As part of Freeline Media’s ongoing Movie Talk series on Cinema, our movie critic Mike Fried sets out to define what a B-Movie is — and Mike has some definite ideas.

By MIKE FRIED

What is a B-movie?  

According to Google’s AI overview, a B-movie is a low-budget film historically shown as the second feature in a double bill, known for genre thrills (sci-fi, horror, westerns) and creative resourcefulness rather than big stars or high production values, often serving as a proving ground for talent and now associated with cult classics and exploitation cinema.

And, sure, there were many, many movies that were B-movies but have turned into classics. Detour, anyone?  Detour is the very definition of a B-movie. Made for $30,000 in 1945, it was the first B-movie inducted into the National Film Registry. It was made for so little money that the car used in the film belonged to the director, Edgar Ulmer. 

But as times change, definitions change.  Starting in the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of the exploitation films, the B-movie took on a seedier, urban or horror connotation.  Films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Superfly, Shaft, and The Last House on the Left were made with the sensibilities of a secondary picture but they were, in fact, the prime reason for the trip to the cinema.  Directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, and Roger Corman all had their start making B-Pictures and actors like Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Vincent Price, Bruce Campbell, even Bela Lugosi who finished his career making B-movies with Ed Wood. 

And the tradition has continued to this day with genre movies and other independent films, made on a low budget, hoping to catch some bit of the zeitgeist and make some money. 

But there are a few bigger budget films made in recent years that definitely fall within what studios pictured back in the 30s, 40s and 50s. 

I am going to take a look at the effect that the British Monarchy has had on the B-movies genre.  Specifically, the B-movie acting by three screen legends having fun as they get older.  

Unhinged with Russell Crowe: B-movie?

For example, Unhinged starring Oscar winner Russell Crowe. Yea, Oscar Winner!

Imagine this: 

A man, sitting in his car in the rain, inexplicably takes a tire iron out of his car, breaks into a house, beats the people inside and sets the house on fire. We next meet Rachel, a divorced mom struggling to make ends meet. She is taking her son to school but is stuck in traffic, takes a detour and gets into a confrontation with the same man at a traffic light. Soon this man decides to terrorize her and her family.  

When I took this out of the library (and yes, I took it out of the library — I wasn’t paying a dime for this movie), I didn’t realize that it was going to be as good as it was. 

And I’m not just saying good — I’m saying really really good, verging on great.

It’s just that somehow this road rage car chase film is nicely paced and delivers not so much a story but a slick exploitation effort that is a cross between Falling Down and The Hitcher (although in the latter film, we don’t know John Ryder’s motives — here we do.)

And what makes this work?  Crowe! Russell Crowe is literally crazy good in a fat suit and scruffy beard looking very much like the late great actor Dennis Burkley (Google that, dear readers) and he looks like he had so much fun making this movie. Chewing up the scenery as the most “unworthiest fuck” and an “invisible man,” Crowe is mesmerizing. It is axiomatic that having fun making a movie shows in the final result. When he says “I don’t think you know what a really bad day is! But you’ll fucking learn” you know he means it. He has lost his job, shy of getting his pension and he’s a man with nothing left to lose.  And he makes every minute count. 

It doesn’t hurt that the film’s breakneck pace is aided by an 81 minutes runtime not including the credits. It definitely tries to resurrect that old tyme B-movie vibe. 

But is it a Crowe one-off?

I think not.

Is The Pope’s Exorcist a B-Movie? 

A couple of years later, Crowe returned with The Pope’s Exorcist in which he plays real-life Father Gabriel Amorth who was selected by the Pope to supervise and uncover secrets held by the Vatican. The Exorcist it ain’t, but it is Russell Crowe’s committed and lunatic performance, as in Unhinged, that makes it a fun watch.

Not as successful was Crowe’s next effort, The Exorcism. He plays Tony Miller, an actor who’s had his share of substance abuse problems but snares a role in a movie called Georgetown — we don’t know whether or not this is an updating of the movie The Exorcist or remake of The Exorcist or just another exorcist type movie. Weird things begin happening to him on the set, and his daughter starts to worry whether or not his substance abuse problems have recurred, or there are some more eerie forces at play.

And there are eerie forces at play. And even if it: A) didn’t live up to its potential; and B) had a kind of a “what the fuck” ending.   Its problem is that it tries to be a horror film when it is really a character study about Tony and the relationship between him and his daughter. But it is a B movie with all of its trappings — hell, an argument can be made that as elegant as The Exorcist was, it was a High-functioning B- movie. 

Is it a great movie? No.

Is it a good movie? Not quite.

 But it is watchable. And that’s what makes it a B-movie. 

Gerard Butler and B-Movies: What’s the link?

And as long as we are talking about loyal subjects of the monarchy, no discussion of B-movies would be complete without referencing Gerard Butler. 

Butler isn’t quite the king of the B-movies but he is really like the Prince William of British B-movie actors.  In a prior post, I discussed Greenland and its ingeniously titled sequel Greenland 2.  What could be more B-movies than the end of the world and its aftermath.   

But he has others. 

Several years ago he did a movie called Plane. It was about, ahem, a plane. Butler plays an experienced pilot who is flying a New Year’s flight with 14 passengers and an Air Marshal aboard escorting a prisoner accused of murder. Because some airline bureaucrat denies his request to fly around a storm to save bucks, the plane is struck by lightning and is forced into a crash landing in a war torn country. And, of course, Gerard has to use his instincts and trust the prisoner, Luke Cage, in order to save the passengers and hold off the warlords until help arrives.  

It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imagination; but when the action ramps up, the movie actually becomes fun, reveling in its stupid cliché ridden script, full of clichéd passengers. My favorite is the always-fun Joey Slotnick who always seems to play an overly nervous and frenetic guy. And it’s the perfect B-movies because it’s an action movie that doesn’t take itself so seriously. 

And speaking of not taking itself seriously how about Geostorm?  One of the most preposterous movies ever made. Natural disasters have plagued the earth and scientists around the world have come together and created a system of satellites that are designed to keep Earth’s weather in check. Of course someone fucks with the system and the calamities on Earth resume and are reaching critical mass. Pure B-movie nonsense and it’s far from anywhere near a good movie, but Butler pulls off his role — which is the same as in any other of his movies — and saves the world.  

And any discussion of the Butler B-movie films would be lacking if there wasn’t a mention of his “Has Fallen” trilogy.  Whether he is protecting the White House from attack or saving the President from terrorists in London or, despite his service to his government, being accused of conspiring to assassinate the current president, Butler’s Mike Bannon is a B-movie hero, albeit with a larger budget.  And they’re not bad movies, but they are so formulaic that in the olden days they’d be on a double bill with some other film with more prestige. 

Similarly, where would we “B” without Copshop, Butler and Joe Carnahan’s homage to Assault on Precinct 13. A con artist gets thrown in jail to avoid a hitman, played by Butler, who gets himself thrown in jail to get to the con artist. It’s a twisty, grindhouse effort by Carnahan that brings out the best of Butler and his costars in this spiritually fun 70s-like pic.

Is Liam Neeson a B-movie guy?

Finally, when we are talking about British subjects and B-movies, can we not mention the King Charles of British B-movie actors?

I am, of course, talking about Liam Neeson who, since 2008, has “Taken” the B-movie world by storm when he played Bryan Mills, a man with special skills who has to track down the kidnappers of his daughter. It was a sensation.  It was a modern day Death Wish, a great 70s B-movie that’s a real Winner (IYKYK). And, of course, like Butler’s Fallen trilogy, people responded so well to the first and second B-movie exploitation sensibilities that a third movie was made, which didn’t fare as well. 

But did that stop Neeson?

Hell, no!  You can’t stop the King that easily.  

He would go on to make a movie called Unknown, a Hitchcock ripoff.  He plays a man named Martin Harris who is in Berlin for a conference when his car crashes and he loses his memory; but then he realizes who he is and goes to his hotel where his wife says she doesn’t recognize him.  Under the unsteady hands of frequent Neeson director Jaume Collett-Serra, the movie goes from Hitchcock to B-movie in short order.  But that doesn’t make it a bad movie. 

Neeson’s subsequent collaborations with Collett-Serra were equally fun B-movies because they didn’t aspire to anything greater — they had a story to tell and they told it with as much gusto as they could. Take Non-Stop, where he plays an air marshal who starts getting F-texts from someone who hasn’t heard of airplane mode demanding exorbitant monies or people will die on the plane.

Or Run All Night, where he has to choose between his estranged son or his best friend and mob boss who wants Liam to pay for the death of his son. Or The Commuter, where a guy on a train gets involved in a conspiracy that not only threatens his life but the lives of other people on the train with him. 

Same movie, different characters — the very nature of the B-movie. 

All of these have the same thing going for them: threadbare plots with a dynamically committed performance from the lead actor.  

Do other things go into the making of a B-movie?

Absolutely! 

But the first thing that is necessary is having a really good actor willing to debase himself by performing in a movie rather than acting.  

Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.

Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.

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