The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- Y is for Young People

Y

is for Young People

 

It took Hollywood decades to discover what B-Movie makers knew from the very beginning. Adult viewers may bring prestige, but teenagers will make you rich.

The fact is that when people grow up their lives become busy and the opportunities they have to indulge their need for unconstructive entertainment can be measured in minutes per month. Teenagers, on the other hand, are so overburdened with free time that it’s the very thing that causes them to terrify their elders. Free time means mischief and mischief means reefer and jazz, which leads to murder in the streets.

Realizing this, enterprising low-budget producers started making films aimed directly at the young folks who had the time and allowance/babysitting money to go out see terrible movies over and over again.

To attract the kiddies, these producers threw in popular pop stars from the day and had them engage in silly, nonsensical plots involving popular fads like surfing, drag racing and dancing. The most famous of these were a series of A.I.P. produced films that starred Frankie Avalon and/or Annette Funnicello. The films were cheaply made cartoons that aped the style pioneered earlier by Frank Tashlin in such films as The Girl Can’t Help it and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. They were also pretty awesome. Especially when they had Susan Hart in them.

Yowza.

Eventually, the studios caught on to this formula and it's now applied to most films made today. The only difference being that the amount of money being spent is that much greater than it ever has been before.

Problem is that while kids today still have a mega-buttload of free time to spend, they increasingly have access to better ways to spend it, which means the studios might eventually have to start making movies for the older audiences they have spent the past couple of decades specifically alienating.

Awkward.

Y

is for Young People

and

Young People

are

Young