Diabolita23

What are your favorite B Movies/B movie directors? I love Roger Corman and Melvin Van Peebles. My favorite B Movie of all time though is Chopping Mall, directed by Jim Wynorski. Mall-based movies are always a win for me. I just saw a great documentary on Wynorski (and on the decline/metamorphosis of the B Movie at the hand of new technology) called “Popatopolis”. The doc follows Wynorski as he shoots the entirety of the feature length “The Witches of Breastwick” in three days. It was both hilarious and tragic, and as I’ve a background in film I got some great laughs out of the standards of filmmaking that he used… the punchline is of course that he made more money off that film than I’ve made in my whole life…

mdnitoil

I usually connect B product to particular distributors and not individual creators. I'm thinking New World, Golan Globus, Cannon, etc. I'm a big fan of the genre stuff of my youth but it's hard to nail down a particular favorite. That being said, I'm not sure if I could elevate "The Witches of Breastwick" to the lofty position of B movie, but I get your general idea.

Brian T

I tend towards filmmakers and not production houses, though I'll watch anything, and probably 75% of my DVD collection would qualify as B movies. Wynorski's HARD TO DIE would easily make my top ten B-movies, but there's far too many to even start listing . . .

SterlingBen

Perhaps you would be interested in the works of Frank Henenlotter

MrSmearkase

FRwL

I love b-movies a lot and like many even over a-movies. For example my favorite movie of 1960 is not Psycho or even Spartacus but another sword and sandal... Colossus and the Headhunters. The movie just has the right feeling. Also my fav director Sergio Leone was pretty much known for b-movies thorughout most of his career and it wasn't till near his death when he was getting more acclaim.

Ash Ketchum

Not quite. A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was relatively low-budget, but wasn't considered a "B-movie." In fact, it did so well that the budgets shot up for FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. I mean the latter is a nearly-three-hour epic with Civil War battles involving hundreds of extras. In what universe is that a B-movie? And his next film (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) was on a similar scale and starred Hollywood legend Henry Fonda along with Jason Robards and Charles Bronson. Leone only made two movies after that, DUCK, YOU SUCKER (1972) and ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984), both fairly high-budget. He died in 1989. I recall him getting quite a lot of acclaim as far back as the late '60s and early '70s, esp. after his first three movies kept getting re-released and finding new audiences (including me).

Leone may qualify as a cult director, but is definitely not associated with B-movies. Yes, he did a sword-and-sandal movie early in his career, COLOSSUS OF RHODES (1960), but even that wasn't a B-movie. It's 128 min. long, for one thing, and had an American star and a fairly good budget for disaster effects. I remember when it was released in the U.S. it was widely publicized.