B級片
发展历史 > 衰落 > 1980年代

已隱藏部分未翻譯内容，歡迎參與。
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.
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.
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."
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".
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.