The Golden Age of Exploitation
an interview with Felicia Feaster and Bret Wood, authors of Forbidden Fruit, interview by Gary Johnson
In the '30s and '40s, independent theaters frequently turned to movies produced outside of the Hollywood system. These movies capitalized upon salacious, sensational topics--such as drug abuse, prostitution, polygamy, and venereal disease. They provided scenes that no Production Code-approved Hollywood movie would ever provide. In Damaged Lives, a group of fun-loving women strip naked and go skinny dipping. In Because of Eve, a doctor educates a young couple on the joys of reproduction by showing them documentary footage of a real childbirth. In Slaves in Bondage, prostitutes share a good time by spanking each other. And in Reefer Madness, arguably the most famous of all exploitation films, partying teens freely indulge in marijuana and turn into giggling maniacs.

Sinsational Sinema
an interview with Eddie Muller, author of Grindhouse, interview by Gary Johnson
From the 1920s through the 1970s, America's most fearless entrepreneurs created thousands of "adults only" features--exploitation films that promised "Sinsational!" treatments of the day's hottest topics. These films played red-light-district theaters and roadshows for almost half a century, until hardcore pornography and the advent of VCRs rang the death knell for this distinctive form of "art."

Russ Meyer
video reviews by Gary Johnson
Few film directors working in the sexploitation genre have ever attracted the attention of mainstream critics. Russ Meyer is one of the exceptions. From the late '50s through the early '70s, Meyer parlayed his love of large breasts into an impressive filmmaking career. While most sexploitation movies in the '60s were poorly lit and indifferently photographed, Meyer's films brimmed with cartoonish color schemes, rapid fire editing, and surprising camera angles.

Radley Metzger
video reviews by Gary Morris
Radley Metzger was both a key player in, and a catalyst for, the sexual revolution of the '60s, and his career contains several milestones in this area. Among his movies number Therese and Isabelle, the first and still best realistic treatment of an adolescent lesbian amour; The Lickerish Quartet, which merged the unlikely elements of Pirandello and pornography; and Score, a sex farce that was far ahead of its time in refashioning the erotic date movie.

Paul Morrissey
video reviews by Gary Morris
Self-absorbed drag queens, has-been B-movie actresses, churlish fag hags, fetching hustlers, effeminate vampires, and delusional junkies form director Paul Morrissey's gallery of characters, and nobody does it better when it comes to exploring the more seedy and pathetic niches of human behavior.