I come to the experts for help. I've been struggling with the whole concept of "exploitation" films in my head. What exactly is an exploitation movie? What makes a movie an exploitation? Some movies that get this tag or are filed under this category are "Last House on the Left" and now "Kill Bill".

I guess my question is - who or what is being exploited? I can kind of understand how this is applied to LHOTL... I think. In this case the victims are exploited.

It seems to me that in many cases people couldn't find a better category to fit a particular movie into - be it drama, action or horror. Is this just a catch-all for movies that cross over genre boundaries? Does anyone know the history of exploitation films and how they came to be known as such?

I'm really curious. Shed some light on this one for me. Of course there is the whole sub-genre (I guess you would call it) of blaxploitation films, which I really am not familiar with. Wow! Lots of questions I know. I've been thinking about this for awhile. Thanks for indulging me.

Where the term "exploitation film" originally came from:

http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue08...tion/text1.htm

Wow, I knew I came to the right place! Thanks, that was very informative. I didn't expect an answer that fast.

I guess the bottom line is, "exploitation" is a throwback term that probably isn't properly applied to most modern movies. But understanding where it came from helps to understand how new movies get that label.

for me an expoitation film is one which uses sex and violence for the sake of the audience attracting nature of sex and violence rather than use them as a necessary tool to forward the story of the film

Hence exploitaton films rarely have much story and are just losely connected set pieces of sex and violence

Baadasssss Cinema is a pretty amusing, informative documentary about blaxsploitation, if you are at all interested.

Here