It's a low-budget commercial film. The name comes from the fact they used to be exclusively shown as the second half on a double feature with the first half being the "A" movie, similar to how records had A sides and B sides.
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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This is very cool, I did not have any idea that’s where the term B movie came from! Thanks for sharing
Same. That's some TIL gold.
Got a curious question. Did you not know the B side was the other side a hit 45 record? Same deal. The popular song was on the A side, literally labelled as such, and a filler song on the B side.
LOL, I'm feeling older by the second.
I did actually know about the B side of a record! It just never translated to movies.
Double features were much less of a thing when I was a kid, so the concept of a “B side” movie never occurred to me! They just played them on TV when I was little so I assumed they were just not as good.
I’m kinda like… How did I not know? How did I not know until last year that “footage” referred to how many feet of film you shot? Haha I even grew up when they shot movies on film and it still never translated.
I'm 52 and double features weren't a thing for me either.
I’ve asked three other people close to my age (they’re between 41 and 44) and none of them knew.
This is fascinating, I don’t know how this information got lost within ten years! Lol
What’s weird too is that I live where there were a lot of drive-ins so you’d kind of assume there would be more double features but maybe not
a “B movie” is something almost completely non-existent in today’s terms – publishers nowadays refuse to even invest in a project unless it’s a guaranteed blockbuster which is why so much of what’s currently on the screen is so excessively formulaic
“back in the day”, studios risked their budgets and tried out new ideas in the hopes of winning the box office – so you ended up with blockbusters as well as imported films and art/indie films and complete flops – but you ended up with a larger chunk of films sitting in that “in between” area, not blockbusters but also not obscure art house flicks – the stuff that was entertaining and fun and a good night out with friends, stuff that was so bad it was hilarious, stuff that didn’t hit immediately but developed a cult following later, stuff that filled the drive-ins on Friday nights, stuff that became the basis of in-jokes in Monday morning classes
I think a lot of contemporary B-movies go direct to streaming (or previously, direct to DVD).
For example Steven Seagal's most recent movies: nobody expects them to be any good, but the producers hope that he still has enough fans that they make a profit.
Then there are independent films that know they're not A-list and work with it, like Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar.
nobody expects them to be any good
they’re Russian money laundering, they’re not meant to be any good
Lol
But there's all kinds of low budget movies of questionable quality coming out these days?
Here's a good straightforward example; https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0389790/
Bee Movie is 100% what I expected when I clicked that link, so I chuckled.
It comes from how movies used to be shown in theaters. The double feature was much more common and between movies there would be cartoons, short films, and news reels. So one ticket would get you a theater experience all day pretty much. Pairing movies usually meant one higher profile picture and one with a smaller budget. The second smaller film is the B movie. Smaller budgets meant more genre pictures with lesser known actors. So you get cheap sci-fi and monster movies mostly but the term B movie just refers to its lesser standing. It's like the opposite of Oscar bait.
Mars Attacks was a big enough Hollywood production, I don't think it's a B-movie at all. It's a cult classic, and it intentionally uses B-movie aesthetics for comedic purposes, but it's not a B-movie.
And John Carpenter is such a skilled auteur that even his low-budget classics are considered top-shelf movie magic. Not B-movies at all. They're A-movies that shaped the horror genre.