10 Best Exploitation Films Of All Time

What is an exploitation film? Well, that's a good question.

For our purposes, it’s an independently produced, often (but not always) poorly-made film with a lurid subject matter whose sensationalist advertising has one goal: putting rubes in seats. 

With the abolition of the Hays production code and relaxation of social attitudes in the mid-1960s, such fare flourished in America’s Grindhouses and Drive-ins until the early 80s, when their revenues declined in the face of competition from video and the major studios. When Paramount released Friday The 13th in 1980, what was essentially Drive-in fodder took in over 100 million worldwide, forcing competing studios to muscle in and effectively transferring the exploitation movie from the Drive-in to the multiplex. 

Some might say this is a good thing. No studio would ever bankroll Don’t Answer The Phone, SS Experiment Camp or Oasis of the Zombies. They have a point. 

But ask yourself this: when Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and co pay homage to exploitation cinema, are they referencing studio pictures or the kind of down and dirty sleazefests that your local plex would actively pay not to show?

Movies like the following, in fact.

One of the most famous titles ever banned in the UK, The Last House On The Left may lack an attention-grabbing title, but the brilliant ad campaign (“To avoid fainting, keep repeating ‘It’s only a movie…’”) more than makes up for it. Raw and primitive, Wes Craven’s debut became one of the most influential exploitation films of the 1970s.

A picture with more on its mind than the depiction of sadism, Last House makes the point that violence degrades victim and victimizer alike. After each killing, there’s no satisfaction felt by the perpetrator, just a sense of self-disgust, which holds true whether the perpetrator is middle-aged and well off or a slum-residing gang member.

You can see the film’s influence on such later films as Late Night Trains (1975), I Spit On Your Grave (1978) and The House On The Edge Of The Park (1980). Last House was officially remade in 2009 and ripped off by Chaos (2005) which despite not being very good, still comes closer to matching the raw power of Craven’s original than the slick studio remake.