For the longest time I always thought that The Room was one of the worst movies I have ever seen, after the viewing of Maniac, I was completely wrong about that statement. After watching Maniac, I realize how bad a film can truly can be. There was barely a plot to Maniac and the only time I figured out what the plot of the film was was after I read the article The Prince of Exploitation, and this allowed me to better understand the film as a whole. Although the article helped me to better understand the film, it did not make the film better, the film is still awful and there is nothing that could help to improve the film in the way it was edited and also the way it was filmed. There are so many cuts in this film and sometimes there is just random shots that make no sense at all. The second screening of American Grindhouse allowed me to better understand a different side of film that I have never seen before. I didn’t know about Grindhouse part of film that much, so this documentary opened my eyes to a new portion of film history that I had never known about.

Before watching American Grindhouse, I never knew how many different kinds of exploitation films there was. There was so many exploitation films that I wrote down in my notes that I don’t even think I got them all during the course of the documentary. The fact that there was this many of these films surprises me. I would think that the reason why this surprises me is because of how much our society has changed, today our society hates to see anything sexual in public and even in film anything that has sex or nudity in it is usually looked down upon. Before the Motion Picture Content Rating System, it seems like studios could have gotten away with so much more in film and wouldn’t have seen a negative reaction. But today, it seems like films that are rated NC-17 or R are usually compared differently to a PG-13 film. There is barely any NC-17 films released nowadays and that is because NC-17 is mostly porn or extreme violence. R rated films are getting way more attention nowadays and some of these films remind me a bit of these grindhouse films, controversial and meant to appease a certain audience. The reason for this lack of type of grindhouse film mostly would have to come down to the fact that Hollywood tries to make PG-13 movies to appease the mainstream audience and to avoid putting anything controversial in these films to make everyone mad at them. Although this seems to be changing a bit and we appear to be getting more films that could cause controversy and appease to adults more than the general public. 

American Grindhouse made me realize that there was a time when a time when some people in Hollywood tried to exploitate a large portion of the general public to just get a quick buck. This has mostly gone away, but every so often it seems like there is a film that brings back this exploitation and attempt to make some quick money. Maniac was one of the first films mentioned in the documentary and after watching the whole documentary I understand why it was placed there. It was placed there because it is one of the first grindhouse films and attempts to make a quick buck through exploitation.