In cinema, “exploitation” is loosely defined as a subcategory of lo-fi B-movies exploring lurid subject matter in a hard genre context. Exploitation had its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s with groundbreaking yet extremely controversial hits likeCannibal Holocaust,The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, andI Spit on Your Grave.
There are plenty of subgenres within the realm of exploitation: slashers, women-in-prison, spaghetti westerns. Blaxploitation movies likeCoffyandShaftempowered Black audiences with badass vigilantes played by Pam Grier and Richard Roundtree.Carsploitation movies likeVanishing PointandDeath Race 2000generated thrills by crashing muscle cars into each other.
RELATED:This Vince Vaughn Movie Is An Underrated Action Masterpiece
In today’s franchise-focused industry, exploitation has all but faded from the cinematic landscape. Directors occasionally come along with a tribute to a long-forgotten exploitation genre.Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 double featureGrindhouseis a throwback to exploitation. 2013’sSonno Profondois an affectionate homage to Italian giallo movies. But, as a prominent underground cult phenomenon, exploitation is pretty much dead.
S. Craig Zahler’s Movies Hark Back To Exploitation Classics
But as long asS. Craig Zahlerkeeps making movies, it’s not gone completely. With hard-hitting, ultraviolent gems likeBone Tomahawk,Brawl in Cell Block 99, andDragged Across Concrete, Zahler has been bringingthe gritty, violent, boundary-pushing sensibilityof exploitation into the modern age.
After spending years working as a novelist and musician, Zahler moved into filmmaking and made his directorial debut with 2015’sBone Tomahawk. Kurt Russell and Patrick Wilson lead a band of cowboys out into the wilderness, where they’re kidnapped, tortured, and eaten by cannibals. Zahler followed that up with 2017’sBrawl in Cell Block 99, in which Vince Vaughn’s ex-con reluctantly returns to crime when his girlfriend becomes pregnant. He’s caught and sent to prison, and as if missing the birth and early years of his child isn’t bad enough, his girlfriend is held hostage and he’s forced to get himself transferred to a filthy underground prison block so he can murder a protected crime lord to earn her freedom. He followed that up with 2018’sDragged Across Concrete, in which Vaughnco-stars with Mel Gibsonas a pair of cops who are suspended without pay for police brutality and plan to rip off the perpetrators of a bank heist to make end’s meet.
In all three of these movies, Zahler has defined his directorial style as a fresh take on exploitation. He uses modern filmmaking techniques and special effects capabilities to make the violence even gnarlier and more hauntingly realistic than it was in exploitation classics likeMandingoandLady Snowblood. Much like the exploitation directors of yesteryear, Zahler has used blunt, uncompromising action filmmaking to tackle contemporary issues like police brutality and the effectiveness of rehabilitation.Zahler’s idiosyncratic voicehas brought out previously unseen talents in well-established stars like Vince Vaughn and Don Johnson.
Zahler’s Greatest Asset Is Inventive Storytelling
The greatest asset of Zahler’s movies – and, indeed, any exploitation movies – is his use of inventive storytelling techniques to bring out to best in hard-edged genre material.Bone Tomahawkstarts off as a standard westernabout a sheriff and his posse going out onto the lawless frontier to rescue the town doctor. But it quickly becomes an all-out gore-fest when they’re abducted and dragged back to a cave by a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals. To audiences going in without watching a trailer or reading a plot summary, this is a wildly unexpected left turn.
The fiercely effective plotting ofBrawl in Cell Block 99is driven by brutal hand-to-hand combat. The messy fight scenes are visceral and uniquely choreographed and Zahler captures them mostly throughunflinching long takes. But they’re not just there to look cool; Zahler came up with a plot that has clearly established stakes and a compelling protagonist with a universally relatable goal (to save his girlfriend from an experimental abortion procedure) and it relies entirely on that protagonist beating and gouging his way to the darkest, deadliest corners of the prison system.
With its tale of gunslinging antiheroes fighting over a bag of gold,Dragged Across Concreteis a classic western in the mold ofThe Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It’s a straightforward heist story told from multiple perspectives. There’s a long sequence involving a new mother struggling to return to work and leave her baby with her husband at home after delaying it for weeks. At her husband’s insistence, she goes back to work at a bank and it turns out to be the day of the heist. The scenes establishing her family life initially seem like an extended non-sequitur, but they end up making her death extra heartbreaking.
The Beauty Of Zahler’s Movies Is Their Simplicity
The beauty of the storytelling across Zahler’s filmography is in its simplicity. His scripts have concise, clear-cut conflicts, allowing him to focus squarely on his characters and their dynamics. His premises and situations arepure pulp. His style feels like Elmore Leonard meets Stephen King. Even the action sequences in his non-horror films are so gruesome and intense that they border on horror.
Zahler keeps pushing the envelope with his graphic depictions of violence. InBone Tomahawk, a guy is ripped in half down the middle. InBrawl in Cell Block 99, a guy’s skull is scraped across the ground. InDragged Across Concrete, a guy retrieves a key that another guy swallowed by cutting open his torso, following his intestines to his stomach, and carefully opening up his stomach in an excruciatingly dragged-out sequence.
Zahler Has Three New Movies In The Pipeline
In a recent interview withWord Balloon, Zahler announced three new movies he’s working on. The first isHug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child, based on his own novel, about a deformed orphan who’s adopted by some sadistic scientists as a pet. The movie will reportedly be shot in black-and-white, run at three hours long, andthe Jim Henson Company is involvedbecause the lead character will be an elaborate animatronic puppet.
The second isFury of the Strongman, a script he’s been shopping around. A gritty, ultraviolent neo-noir in the vein ofBrawl in Cell Block 99andDragged Across Concrete,Fury of the Strongmanrevolves around a traveling circus in the 1970s that runs afoul of nefarious locals in Louisiana.
The third is a mystery project, with Zahler revealing no details except that it’s a horror movie. It would be great to see a nod to the giallo subgenre mixing the pulpy crime stories ofBrawlandDraggedwiththe blood-drenched terror ofBone Tomahawk.
Based on these upcoming projects, Zahler isn’t done with his ongoing modernization of exploitation. In a cinematic climate that increasingly plays it safe, Zahler is making movies with violence thatmakes Tarantino look tameand antiheroes that make Travis Bickle look like a saint.
