Some B Movies Are Actually Good

Tagged with entertainment, movies, science fiction on March 1, 2024

Yes, some B movies are actually good. The problem is finding the good ones out of all the bad ones. Although I’ve been fortunate to see some good ones, it hasn’t been recently.

Of course, your definition of “good” when it comes to B movies may be way different from mine. I sometimes overlook bad practical or special effects when the story itself is good.

B Movie Producers and Film Studios

The Wikipedia article describes a B movie like this:

A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature (akin to B-sides for recorded music).

There are, or were, a lot of B movie producers and film studios. Some of these may ring a bell:

• Charles Band, with Empire International Pictures and Full Moon Features
• Ed Wood
• Roger Corman
• The Asylum

Most new B movies usually end up at one or more of the streaming video services, made for television (like Sharknado). Many of the older ones were actually shown at movie theaters, but I think that was before cable television really took off. I saw quite a few with a service called ON TV, which my oldest brother (R.I.P.) subscribed to in the early 1980s.

B Movies of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s

Many horror and science fiction movies during those decades were either B movies or B movie candidates. I’ve seen a lot of them over the years, and some didn’t even qualify to be in that high of a category.

Elvira’s Movie Macabre, which was based in Los Angeles, used to feature these types of movies on her television program. Mystery Science Theater 3000 still does, off and on (when it actually gets renewed by one of the networks). There was also Disasterpiece Theatre in the early 1980s, hosted by Sal U. Lloyd (Jay Curtis) from Tijuana, Mexico.

A-list Actors in B Movies

I don’t know why A-list actors decide to act in B movies, and I won’t even offer a guess. There are a few that I’ve recognized in B movies. Here they are:

• Bruce Campbell
• Michael Paré
• Richard Moll
• Tim Thomerson

There are more, obviously, but I can’t name them if I can’t remember the movies they starred in. Here’s a list of B movies I’ve enjoyed watching, regardless of where I watched them:

• C.H.U.D.
• Feast and its sequels
• Iron Sky
• Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn
• The Incredible Shrinking Man
• The Return of the Living Dead
• The Stuff
• Trancers and its sequels
• X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes

I know there are a lot more. I can’t remember all of them, and I really don’t want to try. Although I show the picture for “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, I’ve never watched it. I mentioned “Sharknado”, but I’ve never watched it, or any of its sequels.

My wife, Josie, and I tried to watch “The Return of the Living Dead” at a drive-in theater. Unfortunately, she was pregnant at the time, and we had to leave after about 30 minutes, or she was going to be sick. I had to wait until it showed up on one of the cable movie channels a few years later.

I binge-watched “Trancers” and its sequels, long before binge-watching became a thing. Except for “Trancers 6”, that is, because Tim Thomerson didn’t star in it.

Image by Distributors Corporation of America, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons