This book, the first of two volumes, will provide a major new history of the British B film, tracing the development of the low-budget supporting feature from the 1927 Films Act (which introduced a quota system for the distribution and exhibition of indigenous product) to the age of television, when B film producers channelled their energies into making TV programmes. Along the way, the authors will address leading producers and studios, B film stars, distributors, the genres and themes that tended to dominate B film production (comedy, horror, crime and fantasy). "Quota Quickies" will include a case study of the B films of Michael Powell. The authors' argument is that the B film was hugely important in British cinema history in offering an opportunity for British actors and technicians to develop their careers, and that the films themselves provided an outlet for the exploration of peculiarly British cultural concerns in an industry traditionally dominated by Hollywood output. They also contend that some of the films stand up well to contemporary viewing and are deserving of critical re-evaluation.

Product Description: Steve Chibnall is Leader of the Film Studies pathway and Co-ordinator of the British Cinema and Television Research Group, De Montfort University, Leicester. He is the author of Get Carter: The British Film Guide 6 (I.B. Tauris).

Product Description: Mike Hodges’ bleak gangster film was released in 1971 to controversy and mixed reviews. Three decades later in the British Film Institute’s millennial poll, the film was voted one of the 20 best British films of all time. Steve Chibnall’s enjoyable and fresh account relates the film to others in its genre like Point Blank and Dirty Harry, profiles the people involved in its making and presents a fascinating analysis of the film text itself...read more

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First published on the fiftieth anniversary of his directorial debut, this book is the first to examine the work of a man once hailed as the finest film-maker to emerge from the British studio system after the Second World War. J. Lee Thompson first came to notice as a talented teenage playwright before entering the film business as a scriptwriter. In the unadventurous world of British film-making in the 1950s, he established himself as a controversial figure known for his innovative ideas and public clashes with the Censor. Before being recruited by Hollywood he made a string of classic films including: Yield to the Night (1956), Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Tiger Bay (1959), North West Frontier (1959) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). Lee Thompson worked in the Hollywood industry into his late eighties, making nearly thirty films as a director and producer between 1960 and 1990. He remains the best known, however, for his first: the immortal thriller Cape Fear (1962). Drawing on extensive interview material, Steve Chibnall traces Lee Thompson's career in British cinema, and offers an analysis of his films which reveals remarkable, and previously unacknowledged, continuities of style and theme. This is a book for anyone interested in the history of British cinema, and particularly those who enjoy the best of 1950s and 1960s film. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This is the first substantial study of British cinema's most neglected genre. Bringing together original work from some of the leading writers on British popular film, this book includes interviews with key directors Mike Hodges (Get Carter) and Donald Cammel (Performance)...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Britain's Greatest Exploitation Film Director! "I deliberately rub people up the wrong way", Pete Walker once remarked, "I want them to come into the cinema and be shocked." And shock them he did. No other British film-maker achieved the level of transgression that Walker regularly delivered to cinema-goers in the 1970s...read more