B film

Low-budget film originally produced to fill the second half of a double bill. B-film production began in the 1930s with the aim of providing a value-for-money entertainment package that would tempt viewers back into US cinemas during the Depression. Usually the B film would be shown together with a more prestigious A feature, a newsreel, and a cartoon, all for the price of a single entry.

Development Despite the minimal production schedules, narrative constraints imposed by generic material, and limited financial resources, for the better film-makers, the B film became an arena of artistic creativity and technical and stylistic innovation, serving as a proving ground for the likes of the producer Val Lewton, the cinematographers John Alton and Nicholas Musuraca, and the directors Jacques Tourneur, Edgar G Ulmer, Joseph H Lewis, Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray, and Samuel Fuller. Such film-makers worked on a string of inventive westerns, horror films, and films noirs throughout the 1940s.

Influence The work of the classical Hollywood B-film directors was influential on the generation of New Wave film-makers who emerged in Europe and the USA during the 1960s and 1970s. The legacy of B-film narratives and aesthetics is evident in both mainstream and independent feature films of the 1970s-90s, from Spielberg's Indiana Jones trilogy, which pays homage to the B-film serials of the classical Hollywood era, to the low-budget films of Sam Raimi or the producer Roger Corman.