An exploitation film is a type of movie that is typically created with the primary goal of making a profit by taking advantage

of some culturally relevant trend, fear, or mainstream point of contention. If that seems like a fairly

broad definition, you're not wrong. The subjects and pop cultural concepts that have been

exploited for a quick buck in this way over the years

are many and varied, ranging from biker films back in the 1950s to slasher films in the

70s and 80s. Some exploitation subgenres like black exploitation and the women-in Women in Prison-based media eventually reversed roles

and catalyzed work that one could argue revised the intent of the original works in a dramatic way.

Marvel's Luke Cage was a character originally conceived to take advantage of the Blacksploitation

trends of the 1970s, but was

later reintroduced as a figure of more nuanced African-American empowerment.

Similarly, films like The Big Doll House and Women Prison Massacre are arguably the

spiritual ancestors of shows like Orange is the New Black, which,

rather than being purely focused on sex and violence for the titillation of viewers,

presents deeper character development and less superficial subject matter than those earlier

works, though of course it would be difficult to be more superficial than something like

Women Prison Massacre. In the 1930s and 40s, U.S. theaters were filled with black and white

works loosely housed under the cautionary film genre, which presented storylines that served

to warn primarily young people away from doing things their elders, politicians,

and religious leaders thought they should avoid. Works like Children of Loneliness, which was a 1937

anti-homosexuality film, fall into this category. As do Child Bride, she should have said no,

with an exclamation point in the title,

and Sex Madness, a collection of films that were both cautionary films,

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