It is fun to browse at Reckless

Reckless Video does have standard genre sections for Comedy, Action, Drama, etc, but one of the things that makes the store special (and a lot of fun to browse through) is our array of nooks, crannies, and subsections... sometimes small and sometimes not-so-small sections of movies among the more normal categories that might be just what you're looking for (even if you didn't know you were looking for it). Finding the right section-- the one that really captures your imagination-- might keep your movie-watching schedule booked for a month, so feel free to wander around and see if anything catches your eye.

This page will always be highlighting one of Reckless Video's spotlight sections. Right now, it's...

'sploitation

(located in Edgy Indy)

 

Recently celebrated by the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse double feature, "exploitation" has been a part of cinema long before it was canonized my maverick DIY filmmakers in the 1970s. Entries in the genre go back as far as the drug paranoia films of the 1930's, such as camp classics Reefer Madness and The Cocaine Fiends, through the launch of 50's filmmakers like Roger Corman and Russ Meyer, into the grindhouse 70's, and beyond.

Often relegated to private theaters and B-movie drive-in fare, a number of exploitation pictures became underground classics simply for presenting alternative viewpoints and opinions that weren't represented by the Hollywood mainstream. The "blaxploitation" subgenre, for example, provided films like Shaft and Coffee, with strong African-American protagonists, never allowed to lead in mainstream cinema.

There are a few subsections within the exploitation heading: Reckless has had sections for low budget director Roger Corman and border-pushing film company Troma. Both sections have been moved over to the exploitation section, as the long, long resume of Corman (including many "creatures from the deep" low budget horror pictures and ex-adult actresses) and the Fangoria-trumpeted bad taste and social lunacy of Troma films are both huge additions to the exploitation cannon.

The creation of the section also inspired us to gather all of the Takashi Miike films in the store and give him a subsection within the exploitation section as well. Probably best known for the suspenseful Audition and the visceral splatter of Ichi the Killer, Miike is a prolific filmmaker with a particularly graphic style, and as unashamed an exploitation director as any making films today.

Reckless is casting the Exploitation net fairly wide, even including a copy of the hyper-stylized Sin City and Gregg Araki's queasy The Doom Generation (though we agreed it would be a bad idea to start up a section that contains more than one "women in prison" film and not include Paul Verhoven's hysterical Showgirls).

The Exploitation section currently resides in the middle room at Reckless Video, on the same wall as Edgy Indie.