B Movies

THE AETHESTICS OF B MOVIES

Just as the budgets of B movies covered a wide spectrum, the look and feel of the Bs ran the gamut from the sophisticated to the incompetent. Programmers, and even some Bs made by the majors, could come close to the quality of A films, the only obvious difference being shorter running times. But a B running time could affect the final product. For instance, in Warner Bros.'s Smart Blonde , noted above, the studio attempted to fit a complex mystery into a fifty-nine-minute slot. Wise-cracking reporter Torchy Blane and her police detective boyfriend Steve McBride attempt to solve the murder of the man set to buy the holdings of nightclub owner Fitz Mularkay. A dizzying array of characters with barely sketched motivations are tossed into the trim film, producing so much confusion that in the final scene Torchy and Steve must give an accounting of the characters, their relationships and motives, and the reasoning they used to solve the case. Even with the elaborate explanation, the plot remains maddeningly obscure. With smaller company

Bs and Poverty Row quickies, the impact of a low budget and a fast shooting schedule was much more obvious.

Lower budgets meant that exposition tended to be handled in a more overt, at times ham-fisted, manner than in A films, in which it could be delivered more subtly over a longer running time through character behavior. Dialogue was the most expedient way to transmit crucial plot information. In PRC's The Devil Bat (1941), the vengeful mad scientist Bela Lugosi greets the jumbo creation of the title by telling it, "Ahhh, my friend, our teeory ov glandular stimooolation through electrical impulses vas correct! A few days ago you were as small as your companion. And now, look at you!" He reveals his plan to murder the employers who have cheated him by having them wear a bat-baiting shaving lotion he has concocted. He tells the bat, "You hate diss strange oriental fragrance even vile you sleep, just as you did before I made you big and strong. Now if you detect de fragrance in de night when you're fully avake, you vill strike! Yes, you vill strike and kill!" The overwrought dialogue is not, of course, meant for the bat but for the audience, as the film awkwardly establishes its story line. Exposition could also be transmitted overtly in the form of swirling newspaper headlines, radio news broadcasts, and character voice-over. All three techniques are utilized in The Devil Bat , which plays out as a series of repetitive attacks, interspersed with investigation scenes with a big-city newspaper reporter and his photographer, who provides comic relief.

The plots of B movies were generally as thin as the film on which they were shot. As a result, many films required padding of various kinds to bulk them up to feature length. For instance, Arizona Badman , a 1935 B western, clocks in at just under an hour. It uses a song sung at a campfire and footage of cattle meandering over the hills to pad its running time, and more than a third of the film's first sixteen minutes are devoted to interminable scenes of townsfolk hoofing at a square dance. Other cost-saving measures were employed in B movie production to save both time and money, most of which are evident on the screen: day-for-night shooting (day-light shooting employing filters and/or underexposing the film to simulate nighttime), liberal doses of stock shots and repeated shots (e.g., the Devil Bat flying out of its lair to attack), and the use of rear-screen projection in place of location work. Shooting techniques always attempted to maximize efficiency. For example, rather than shooting dialogue as a series of complex shot/reverse shot combinations (shooting over the shoulder of one actor, then the other), which requires multiple set-ups, relighting, and time in the editing room to assemble the footage, B directors would cut corners. Dialogue scenes were often filmed by framing all of the actors together facing each other, but turned slightly toward the camera. The conversation unfolds in a single, extended shot—effectively eliminating the time necessary for additional set-ups and the editing needed to achieve shot/reverse shot combinations. Moving camera shots were usually kept to a minimum because of the expense and time needed to mount them. As a result of these factors, the majority of B movies have a relatively static quality.

That static quality carried over to acting. Because of the brief shooting schedules and desire to avoid retakes, performances in B movies often appear hesitant and wooden when compared to the smoother, more naturalistic performances in A films. Fight scenes in Bs were often poorly choreographed, with pulled punches obvious and falls leaden. While Bs occasionally employed imaginative camerawork and staging (e.g., the opening dream sequence in Fear in the Night , 1947), B movies can best be described as displaying classical Hollywood style in its most stripped-down, unembellished form.