I was a kid just as the drive-in craze was coming to a close. I can recall packing into our giant boat of a Chrysler station wagon and trekking out to see some first-run movies with my family back in the early 80s. I vividly remember seeing The Muppets Take Manhattan, Superman III (which terrified young me to no end), and Return of the Jedi on the massive screens of the Starlight Drive-In that stood for decades after the projectors were shut down and the lot converted into a gigantic swap-meet. Unfortunately, I was far too young to take in the legendary exploitation fare of the period. Sometimes I wish I had been born fifteen or twenty years earlier so I could have experienced the heyday of AIP, New World, and their ilk firsthand, but living through the dawn of the home video boom wasn’t a bad trade off. The new book A Cut Below: A Celebration of B Horror Movies, 1950s-1980s by Scott Drebit is a look back at the height of the drive-in era to the dawn of home video and the kinds of horror that slipped into the cracks that are sometimes dubbed “schlock,” but the movies presented here are so much more than that.
For years, Scott Drebit wrote a weekly column over at Daily Dead called “Drive-In Dust Offs” and the book is an expansion on that idea. As he notes in the acknowledgements to A Cut Below, a few of those essays have been given an update and shiny new polish for the book, but most entries are brand spanking new. The book is divided into twelve sections that Drebit dubs “festivals,” each focusing on a particular subgenre popular during the time period covered by the book. He then chooses five titles for each festival, each of which would make a hell of a weekend marathon. For example, “Festival Six: Terror in Technotown,” all about technology run amok, covers The Fly (1958), Westworld (1973), Demon Seed (1977), Evilspeak (1981), and Videodrome (1983). Some of the other festivals include “The Animal Killdom” (animal attack movies), “The Blood on Satan’s B-Roll” (satanic horror), “Back Bacon Bloodbath” (Canadian exploitation), and “If You’re Undead and You Know It, Clap Your Hand” (Zombies) just to name a few.
Most of the titles in A Cut Below will be familiar to those who spent all their time at their trusty old mom and pop video store browsing the horror section with or without their parents’ knowledge or permission, but that’s doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily seen them all. A few choice slices from the top tier can be found in its pages—Creepshow, Videodrome, The Incredible Shrinking Man—but as the title implies, most of the book is devoted to the cut below, the deeper cuts every horror fan craves after devouring the big titles. Reading Drebit’s sales pitches have prompted me to finally hit play on more than a few movies that have been sitting in my watchlist and motivating me to add several more to said list. I consider myself a savvy seeker of hidden gems from the era covered here, but I still found a few titles I’d never even heard of, which is always gratifying for a treasure hunter like me. Peppered throughout the official entries are mentions of even deeper cuts that hint at the possibility of what would be a very welcome follow-up of cuts below the Cut Below.
Drebit’s writing style is breezy and conversational, making A Cut Below an absolute joy to read. Most chapters offer some cleverly worded setup of the plot, but make sure to stop before entering spoiler territory. He wisely assumes that many of the movies discussed have not been seen by every reader. He also offers insight into the making of most of the films, but this aspect never overstays its welcome. Occasionally he offers some personal anecdotes about his own experiences with a film, be it at the drive-in, the grindhouse, or the video store but again only to underscore the impact of a specific movie. The key aspect of each entry is that the writing never takes itself too seriously. Yes, it is factually accurate and attentive to detail, but it is also fun, injected with a great deal of wit and humor that compels the reader to keep telling themself to read “just one more.”
Drebit’s affection for these titles is clear but he’s also not above the loving jab that comes from the true fan. In his introduction to 1980’s The Children, for example, he begins with this little elbow in the ribs of not only the movie, but his fellow film writers (admittedly like myself) who seek out subtext in absolutely everything. “The Children deals with the disintegration of the family unit and the decay of modern society. Just kidding! The Children is about radioactive kids who like to give hugs and burn people up real good.” He then discusses how some movies do have subtext and “some horror films are content to just show children having their hands cut off with a samurai sword.”
Personally speaking, I’m generally kind of a slow reader and always have been. The old ADHD and a touch of dyslexia can make it a chore at times. But I absolutely devoured A Cut Below, blazing through it in just a few sittings. Of course, that’s not the only way to read it. It welcomes a leisurely pace as well. Take in a festival at a time if you choose, or skip around from entry to entry, reliving favorites or discovering something new to you. However you decide to take it in, A Cut Below will without a doubt prove rewarding. It is something akin to Danny Peary’s Cult Movies books from the early 1980s, covering the waterfront of movies that were much maligned when released but now considered classics, to those with small but rabid fanbases, to those that are still maligned but have something worth checking out. In the final analysis, A Cut Below is a joyful celebration of all things low budget, wild, wonderful, and above all…weird, and this party is a rager.
A Cut Below: A Celebration of B Horror Movies, 1950s-1980s by Scott Drebit is currently available at all the major online book retailers or directly from the publisher, McFarland at mcfarlandbooks.com.
