Q: What's the difference between a B-Movie, a "cult movie" and a "midnight movie"?
A: To define these by way of an example, think about The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which could be all three:

A B-movie can be a cult movie, and a cult movie can be a B-movie, but they don't have to be both. For example, Eraserhead and Harold and Maude are certainly cult movies - they are offbeat films with devoted followings. Meanwhile, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, an action film with less artistic aims but which received favorable notices and developed a following, could be said to be both. Whew.

Q: Is there a grade lower than B?
A: Skipping all the way down to the bottom of the alphabet, film critics often use "grade Z" to refer to bottom-of-the-barrel fare with no redeeming artistic or historic value. Like B-movies, grade Z flicks are made on a low budget, but often even lower, and unlike B's, they usually have very little talent involved. You may have seen some examples while watching the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000, where Joel and Mike and the 'bots were tortured by many of these (Manos The Hands of Fate, Sidehackers, Eegah!), or if you've ever caught one of the many masterpieces of schlock by Ed Wood. However, there are those who think of B's and Z's as the same thing - as any film without much merit, but which some enjoy watching in some sort of gleeful masochistic exercise.

Q: What about B Movies from other countries?
A: Yes, they exist. What's your point? Well, if your question is really, "Why are you ignoring them?", I'll add that for the purposes of clarity and to focus on the country that originated the term - and not for any xenophobic biases - in this primer, we're sticking to the US, the land of the cheese and the home of the schlock. (But if you want another country that's made its share of B's, try Japan. Ever see Destroy All Monsters? A classic B.) Okay, okay, there are a few British B's thrown in here, too, but those usually feature an American in the cast and were pretty widely seen in the States the first go 'round.

Q: When did B-movies become something different?
A: In postwar America, as our demographics were shifting to the younger end of the scale and people started moving from the 'urbs to the 'burbs and cars became the center of our worlds, the way we saw movies began to change, too. Indoor movie theaters, with their "A" and "B" double-features, newsreels, and cartoons, declined, while drive-ins began to take off. Teenagers were suddenly a target demographic, and teenagers needed a place to neck while their parents were home on the couch watching that new-fangled tele-vision. Cars were a perfect place for that, and drive-ins were a perfect place to park one's car and then watch a bit of the flick between make-out sessions. Horror movies were the perfect drive-in fare because guys wanted their girlfriends to get scared and then cuddle while hiding their eyes. Wait, what was your question again?

Oh yeah, so in the 1950s B's were no longer just a staple of the major studios; the decade saw the rise of both independent, cheapie studios and of B-movie genres targeted specifically at teens: low-budget, science-fiction, I Was a Teenage [insert creature here] horror movies; Hot Rod flicks; Rock n' Roll (even teen movies that weren't directly about music often featured a Rock n' Roll character; whether the actor playing them was talented or not was usually beside the point - see Arch Hall Jr. in the aforementioned Eegah! for a particularly painful example of this); and the gimmicky (3-D movies being the prime example).

This drive-in B-movie trend was at its peak in the 50s but carried all the way through the 1960s and 70s, too. As the drive-in trend died out like dinosaurs, and so, too, did many of the single screen movie houses, the official concept of B-movie faded away. But with the proliferation of home video players, the production of B (and Z) movies made directly for video has kept the genre alive, as have the DVD releases of many of the fine B-movie originals.

Q: Who are some of the best B-movie directors?
A: A few instantly come to mind: Roger Corman was certainly prolific, so much so that the quality of his films were sometimes diluted. Still, no discussion of B-movie directors can be complete without first mentioning his name; John Carpenter has exclusively worked within a genre and usually with a low budget, and his track record's also erratic - but includes a host of great B-movies (see below); Larry Cohen is another King B, who has worked in the biz for over thirty years (his more mainstream script Phone Booth was a 2003 release), mostly in the horror and action genres.

Others of note include: Ray Dennis Steckler, Edgar Ulmer (born in Hungary but worked in America), Ed Wood, Jack Arnold, Fred Olen Ray, Gary Graver, Jacques Tourneur (born in France but worked in America), Paul Bartel, Jim Wynorski, Russ Meyer (whose boob fixation still fascinates many today), Ted V. Mikels.

And then there are some studios that have specialized in this genre, the best of which is arguably Britain's Hammer Studios, which specialized in Technicolor horror films in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, from The Curse of Frankenstein to Fear in the Night. One could also argue that some of these were actually "A" films.

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