hotchpotch/wikipedia-multilingual-ir-pairs huggingface dataset:
B級片 发展历史
One of the most influential films of the era, on Bs and beyond, was Paramount's Psycho. Its $8.5 million in earnings against a production cost of $800,000 made it the most profitable movie of 1960.Its mainstream distribution without the Production Code seal of approval helped weaken U.S. film censorship. And, as William Paul notes, this move into the horror genre by respected director Alfred Hitchcock was made, "significantly, with the lowest-budgeted film of his American career and the least glamorous stars. [Its] greatest initial impact ... was on schlock horror movies (notably those from second-tier director William Castle), each of which tried to bill itself as scarier than Psycho."Castle's first film in the Psycho vein was Homicidal (1961), an early step in the development of the slasher subgenre that took off in the late 1970s.Blood Feast (1963), a movie about human dismemberment and culinary preparation made for approximately $24,000 by experienced nudie-maker Herschell Gordon Lewis, established a new, more immediately successful subgenre, the gore or splatter film. Lewis's business partner David F. Friedman drummed up publicity by distributing vomit bags to theatergoers—the sort of gimmick Castle had mastered—and arranging for an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida—the sort of problem exploitation films had long run up against, except Friedman had planned it.This new breed of gross-out movie typified the emerging sense of "exploitation"—the progressive adoption of traditional exploitation and nudie elements into horror, into other classic B genres, and into the low-budget film industry as a whole. Imports of Hammer Film's increasingly explicit horror movies and Italian gialli, highly stylized pictures mixing sexploitation and ultraviolence, fueled this trend.
B級片 发展历史
The Production Code was officially scrapped in 1968, to be replaced by the first version of the modern rating system.That year, two horror films came out that heralded directions American cinema would take in the next decade, with major consequences for the B movie. One was a high-budget Paramount production, directed by the celebrated Roman Polanski. Produced by B horror veteran William Castle, Rosemary's Baby was the first upscale Hollywood picture in the genre in three decades.It was a critical success and the year's seventh-biggest hit.The other was George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, produced on weekends in and around Pittsburgh for $114,000. Building on the achievement of B genre predecessors like Invasion of the Body Snatchers in its subtextual exploration of social and political issues, it doubled as a highly effective thriller and an incisive allegory for both the Vietnam War and domestic racial conflicts. Its greatest influence, though, derived from its clever subversion of genre clichés and the connection made between its exploitation-style imagery, low-cost, truly independent means of production, and high profitability.With the Code gone and the X rating established, major studio A films like Midnight Cowboy could now show "adult" imagery, while the market for increasingly hardcore pornography exploded. In this transformed commercial context, work like Russ Meyer's gained a new legitimacy. In 1969, for the first time a Meyer film, Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!, was reviewed in The New York Times.Soon, Corman was creating nudity-filled sexploitation pictures such as Private Duty Nurses (1971) and Women in Cages (1971).
B級片 发展历史
In May 1969, the most important exploitation movie of the era premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.Much of Easy Rider's significance owes to the fact that it was produced for a respectable, if still modest, budget and released by a major studio. The project was first taken by one of its cocreators, Peter Fonda, to American International. Fonda had become AIP's top star in the Corman-directed The Wild Angels (1966), a biker movie, and The Trip, as in taking LSD. The idea Fonda pitched combined those two proven themes. AIP was intrigued but balked at giving his collaborator, Dennis Hopper, also a studio alumnus, free directorial rein. Eventually they arranged a financing and distribution deal with Columbia, as two more graduates of the Corman/AIP exploitation mill joined the project: Jack Nicholson and cinematographer László Kovács.The film (which incorporated another favorite exploitation theme, the redneck menace, as well as a fair amount of nudity) was brought in at a cost of $501,000. It earned $19.1 million in rentals.In the words of historians Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, Easy Rider became "the seminal film that provided the bridge between all the repressed tendencies represented by schlock/kitsch/hack since the dawn of Hollywood and the mainstream cinema of the seventies."
B級片 发展历史
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new generation of low-budget film companies emerged that drew from all the different lines of exploitation as well as the sci-fi and teen themes that had been a mainstay since the 1950s. Operations such as Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Cannon Films, and New Line Cinema brought exploitation films to mainstream theaters around the country. The major studios' top product was continuing to inflate in running time—in 1970, the ten biggest earners averaged 140.1 minutes.The Bs were keeping pace. In 1955, Corman had a producorial hand in five movies averaging 74.8 minutes. He played a similar part in five films originally released in 1970, two for AIP and three for his own New World: the average length was 89.8 minutes.These films could turn a tidy profit. The first New World release, the biker movie Angels Die Hard, cost $117,000 to produce and took in more than $2 million at the box office.
B級片 发展历史
The biggest studio in the low-budget field remained a leader in exploitation's growth. In 1973, American International gave a shot to young director Brian De Palma. Reviewing Sisters, Pauline Kael observed that its "limp technique doesn't seem to matter to the people who want their gratuitous gore. ... [H]e can't get two people talking in order to make a simple expository point without its sounding like the drabbest Republic picture of 1938."Many examples of the blaxploitation genre, featuring stereotype-filled stories about African Americans and revolving around drugs, violent crime, and prostitution, were the product of AIP. One of blaxploitation's biggest stars was Pam Grier, who began her film career with a bit part in Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Several New World pictures followed, including The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972), both directed by Jack Hill. Hill also directed Grier's best-known performances, in two AIP blaxploitation films: Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974).
B級片 发展历史
Blaxploitation was the first exploitation genre in which the major studios were central. Indeed, the United Artists release Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), directed by Ossie Davis, is seen as the first significant film of the type.But the movie that truly ignited the blaxploitation phenomenon was completely independent: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) is also perhaps the most outrageous example of the form: wildly experimental, borderline pornographic, and essentially a manifesto for an African American revolution.Melvin Van Peebles wrote, co-produced, directed, starred in, edited, and composed the music for the film, which was completed with a loan from Bill Cosby.Its distributor was small Cinemation Industries, then best known for releasing dubbed versions of the Italian Mondo Cane "shockumentaries" and the Swedish skin flick Fanny Hill, as well as for its one in-house production, The Man from O.R.G.Y. (1970).These sorts of films played in the "grindhouses" of the day—many of them not outright porno theaters, but rather venues for all manner of exploitation cinema. The days of six quickies for a nickel were gone, but a continuity of spirit was evident.
B級片 发展历史
In 1970, a low-budget crime drama shot in 16 mm by first-time American director Barbara Loden won the international critics' prize at the Venice Film Festival.Wanda is both a seminal event in the independent film movement and a classic B picture. The crime-based plot and often seedy settings would have suited a straightforward exploitation film or an old-school B noir. The $115,000 production,for which Loden spent six years raising money, was praised by Vincent Canby for "the absolute accuracy of its effects, the decency of its point of view and ... purity of technique".Like Romero and Van Peebles, other filmmakers of the era made pictures that combined the gut-level entertainment of exploitation with biting social commentary. The first three features directed by Larry Cohen, Bone (1972), Black Caesar (1973), and Hell Up in Harlem (1973), were all nominally blaxploitation movies, but Cohen used them as vehicles for a satirical examination of race relations and the wages of dog-eat-dog capitalism.The gory horror film Deathdream (1974), directed by Bob Clark, is also an agonized protest of the war in Vietnam.Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg made serious-minded low-budget horror films whose implications are not so much ideological as psychological and existential: Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), The Brood (1979).An Easy Rider with conceptual rigor, the movie that most clearly presaged the way in which exploitation content and artistic treatment would be combined in modestly budgeted films of later years was United Artists' biker-themed Electra Glide in Blue (1973), directed by James William Guercio.The New York Times reviewer thought little of it: "Under different intentions, it might have made a decent grade-C Roger Corman bike movie—though Corman has generally used more interesting directors than Guercio."
B級片 发展历史
In the early 1970s, the growing practice of screening nonmainstream motion pictures as late shows, with the goal of building a cult film audience, brought the midnight movie concept home to the cinema, now in a countercultural setting—something like a drive-in movie for the hip.One of the first films adopted by the new circuit in 1971 was the three-year-old Night of the Living Dead. The midnight movie success of low-budget pictures made entirely outside the studio system, like John Waters' Pink Flamingos (1972), with its campy spin on exploitation, spurred the development of the independent film movement.The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), an inexpensive film from 20th Century Fox that spoofed all manner of classic B picture clichés, became an unparalleled hit when it was relaunched as a late show feature the year after its initial, unprofitable release. Even as Rocky Horror generated its own subcultural phenomenon, it contributed to the mainstreaming of the theatrical midnight movie.
B級片 发展历史
Asian martial arts films began appearing as imports regularly during the 1970s. These "kung fu" films as they were often called, whatever martial art they featured, were popularized in the United States by the Hong Kong–produced movies of Bruce Lee and marketed to the same audience targeted by AIP and New World.Horror continued to attract young, independent American directors. As Roger Ebert explained in one 1974 review, "Horror and exploitation films almost always turn a profit if they're brought in at the right price. So they provide a good starting place for ambitious would-be filmmakers who can't get more conventional projects off the ground."The movie under consideration was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Made by Tobe Hooper for less than $300,000, it became one of the most influential horror films of the 1970s.John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), produced on a $320,000 budget, grossed over $80 million worldwide and effectively established the slasher flick as horror's primary mode for the next decade. Just as Hooper had learned from Romero's work, Halloween, in turn, largely followed the model of Black Christmas (1974), directed by Deathdream's Bob Clark.
B級片 发展历史
On television, the parallels between the weekly series that became the mainstay of prime-time programming and the Hollywood series films of an earlier day had long been clear.In the 1970s, original feature-length programming increasingly began to echo the B movie as well. As production of TV movies expanded with the introduction of the ABC Movie of the Week in 1969, soon followed by the dedication of other network slots to original features, time and financial factors shifted the medium progressively into B picture territory. Television films inspired by recent scandals—such as The Ordeal of Patty Hearst, which premiered a month after her release from prison in 1979—harkened all the way back to the 1920s and such movies as Human Wreckage and When Love Grows Cold, FBO pictures made swiftly in the wake of celebrity misfortunes.Many 1970s TV films—such as The California Kid (1974), starring Martin Sheen—were action-oriented genre pictures of a type familiar from contemporary cinematic B production. Nightmare in Badham County (1976) headed straight into the realm of road-tripping-girls-in-redneck-bondage exploitation.
B級片 发展历史
The reverberations of Easy Rider could be felt in such pictures, as well as in a host of theatrical exploitation films. But its greatest influence on the fate of the B movie was less direct—by 1973, the major studios were catching on to the commercial potential of genres once largely consigned to the bargain basement. Rosemary's Baby had been a big hit, but it had little in common with the exploitation style. Warner Bros.' The Exorcist demonstrated that a heavily promoted horror film could be an absolute blockbuster: it was the biggest movie of the year and by far the highest-earning horror movie yet made. In William Paul's description, it is also "the film that really established gross-out as a mode of expression for mainstream cinema. ... [P]ast exploitation films managed to exploit their cruelties by virtue of their marginality. The Exorcist made cruelty respectable. By the end of the decade, the exploitation booking strategy of opening films simultaneously in hundreds to thousands of theaters became standard industry practice."Writer-director George Lucas's American Graffiti, a Universal production, did something similar. Described by Paul as "essentially an American-International teenybopper pic with a lot more spit and polish", it was 1973's third-biggest film and, likewise, by far the highest-earning teen-themed movie yet made.Even more historically significant movies with B themes and A-level financial backing followed in their wake.
B級片 发展历史
Most of the B-movie production houses founded during the exploitation era collapsed or were subsumed by larger companies as the field's financial situation changed in the early 1980s. Even a comparatively cheap, efficiently made genre picture intended for theatrical release began to cost millions of dollars, as the major movie studios steadily moved into the production of expensive genre movies, raising audience expectations for spectacular action sequences and realistic special effects.Intimations of the trend were evident as early as Airport (1970) and especially in the mega-schlock of The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1973), and The Towering Inferno (1974). Their disaster plots and dialogue were B-grade at best; from an industry perspective, however, these were pictures firmly rooted in a tradition of star-stuffed extravaganzas. The Exorcist had demonstrated the drawing power of big-budget, effects-laden horror. But the tidal shift in the majors' focus owed largely to the enormous success of three films: Steven Spielberg's creature feature Jaws (1975) and George Lucas's space opera Star Wars (1977) had each, in turn, become the highest-grossing film in motion picture history. Superman, released in December 1978, had proved that a studio could spend $55 million on a movie about a children's comic book character and turn a big profit—it was the top box-office hit of 1978.Blockbuster fantasy spectacles like the original 1933 King Kong had once been exceptional; in the new Hollywood, increasingly under the sway of multi-industrial conglomerates, they ruled.
B級片 发展历史
It had taken a decade and a half, from 1961 to 1976, for the production cost of the average Hollywood feature to double from $2 million to $4 million—a decline if adjusted for inflation. In just four years it more than doubled again, hitting $8.5 million in 1980 (a constant-dollar increase of about 25%). Even as the U.S. inflation rate eased, the average expense of moviemaking continued to soar.With the majors now routinely saturation booking in over a thousand theaters, it was becoming increasingly difficult for smaller outfits to secure the exhibition commitments needed to turn a profit. Double features were now literally history—almost impossible to find except at revival houses. One of the first leading casualties of the new economic regime was venerable B studio Allied Artists, which declared bankruptcy in April 1979.In the late 1970s, AIP had turned to producing relatively expensive films like the very successful Amityville Horror and the disastrous Meteor in 1979. The studio was sold off and dissolved as a moviemaking concern by the end of 1980.
B級片 发展历史
Despite the mounting financial pressures, distribution obstacles, and overall risk, many genre movies from small studios and independent filmmakers were still reaching theaters. Horror was the strongest low-budget genre of the time, particularly in the slasher mode as with The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown. The film was produced for New World on a budget of $250,000.At the beginning of 1983, Corman sold New World; New Horizons, later Concorde–New Horizons, became his primary company. In 1984, New Horizons released a critically applauded movie set amid the punk scene written and directed by Penelope Spheeris. The New York Times review concluded: "Suburbia is a good genre film."
B級片 发展历史
Larry Cohen continued to twist genre conventions in pictures such as Q (a.k.a. Q: The Winged Serpent; 1982), described by critic Chris Petit as "the kind of movie that used to be indispensable to the market: an imaginative, popular, low-budget picture that makes the most of its limited resources, and in which people get on with the job instead of standing around talking about it".In 1981, New Line put out Polyester, a John Waters movie with a small budget and an old-school exploitation gimmick: Odorama. That October The Book of the Dead, a gore-filled yet stylish horror movie made for less than $400,000, debuted in Detroit.Its writer, director, and co-executive producer, Sam Raimi, was a week shy of his twenty-second birthday; star and co-executive producer Bruce Campbell was twenty-three. It was picked up for distribution by New Line, retitled The Evil Dead, and became a hit. In the words of one newspaper critic, it was a "shoestring tour de force".
B級片 发展历史
One of the most successful 1980s B studios was a survivor from the heyday of the exploitation era, Troma Pictures, founded in 1974. Troma's most characteristic productions, including Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986), Redneck Zombies (1986), and Surf Nazis Must Die (1987), take exploitation for an absurdist spin. Troma's best-known production is The Toxic Avenger (1984); it's hideous hero, affectionately known as Toxie, was featured in three sequels, an upcoming reboot and a TV cartoon series.One of the few successful B studio startups of the decade was Rome-based Empire Pictures, whose first production, Ghoulies, reached theaters in 1985. The video rental market was becoming central to B film economics: Empire's financial model relied on seeing a profit not from theatrical rentals, but only later, at the video store.A number of Concorde–New Horizon releases went this route as well, appearing only briefly in theaters, if at all. The growth of the cable television industry also helped support the low-budget film industry, as many B movies quickly wound up as "filler" material for 24-hour cable channels or were made expressly for that purpose.
B級片 发展历史
到了1990年，美國電影的平均成本已超過2500萬美元。當年上映的九部美國票房收入超過1億美元的電影中，有兩部在1970年代後期之前嚴格來說屬於B級片：《忍者龜》和《狄克崔西》。另外三部——科幻驚悚片《魔鬼總動員》、充滿動作的警匪驚悚片《終極警探2》和當年最受歡迎的兒童喜劇《小鬼當家》——也更接近傳統的B級片，而非經典的A級片主題。家庭電影的日益普及、有線電視和衛星電視上得以收看未經剪輯的電影、以及與日俱增的房地產壓力，使得作為獨立電影主要發源地的那種小型或非連鎖影院的生存更加困難。汽車戲院也迅速從美國景觀中消失。
B級片 发展历史
倖存的B電影以各種方式適應著。特羅馬娛樂製作的電影現在經常直接跳過院線發行。新線影業在成立最初十年中，幾乎完全是低成本獨立電影和外國類型片的分銷商；隨著剝削片老手衛斯·克萊文原創的《半夜鬼上床》（1984）取得巨大成功（新線影業直接投入近200萬美元的成本），該公司開始穩步轉向更高預算的類型片製作。1994年，新線影業被出售給透納廣播公司；它很快成為一個中型工作室，並與華納兄弟一起在時代華納集團內運營。次年，Showtime電視網推出了《羅傑·科曼作品》，這是由New Concorde製作的13部有線電視首映系列電影。《紐約時報》的一位評論家發現，一開始的作品被稱為“復古的科曼......從裸露的女性乳房到令人興奮的湯瑪斯·曼在《魂斷威尼斯》的引述都含在內”。
B級片 发展历史
在放映B級片的戲院消失的同時，獨立電影運動興起；結果就是低預算類型電影和“精緻”藝術電影之間的各種交叉。導演阿貝爾·費拉拉以暴力B級片（如《電鑽殺手》（1979）和《45女士》（1981））聞名，他在90年代初拍了兩部電影，將剝削電影常見的性、毒品和一般猥褻描寫與對榮譽和救贖的複雜審查相結合：《紐約之王》（1990）得到了一群主要為小型製作公司的支持，《流氓幹探》（1992）的180萬美元成本則完全獨立出資。賴瑞·費森登的小預算怪獸電影，如《No Telling》（1991）和《Habit》（1997），分別重構經典類型主題——科學怪人和吸血鬼——以探索與當代相關的議題。大衛·柯能堡的《慾望號快車》（1996）預算為1000萬美元，雖然不算A級，但也算不上B級。這部電影的意像是另一回事：“大衛·柯能堡的《慾望號快車》在其令人震驚的表面上暗示了剝削片最令人不安的病態”評論家珍妮特·馬斯林寫道。如同《紐約之王》由一個製作公司財團資助，它由佳線電影公司在美國發行。此結果反映了電影對定義的混亂：佳線影業是新線影業的子公司，最近併入華納媒體——具體來說，它是舊剝削片發行商的藝術部門。由昆汀·塔倫提諾以850萬美元預算執導的《黑色追緝令》（1994），藉由非線性敘事成為極具影響力的大片，正如詹姆斯·莫特拉姆（James Mottram）所描述：“憑藉其實驗電影的敘事結構、B級片主題和好萊塢演員陣容，這部電影是三種不同電影傳統相交的軸心。”
B級片 发展历史
到千禧年之際，製作一部美國電影已平均需耗時三年並花費超過5000萬美元成本。2005年，美國票房前十的電影中，包含三部改編自兒童奇幻小說、一部延續及一部開啟系列電影（分別是《哈利波特：火盃的考驗》和《納尼亞傳奇：獅子·女巫·魔衣櫥》）、兒童動畫片（《馬達加斯加》）、漫改電影（《蝙蝠俠：開戰時刻》）、科幻系列電影續集（《星際大戰三部曲：西斯大帝的復仇》）、科幻改編電影（《世界大戰》），以及翻拍電影《金剛》。對科曼來說，這是漫長的一年：他只製作了一部電影，還沒有在美國上映，而過去十年他參與的大多數電影亦是如此。隨著高成本製作的好萊塢電影進一步取代傳統低預算類型片，B級片品牌的生存能力受到嚴重質疑。《紐約時報》評論家A·O·史考特警告說，B級片的“俗氣、野蠻、罪惡的樂趣”即將“滅絕”。
B級片 发展历史
另一方面，最近的行業趨勢表明，傳統的“A-B分裂”在主要工作室的製作中重新出現，儘管有更少的“程式設計師”彌合差距。根據行業分析師阿方索·馬龍2006年的一份報告，“目前好萊塢電影的平均預算約為6000萬美元，如果將國內上映的行銷成本（僅限美國）考慮在內，則上升到1億美元。然而，我們現在正在目睹電影預算兩極分化成兩個層次：大型製作（1.2到1.5億美元）和小眾電影（500到2000萬美元）。……預計製作成本3000到7000萬美元的電影發行量將減少。”福斯於2006年成立了一個新的子公司——福斯原子能（Fox Atomic），專注於青少年面向的類型片。經濟模式為刻意的低成本，至少按照主要工作室的標準。根據《綜藝》的一份報告，“福斯原子能的許多電影預算都保持在不高於1000萬美元。它還鼓勵電影製作人以數位方式拍攝——這是一種更便宜的流程，能產生更堅韌、更適合青少年的結果。並忘記明星。福斯原子能公布的九部電影中，沒有一部是鼎鼎大名的”。新奇的B級片部門於2009年關閉。
B級片 发展历史
正如《綜藝》的報導，近來的技術進步大大促進真正低預算電影的製作。雖然拍攝電影一直有經濟實惠的方式，包括超8毫米和16毫米底片，以及錄製到模擬上的，但都無法與35毫米膠片的畫面品質相媲美。如今數位相機和後製技術的發展，使電影製作者即便低預算也能作出亮眼的、而非必然“蒙上一層灰”的畫面品質與剪輯效果的電影。正如馬龍觀察到的，“數位拍攝所需的設備預算（攝影機、技術）大約為膠片的1/10，大大降低獨立電影的製作預算。同時，（自2000年代初）數位電影的製作已顯著改善。”獨立電影製作人，不論拍攝類型電影還是藝術追求，發現儘管數位端對端的發行方法提供了新的機會，依然很難進入發行管道。以類似的方式，YouTube等網站為展示低預算電影開闢了全新途徑。
B級片 发展历史
同樣地，從2000年起，影像技術的加速和應用以前所未有的速度持續著。這有助於做出以傳統手法成本過高的效果，特別是某些電影類型，例如使用越來越多CGI的災難片或怪獸電影。因此，這一趨勢刺激了面向大眾的B級片的增長。在這種情況下，瘋人院影業等電影公司或Syfy等頻道齊心協力開發B級片，有些公司甚至將此類電影作為其商業模式的關鍵部分。然而，許多此類電影的製作通常是為了利用更成熟的功能的成功。 此外，這一新方向同樣獲得羅傑·科曼和吉姆·懷諾斯基等資深B級片製片人的參與。
B級片 衍生术语
C級片及更常見的Z級片指涉B級片裡逐漸降低的等級。與特定歷史現象相關的“汽車電影”和“午夜電影”這兩個術語現在常被視為B級片的同義詞。
B級片 衍生术语
C級片（英語：）指品質比B級片更差的電影類型；在某些電影分類法中，C級片指僅次於B級片的低等電影類型。1980年代，隨有線電視興起，C級片漸漸被視為低品質類型電影的代名詞，而這些電影大多進入有線電視市場。此後，C級片中的“”有了雙重含義：一方面指該類影片品質低於B級片，另一方面指有線電視英語“”的首字母。電視劇《神秘科學劇院3000》（1988-99）C級片的概念家喻戶曉，該劇第一年就在全國有線頻道播出（先是Comedy Central頻道，然後是Syfy頻道）。該劇更新了電視女主持人邁拉·魯米30多年前提出的概念，展示廉價、低等級的電影，主要是1950年代和1960年代的科幻題材及點出電影缺陷的配音評論。導演艾德·伍德在這個意義上被稱為“C級片大師”，儘管Z級片可能更適用於他的作品。1990年代和2000年代，諸如Sci Fi（及其Sci Fi Pictures製片公司）和 HBO的類型節目頻道等利基有線和衛星頻道的迅速擴張，意味著當代C級片的市場，其中許多是直接在有線電視發行的電影——低預算類型電影從未在戲院上映。
B級片 衍生术语
Z級片（英語：）被用來描述品質遠低於大多數B級片甚至C級片的低預算電影。大多數被稱為Z級片的電影都是由電影界的邊緣運營商以極低預算製作的。1930年代貧困行製作的微預算電影被認為可能是Z級片的前衛（）。導演艾德·伍德的電影，例如《忽男忽女》（1953）和《外太空九號計劃》（1959）——後者經常被認為是史上最糟電影之一——是經典Z級片的例子。後來的Z級片往往以暴力、血腥或色情內容為主打特色，幾乎沒有藝術追求，使得其中多數電影注定只能收費頻道上發行。
B級片 衍生术语
精神病電影（英語：）是影評人邁克爾·J·韋爾登創造的術語——他被同行影評人稱為“邊緣電影歷史學家”——代表那些常被評論機構鄙視或完全忽略的低成本類型片。該詞源於1980年的芝加哥邪典電影《The Psychotronic Man》，該片主角為理髮師，他開發了以精神能量殺人的能力。根據韋爾登的說法，“我一開始對這個詞的想法是它是由兩個部分組成的詞。‘Psycho’代表恐怖電影，而‘tronic’代表科幻電影。我很快地將這個詞的含義延伸為包括任何形式的剝削電影或B級片。”該詞在1980年代開始流行，隨著韋爾登的著作相繼出版，如《精神病電影百科全書》（）、《精神病影片指南》（）和《精神病影片》（）雜誌，該詞陸續被粉絲和其他評論家引用。若遇到能作為坎普風欣賞的B級片，通常會以此術語強調對這些電影的關注與喜愛。