The Style of Sleaze

'In its focus on the taboo-breaking and transgressive elements of 1970s exploitation cinema, it is set to be as important a publication in this area as Eric Schaefer's "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!" A recognition to the importance of further study into the wonderful world of American "trash" cinema.'
Mikel J. Koven, University of Worcester

What is an exploitation film? The Style of Sleaze reasons that the aesthetic and thematic approach of the key texts within three distinct exploitation demarcations - blaxploitation, horror and sexploitation - indicate a concurrent evolution of filmmaking that could be seen as an identifiable cinematic movement. Offering a fresh perspective on studies of marginal cinema, the book maintains that defining exploitation cinema as a vaguely attributed 'excess' is unhelpful, and instead concludes that this period in American film history produced a number of the most transgressive, and yet morally complex, motion pictures ever made.

Calum Waddell gained his PhD at the University of Aberdeen.

Cover image: poster art for Night of the Living Dead (1968) © Continental Distributing Inc./Photofest

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ISBN 978-1-4744-0925-4
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