Production Glossary
B-Movie
B-movies were created to fill the second slot of a double feature, giving audience members more bang for their buck when attending the movies. The casting of relatively unknown actors and the significantly less money it would take to make the film guaranteed a constant return on investment when paired with the first billed motion picture.
Although they are commonly referred to as low-budget films, the B-movie has defining characteristics that set it apart from independent films, such as an overall laughable style, bad acting, and crudely fashioned costumes and sets. It’s genres include science fiction, mystery, Western, horror, fantasy, and thrillers- with the most popular being Westerns, sci-fi, and horror.
A practice adopted early on in B-movie history was block booking. This enabled theaters to rent the movie studio’s entire film output for a whole season. The B films were rented at a flat rate, guaranteeing the movie studio’s would turn a profit on all B movies produced. During the 1950s, a ruling by the Supreme Court restricted block booking, causing the Big Five theater chains (Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, and RKO Radio Pictures) to dismantle the distribution of their films. This, along with the increased number of people watching TV at home, caused the double feature to become obsolete.
Despite the disappearance of the double feature, the expanding B-movie industry was given a boost by the drive-in theater. In 1945, there were only ninety-six drive-ins in the US. Ten years later that number had increased to 3,700. The B-movie and its many genres were an ideal match for the newest fad in American pop culture. Around the same time (the 1950s), TV stations began what would eventually be known as the midnight movie, by airing B-movies in late-night openings on their viewing schedule.
Exploitation films, a subset of the B-movie, took off in the 1960s thanks to the loosening of censorship restrictions. The exploitation film genre used gimmiky publicity to promote its base and exorbitant subject matter. These films were not scheduled regularly in theaters, but appeared more commonly in grindhouses, or traveling roadshows.
Today, the B-movie is still viable because of technological advances that help shooting low-budget films a reality in a film industry that creates movies for multi-millions of dollars.
| Year | Approx Studio Movie Budget |
Approx B-Movie Budget |
| 1928 |
$190,000-275,000 | $3,000 |
| 1930 | $375,000 | $5,000 |
| 1940-50s | $400,000-$1 Million | $100,000-$400,000 |
| 1960-70s | $2 Million |
$100,000-$400,000 |
| 1980s |
$4 Million |
$100,000-$400,000 |
| 1990s | $25 Million |
Under $2-4 Million |
| 2000s |
$50-300 Million |
$2-10 Million |
