Exploitation films

Scum of the Earth

Herschell Gordon Lewis invents the roughie the same year he invents gore. Busy man.

Maniac

Dwain Esper's roadshow lunacy. A man eats a cat's eye. Not the 1980 film.

Marihuana

Esper again. One reefer leads directly to nude swimming and death.

The Immoral Mr. Teas

Historically pivotal, formally inert. Watch ten minutes and read about the rest.

Mom and Dad

Kroger Babb toured it for twenty years with a fake nurse in the lobby.

Blood Feast

The first gore film. Barely competent, historically unavoidable.

Reefer Madness

A church-funded warning that became a comedy 40 years later.

White Zombie

Lugosi, Haitian folklore, and the first zombie film. No eating involved.

Häxan

A 1922 documentary about witchcraft that is also a horror film. Way ahead of itself.

Freaks

Killed Browning's career, banned in Britain for thirty years. Still unclassifiable.