Glossary
Every label used on this site, defined, including the ones critics invented decades after the fact, which is most of them.
- Classical exploitation1919–1959 · 9 films
- Roadshow pictures sold as education and shown as filth. This is where the word comes from.
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- Peplum1958–1965 · 5 films
- Italian muscleman epics. The cycle that built the machine everything else on this site came out of.
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- Giallo1963–1982 · 23 films
- Italian murder mysteries where the plot exists to get you from one killing to the next.
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- Krimi1959–1972 · 5 films
- West German Edgar Wallace thrillers. The direct ancestor of the giallo.
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- Euro-gothic1957–1979 · 21 films
- Continental horror built on atmosphere, crumbling architecture and dream logic rather than plot.
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- Fantaterror1968–1976 · 8 films
- The Spanish horror boom, made in the last years of Franco and shot in two versions.
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- Poliziotteschi1971–1980 · 9 films
- Italian cop films shot during real civil unrest, and furious about all of it.
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- Cannibal boom1972–1985 · 8 films
- The Italian jungle cycle. Eight years, a dozen films, and a court case.
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- Nunsploitation1969–1985 · 4 films
- Convent films. Anticlerical satire, softcore, and the occasional serious historical drama filed on the same shelf.
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- Ozploitation1971–1988 · 13 films
- Australia's genre boom, funded by a tax loophole and staffed by stunt drivers with no fear of injury.
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- Video nasty1980–1985 · 22 films
- Not a genre. A list of 72 films a British prosecutor decided were obscene in 1983.
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- Roughie1963–1970 · 6 films
- Mid-60s American sexploitation that stopped being fun on purpose.
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- Sexploitation1968–1984 · 0 films
- The European softcore boom. Where the roughie went continental and made a fortune.
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- Blaxploitation1971–1976 · 15 films
- Black-led American genre films, 1971 to 1976. A real industry moment, shut down as soon as something bigger came along.
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- Pinky violence1969–1979 · 10 films
- Toei's female delinquent films. Formally beautiful, thematically indefensible, often in the same shot.
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- Eurospy1964–1969 · 3 films
- Continental Bond knockoffs, produced faster than the originals and occasionally more fun.
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- Women in prison1971–1986 · 11 films
- The most rigid formula in exploitation cinema, and the most durable.
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- Mondo1962–1985 · 4 films
- Documentary as sideshow. Assume half of what you are watching was staged.
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- Zombie1932–1988 · 19 films
- From Haitian folklore to Romero to the Italian cycle that ate the video shelves.
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- Spaghetti western1964–1978 · 12 films
- Italian westerns shot in Spain. Dirtier, louder, and more cynical than the American kind.
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- Martial arts1966–1985 · 13 films
- Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest, and the grindhouse circuit that dubbed all of it badly.
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- Chanbara1962–1980 · 0 films
- Japanese sword cinema. Everything the kung fu tag isn't, and often bloodier.
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- Splatter1963–1990 · 21 films
- Gore as the entire attraction, invented by a man who mostly made nudie films.
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- Post-nuke1982–1990 · 7 films
- Italian producers watched Mad Max 2 and made forty of them in five years.
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- Slasher1974–1989 · 10 films
- The giallo, relocated to America and put to work on a holiday calendar.
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- Bruceploitation1973–1981 · 0 films
- Bruce Lee died. The industry hired men named Bruce Li and kept going.
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- Vigilante1971–1985 · 14 films
- The city has failed, the courts have failed, and an ordinary man buys a gun.
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- Body horror1975–1992 · 0 films
- The flesh betrays itself. Mostly early Cronenberg, and mostly disgusting on purpose.
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- Occult & satanic panic1968–1990 · 11 films
- Devil worship, possession, and a decade of audiences half believing it.
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- Folk horror1968–1978 · 4 films
- Rural isolation, older beliefs, and a stranger who does not understand the local calendar.
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- Natural horror1963–1988 · 10 films
- Animals attack. An entire industry spent a decade rearranging one Spielberg film.
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- Luchador1958–1982 · 4 films
- Mexican wrestling films. A masked hero fights vampires, then wrestles, then fights the vampires again.
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- Yakuza1963–1980 · 6 films
- Japanese gangster films, from chivalrous ritual to Fukasaku tearing the whole idea down.
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- Sword & sorcery1982–1988 · 5 films
- Conan made money, so Italy and Argentina made forty barbarian films in six years.
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- Juvenile delinquent1953–1967 · 0 films
- 1950s teen panic on screen. The biker film's parents, and the drive-in's first target audience.
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- Biker1966–1972 · 4 films
- AIP's outlaw cycle. Started with a news story, ended when the counterculture stopped selling.
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- Acid & psychedelic1967–1980 · 0 films
- The counterculture as both subject and threat. Drug panic, head films, and one very strange western.
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- Kaiju & tokusatsu1954–1980 · 5 films
- Japanese monster and effects cinema. Suits, miniatures, and a postwar wound underneath.
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- Turkish remakesploitation1970–1984 · 3 films
- Yeşilçam at full tilt: unlicensed remakes and homegrown pulp, on ten-day shoots using somebody else's soundtrack.
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- Carsploitation1971–1981 · 13 films
- Real cars, real speed, real crashes, no computers.
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- Rape-revenge1972–1984 · 5 films
- An assault, then a reckoning. One of the most argued-about structures in film criticism.
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- Hicksploitation1972–1983 · 8 films
- Moonshine, backroads, and city people who took a wrong turn. The American South as a horror setting.
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- Nazisploitation1974–1979 · 2 films
- A two-year Italian and Canadian cycle that took the most taboo setting available and sold tickets with it.
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- Transgressive & midnight1970–1990 · 0 films
- Films made to offend, that found their audience at midnight. Waters, Jodorowsky, Lynch.
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