormented him until he had a horrifying accident and fell into a vat of nuclear waste. So Josh, the Toxic Avenger movie was unique in that its film production company, Troma, is very popular in their own right. Have you ever seen Surf Nantes Must Die? I haven't. But I know about Troma.

And they are master self promoters and marketeers. They were one of the first production companies to have a website, like a really comprehensive website. You should go on their website. I like that. Their whole catalog. It's really just well done. It's schlocky, but it's well done.

Right. And Toxic Avenger follows the story of a 98 pound weakling who was picked on, released the same year as Ghostbusters. Do you notice that? 1984. Right? Yeah. So it was, it occurred at zero year.

Is it year zero? Yeah. We'll just put the null set to represent that. And this kid gets pushed out of a window into a vat of Toxic sludge. Which, that's beyond bullying, really. Yeah. I mean, this is, basically it's a more twisted version of Modern Problems, the Chevy Chase film from a couple of years earlier.

Okay. I haven't seen that one. Oh, you never saw Modern Problems? No. It's very silly. But he got Toxic sludge dumped on him and had special powers. Some years earlier or prior or after. When was the movie?

Yeah. It was two years before Toxic Avenger. But Toxic Avenger took it into a gore, special effects way that Modern Problems never did. So the janitor, Melvin, I believe his name is, becomes Toxified, becomes Toxy, the Toxic Avenger who beats the tar out of people at the health club where he was abused and mutated. And has tons of sex as the Toxic Avenger because his newfound manhood is just irresistible to women. And one of the things that's noteworthy about the Toxic Avenger is that they actually tried

to make decent effects. Yeah. It wasn't just, it wasn't horrible, I guess you could say. Well, for the time, you know, it wasn't bad. No. They remain bad. And they probably were kind of bad even back then. But for Grindhouse films.

Yeah, they were great. And it was also noteworthy because it came out of Troma Productions or Troma Studios. And it led to a whole line of Toxic Avenger movies and schlock in general, which is basically like some crazy horrible thing has happened, but we're not going to dwell too much on that. Let's see where the action takes us. Yeah, exactly. So like Bad Taste, the Peter Jackson's first film is a great example of schlock that came out of Toxic Avenger.

And he had the film that followed Peter Jackson Dead Alive, which was at one point supposedly the goriest film ever made. Really? Although it sounds like your new Korean movie has surpassed that. Yeah. I think it probably has. I haven't seen Dead Alive. I've seen Bad Taste.

And Bad Taste was horribly gory, but I think this has a beat. Yeah, but I bet you if anything, I mean, I haven't seen the one you're talking about, but is it more realistic, Gor? Yeah, with Bad Taste, it's like these are aliens that are having their heads blown off. So it definitely takes you at least a degree away from caring. This is happening to human beings, and I saw the devil, so it definitely is driven home a little more. Well, and the violence, even the gore back then, it was so over the top, right out of

Fangora Magazine, it's like, you know... Dude, Fangoria is still around. Is it? Yeah, I figured it was. I'm glad it is. We follow it on our Twitter feed. Oh, we do? Yeah.

Yeah, and it will explode in scanners, and, you know, it's not disturbing because it's so clearly over the top, but these new movies are much more disturbing if you ask me. I agree wholeheartedly because they're more realistic. So carrying on with Chuck's and my Siskel and Eber act, this is the second to last movie in our little list today, and this one's from way back from the 30s, so let's talk about Reef for Madness. These high school boys and girls are having a hop at the local soda fountain. Innocently they dance.

Innocent of a new and deadly menace lurking behind closed doors, marijuana, the burning weed with its roots in hell, or watch case. If you want a good smoke, try one of these. You will meet Bill, who wants to pride in his strong will as he takes the first step toward enslavement. Hey! Hey! Hey!

Hey! On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Life in relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. So that was the Excellent Reef for Madness, which was an exploitation, a drug exploitation film.

Yeah. And very much a cautionary tale. It even shaped the drug culture and how people looked at drugs is, you know, marijuana at the time is this really evil thing that can make you crazy and kill people. Yeah, and actually in very much the vein of early exploitation films, it was produced and distributed as a public service. Like the alternate title for it was Tell Your Children. And the whole thing set in a PTA meeting where this guy is relating the story.

And it's a story about lost lives, about murder, about guilt and paranoia. And all of it is fed and based on rampant drug use, which is really just a lot of pot smoking, which can turn you into a fiend. And it's apparently the director, his name is Dwayne Esper. He did other exploitation films from the 30s like Sex Madness, Psychotic Connections. And he made a name for himself, basically taking these things that may have originally been written as a public service and making them so outlandish that he exploited the people who were making these movies and created this legacy of just insanely over the top exploitation

films from the 30s. Well, and ironically, Reef for Madness years later would become not so much an anti-drug propaganda film, how should I say this, but a film that college students would sit around and watch while partaking and laughing at this whole thing. And a cult film. Yeah, because it puts drugs so far out there that if you, despite all the warnings, take drugs anyway, and you realize that you don't turn into a fiend and murder somebody, Reef for Madness basically dares you to go further.

So it's kind of in, it's the opposite, it has the opposite effect of what I think its original intent was before Dwayne Esper got its hands on it. And as a side note, I had trouble deciding between Reef for Madness and another 1930s film by a guy named Todd Browning called Freaks. Oh yeah, well that was huge because it was the first big exploitation film pre-Haze Code and last. Yeah, and it was an MGM film. And it's widely considered a masterpiece.

Yeah, I mean it looks great, it was well done. It's a huge, it's a revenge movie which is a very common theme in exploitation films, especially violent ones, but it featured Browning dared to have real freaks, I guess if you'll do. Yeah, circus side show freaks. Yeah, star in this and they basically exact their revenge on people who mistreated them. And I have not seen it. Oh really?

Yeah, yeah. I want to, I hear it's just awesome, I can't wait. It ended his career though, unfortunately, Browning's, and he was a popular filmmaker at the time. Well, hats off to him for staying true to his art, Chuck just took his hat off. On the old cap. All right Chuck, here's the last one that we've got a clip for which I think everybody will notice or recognize without even a word.

There's not even a word in this clip and you will understand what's going on, so here we go. So Josh, those are the unmistakable sounds of Fist of Fury of Mr, one Mr. Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, kicking bottom. This first movie. Yeah, which was originally titled, well it's still title I think in Asia, the big boss. And in America it is, it's titled Fist of Fury. Yeah, it was on the other night on cable, I saw part of it.

Oh yeah? Yeah, I didn't realize it was his first one though, I would have tuned in. Yeah, and it was first of what, five major films. Right. So basically it's the story of a martial arts student who's investigating the murder of his teacher and it began the martial arts exploitation subgenre. Which later would become just martial arts films, right, or was it still considered exploitation? It's all the same.

Okay. They're one and the same. Anything that even remotely resembles a Bruce Lee movie, specifically the big boss or any of them is martial arts exploitation technically. Because again, we arrive at that one definition, it's over the top. Like Bruce Lee's taking on scores of anonymous thugs. For two hours. One after the other, for two hours, just beating the tar out of all these people.

Without tiring really. Everybody's kind of waiting their turn politely in a circle around him and he has to beat everybody and then he works his way up and it's over the top. So it is exploitation but it led to other films like Samurai Exploitation. Remember American Ninja, remember the whole Ninja film thing that came out in the mid-80s? That's from Bruce Lee's doing. Well yeah, and you go to the time when I was first going to New York many years ago, you need to go to Times Square and this is still when Times Square was kind of gross.

And there would be just the martial arts movie store where it was all that stuff, made like thousands of movies about ninjas and samurais and martial artists and very big. I was inspired by American Ninja to become a ninja, remember I entered a ninja training with Tommy Roper who had like more throwing stars than any kid I've ever met. What did you have like one throwing star? I borrowed his. Okay. I was not allowed to have throwing stars on my own.

Oh I wasn't either, Baptist, no, that was very violent. No nunchucks. I think that even, that transcends like religious background, it's like if you're a good parent you shouldn't let your kid have throwing stars. That's a good point. And as you pointed out in the article, this actually led to another subgenre which was Bruce Lee lookalike movies. Yeah, so he made five movies and then died at age 32 in 1973.

So Big Boss released in 1971, he dies two years later. Everybody's like, no. So let's find some guys that look like him, which is really kind of stereotypical and racist for the West. What's the name of Bruce Lee, L.I. or L.E.E. or L.E. or just L.E. Well Bruce L.I. or Bruce L.E., I don't think there was ever like Bruce L.E.I.G.H. I don't think it ever got that far. But I mean they released dozens of Bruce Lee and I just made air quote films.

So Bruce Lee created the martial arts exploitation genre and subgenre and he inadvertently created the Bruce Lee exploitation subgenre of the martial arts exploitation subgenre. By dying young. Yeah. And being very popular. Yeah. And which one was the one he had Karina Toljibar in? Was that Enter the Dragon?

Enter the Dragon. Yeah. Yeah. If you've never seen a like seven foot plus guy do martial arts, you should check that out. And if you can't get enough Bruce Lee and you have a good sense of humor, check out Kentucky Fried Movie. Yeah.

Made by one Jerry Zucker who we met in Los Angeles recently. And who used an expletive to me. He did. It was one of the high points of my life. It is. But yeah, Kentucky Fried Movie awesome. Actually when we met Jerry Zucker, we told him that our little speech we were given that night was one of the highlights of our career thus far.

And he says, well, it doesn't say much about your career, does it? Like the first thing that you did is something funny. And we just like kind of fawned over him after that. We should mention briefly, and it's in the article, but just as a teaser, the late seventies we got Nazi exploitation movies. Nazi exploitation. As a sub-genre. Yeah.

And one of the major players there movie-wise was Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS. Yeah, which led to Ilsa Siberian Tigris and Ilsa Heron Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. Really? There's a whole sex violence franchise, dominatrix franchise that was based out of the Nazi exploitation film. You know, one could argue that QT, Mr. Tarantino has made nothing but exploitation films since Pulp Fiction, because the Kill Bills were definitely martial arts exploitation. Definitely.

The Jackie Brown was a riff on Blacksploitation, Death Proof, obviously, that was what they were trying to do there. Well, Death Proof is Carsploitation, which follows in the tradition of Vanishing Point, which was released the same year as basically its rival to the founder, the founding movie of Carsploitation, Tulane Blacktop. Right. Great movie. Yeah.

If you want to start an argument with an exploitation film, tell them Vanishing Point was the beginning of Carsploitation. They'll get mad at you. And then finally, Tarantino with the Inglourious Basterds, which was clearly a riff on the Nazi exploitation films. Yeah. Beaton, Nazis, the Death of the Baseball Bat, that's about as over the top and lurid as it gets.

It's awesome. Yeah. And then Machete, I hated it, but Robert Rodriguez, it's terrible. And of course, he was the other half of the, Rodriguez was the other half with his Planet Terror of the Grindhouse double feature. Yeah. Okay. And Machete was born from one of the little fake trailers they made in that movie.

Oh, is that right? Yeah. It was one of the fake movie previews. It is even as far as like a purposefully B movie. Not good. No. Well, Death Proof was okay, but I didn't like Planet Terror that much. Yeah.

And then Chuck, well, first of all, before we get to today, we also have to give a shoutout to Pornos. Pornos came out of the exploitation film genre. And it arguably had a lot to do with killing the X or pushing it into the mainstream because once you had the movie Deep Throat and all of a sudden a pornography was on the screen, it's like, you can't do an exploitation film about it anymore. If there's the real deal going on, it loses all its power. And then a little movie called Jaws came along and all of a sudden a quote unquote B movie

style movie made gobs and gobs of money. And that put a little bit of mainstream respectability on the map all of a sudden. And so one might argue, Josh, that movies like Jaws and Pornography kind of shoved exploitation films even though they still exist, they're sort of mainstream movies now. Yeah. Well, yeah. I guess another word for Grindhouse these days is Blockbuster. Jaws was the first Blockbuster movie, Summer Blockbuster.

And now you have to have Summer Blockbusters and they're always over the top and exploitive of viewers' tastes. And not only Tarantino, there's other filmmakers out that are trying to capture that seventies vibe with overt exploitation films again. Shot that way, shot on 35 or I'm sorry, 16 millimeter film, stuff like that. Yeah. So, Chuck, I say our message to everybody is, number one, go onto the site, read ten noteworthy exploitation films.

Number two, if that interests you, like even the ten noteworthy exploitation films they chose don't cover even I think a third of the exploitation subgenres. So there'll probably be another article forthcoming at some point if there is, we'll let you know. And then go watch some exploitation movies and enjoy them. Yeah. Watch the documentary American Grindhouse too if you're into that. Yeah. That's a great one.

It's free on Hulu actually. That's right. Hulu.com has American Grindhouse for free. It is not safe for work. In no way, shape or form. I was watching it at work and I was like, whoa, okay. That really? Yeah.

If you are watching it at work, tab browsing is what you want to be doing. Right. And keep your finger over the mouse and keep the cursor over the other tab and stay sharp. Or in our case, you can just say, it's research, but you can't do that if you're an accountant at J.P. Morgan. You're just a sicko. A weirdo.

A weird guy in accounting. So look up 10 noteworthy exploitation films. You can type that into the handysearchbarhowstuffworks.com. And now, at long last, it's time for Listener Mail. Josh, I'm going to call this, it's a small world after all. Dear guys, I'm a long time fan from Minnesota. And enjoy spreading stuff you should know, goodness wherever I go. My coworkers at a local coffee shop know me for the trivia and information I abound in.

But after giving me what that he, he says he abounds and I guess he's proficient in. Okay. Did he misuse that? Yeah. I don't know. It sounds hilarious. It does. After giving credit where credit is due, which means us, several of them decided to subscribe

to your podcast. Listening to the podcast has also given me an advantage at work for thinking of the coffee shops daily trivia question, which saves people 10 cents on their drink. Nice. That is awesome. After re-listening to how Legos work, I set the trivia question for which company produces the most tires on a yearly basis? A. Bridgestone.

B. Goodyear. C. Legobricks. You know the answer, Josh? Most people were surprised and pleased to find out it was Legobricks, reminding them about the little play sets that their kids enjoy. This is where it gets weird. One of the customers read the trivia question, looked at me and said, it's a puncy scheme. Nice.

That's awesome. It's funny and accent, he could muster. Everyone else gave him an odd look. I started laughing. He apologized and then said he just heard it on a podcast. He had just listened to Legos followed by Poncy Schemes. Long story short, we were both pleased to find out that we were both fans. We are now on a first name basis, eager to discuss the most recent episodes.

So these dudes in Minneapolis, Daniel. That's awesome. Thanks, Daniel. And his friend now, his new friend. This is his unnamed friend. Yeah, he didn't name him. You wouldn't know him. He met him at camp.

He met him at camp. Yeah. Thanks, Daniel. That's really awesome. Wow. That's really cool. Let us know if you tweet those daily facts for your coffee house because we will start following you.

Indeed. That'd be very cool. If you want to follow us, we have our own Twitter feed. Seriously. It's called SYSK Podcast. One word. 10,000 strong. Plus.

Yeah. We're on, no, we're up to like 11 and change. That's plus 10. That's two. We're also on Facebook. Facebook.com. You should know. Yep.

We have a Kiva team. Right? We're trying to get to half a million dollars. That's right. That's KIVA.org. Team. You should know. And then you can always send us a good old fashioned email.

We want to know what your favorite exploitation film of all time is. You can send that in an email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. From the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.