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[Image]By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY
The word "exploitation" is not usually a compliment, but the makers of upcoming movies that revel in taboos will take it as flattery.
"Exploitation movie" has varying definitions, but it most commonly refers to a film that savors the naughty while boasting a sneering, and cheerfully hypocritical, moralism toward the sinful characters.
The first of this new generation of exploitation filmmaking is Black Snake Moan, opening Friday. Written and directed by Hustle & Flow's Craig Brewer, it stars Christina Ricci as a hostile sex addict who finds herself chained to the radiator in the house of a bluesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who is trying to save her soul. Justin Timberlake is her volatile fiancé.
Brewer acknowledges that the R-rated movie is not for the prudish. "There is sexual tension worthy of excitement or terror, depending on who you are," he says. Grindhouse, opening April 6, is a double feature of full-length B-movie thrillers directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, complete with fake trailers and film stock that was aged to mimic the gritty 1970s look.
Rodriquez directs Planet Terror, about a sexy woman (Rose McGowan) with a machine-gun leg who takes out an army of zombies. Tarantino has Death Proof, a reverse of the serial-killer genre. Here, buxom babes team up to slay a hot-rod-driving murderer (Kurt Russell).
Low-budget movies of the 1970s, the golden age of exploitation, turned to shock value because it was "the only thing they had to lure people in," Rodriguez says. "Anything you couldn't get in a mainstream movie, you could get there." Tarantino is even hosting his own exploitation film festival through March and April at Los Angeles' New Beverly Cinema, screening the likes of The Swinging Cheerleaders and Brotherhood of Death.
Black Snake Moan is a big risk for Brewer, but it's an even greater risk for Ricci, who bares practically everything as a character who is alternately sexy, savage and heartbreaking. When the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Ricci told the audience her character "didn't need to be fixed. But she definitely needed someone to show her appropriate love, unconditional love."
Brewer says Ricci vs. Jackson is a battle of equally fearsome characters: "This movie has got attitude, and they're going to be tested morally." With so much temptation, audiences might be, too.