Apocalyptic projections of the New York-based 70-80s exploitation movies: Government, Ethnic Groups and Political representations of Justice,

Crime and Law Assoc.-Pr. Dr. Frdric Gimello-Mesplomb

Department of the Arts, Lorraine University, Metz, France Frdric Gimello-Mesplomb www.gimello.fr gimello@univ-metz.fr Mob. + 33 6 88 42 19 74
Frdric Gimello-Mesplomb, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at the Lorraine University (Metz, France) and researcher in Lorraine Laboratory of Social Sciences (2L2S). Professor Gimellos research works concerns Economics of cultural policy, Film policies (social and aesthetic stakes of cinema State aid systems for film industry), and cultural reception of American popular movies. He is author of Hollywood spectacular action movies during the Reagan
area: politics, narrative and ideology (Le cinma des annes Reagan, un modle Hollywoodien ?

Editions Nouveau Monde, 2007) and French cinema of the fantastic from the 1930s to the present: A
socioeconomic perspective (L'invention d'un genre: le cinma fantastique franais: Socioanalyse

d'une production artistique, LHarmattan, 2012).

The author wishes to thank Jean-Marc Micciche for the first version of this paper and the numerous movies examples and David Lobel for his helpful translation support.

Apocalyptic projections of the New York-based 70-80s exploitation movies: Government, Ethnic Groups and Political representations of Justice, Crime and Law

The 70-80s have produced copious exploitation movies flirting with Apocalypse themes. This paper explores some key figures of the politics, crime, justice and law offered in (post)apocalyptic New Yorkbased movies. We examine particularly the vertical geography of justice; the urban vigilante hero; survivalist themes and the figure of local democracy.

Keywords: apocalyptic projections, post-apocalyptic movies, Exploitation movies, Political representations, Justice

The economic context In the nineteen sixties and seventies, the grindhouses were local movie halls which showed uninterrupted independent films of series B quality, today known as exploitation flicks or exploitation films: blaxploitation, sexploitation, kungfuxploitation, nunsploitation, nazixploitation, etc.1 The term grindhouse film was at the same time used as a generic term to designate the films shown in these places. It might be said that these were places where they caught on because, in the middle of the Sixties, the majority of these films were produced and diffused in the second or third part of the program at drives-in. Since the great urban areas did not have sufficient space to establish drive-ins, these films were thus shown in old theatres reconverted into grindhouse.2 Some companies focused on independent production produced doubles (generally long versions) of their films especially designed for this alternative network.

New York was without any doubt the American city where the cinematic genre was to develop with the most success during the period of the Sixties to the Eighties, providing today for researchers an astonishing cultural portrait. When, at the end of the Sixties, benefiting from falling into disuse of the Hays code, independent producers began to offer the first adults only movies, they attempted to recombine this with the itinerant exploitation extant through the United States. Not being able to raise the production costs on the traditional exploitation circuit, they adopted a management logic which aimed at distinction from the majors without being marginalized. Curiously, the question of quality was at the time a primary concern of the various movie creators. They were necessarily disassociated from the major studios by their extreme themes, their genres and their incredible technical processes intended to attract a new public in search of the forbidden. The forbidden, the transgressor, was the new ingredient belonging to genres already codified in the past in screen and literature (films noirs, crime stories, fantasy or science fiction) which come to tend towards exploitation from then on existing, in a competitive market. This logic animates and justifies the establishment of exploitation films, deliberately trying to disturb, populist, and vulgar. The better because this does not embarrass or upset moral precepts or taboos, because it exploits without shame and often without understanding all the pressure points of American society, and in particular that of the big cities, the cinema of exploitation develops and finds a form of legitimacy which is denominated in its turn into currents and sub-genera. The abundance of this production nourished movie-lovers arriving late on the scene, which led to a kind of worship a posteriori, revaluing their objects while latching onto aesthetic aspects considered to be more kitsch. This posthumous rediscovery in the late 90s, one of the most active directors among whom was Tarantino3, caused, as a counter-effect, a form of disdain on the part

of academics for these objects of the counter-culture. And rare are the occasions, in the academic field, to speak with seriousness about these films which are other than this. A geography of justice Apocalypses are one of the oldest narrative forms, and they have informed some of the most imaginative and terrifying imagery in cultural history. So, as notices Conrad Ostwalt, links between movies and religion are more than obvious seeing the copious literacy produced on this issue (Secular Apocalypse in recent Hollywood Film 18-19). As an example, Jerome F. Shapiro presents The Terminator blockbuster as an apocalyptic bomb film. Many elements of the apocalyptic genre have wonderful twists that show the plasticity and vitality of the genre (203). On another hand, Benjamin Urrutia points in this movie several influences linked to chapters 12:2-6 in The revelation of John (The Apocalypse) and notably the figure if the messianic hero(40). However, following Charles P. Mitchell and his meticulous Guide to apocalyptic cinema, apocalyptic films would concern not only Religious area but seven specific categories: Religious or Supernatural; but also Celestial collisions, Solar or orbital Disruption, Nuclear war and radioactive Fallout, Germ warfare or Pestilence, Alien device or Invasion, and Scientific Miscalculation (11-12). Mitchell suggests also some miscellaneous intra-categories because, is somewhat of a grab bag that required to account for a few oddball title outside the regular categories (12). This is the reason we focus primarily on this paper on the social/political climate emerging from such fictions factually more in post-apocalyptic than apocalyptic films because world ending events create a new social contract interesting to be analysed from the socio-political point of view. From the beginning of the 20th century, various apocalypse theories in literature were turning around the theme of self-destruction of mankind, a darker approach emerged in Science Fiction during and after World War I such as in Jack

Londons The Scarlet Plague (1914), George Allan Englands Darkness and Dawn (1914), Anderson Grahams The Collapse of Homo Sapiens (1923), Fowler Wrights Deluge (1928), H.G. Wells When Worlds Collide (1932) or George Stewards Earth Abides (1949). In cinema, Claire P. Curtis notes that apocalyptic events by their very character are understood to destroy functional governments, food distribution, organized medical care and the infrastructure on which we rely for most of what we do... Apocalyptic fiction provides a window into that imaginative possibility. The novels focus on the very idea and possibility of starting over, with all the potential hope and utopian imaginings that starting over implies (5). Apart the biblical issue, a recurrent theme of post-apocalyptic fictions is the reference on the scale of values connecting justice and morals in the New York social structure. Why New York? Because in these fictions the city is generally showed as the symbol of the organized life of ordinary people (especially in survivalist fictions) while metaphoric function of Washington, DC, is to reflect the seat of power simply observes Kim Newman (Apocalypse Movies: End of the World Cinema 15). So, the first target of directors focusing on New York relates to the dysfunctions of the local and domestic democracy, in particular the corruption of the mayors and directors of the police services of the big cities. It is not to be forgotten that the Seventies are remembered for a wave of delinquency and corruption which affected large American cities, and which led to a crisis of confidence without precedent of the small-scale property-holders (as well as the massive purchase of firearms by private individuals), a fact which explains in large part the rout of the Carter administration in the elections of 1981, following Kaspi (145). Contrary to mainly of the 90s and post 9/11 movies painting a neo-positivist view of Power and Central administrations, the fictions of this time paint a severe portrait of elected officials, introduced as political cowards and

ineffective in their jobs vis--vis the rise of urban delinquency and crime. Representation of the chief magistrate of New York does not escape the rule. The genre is inclined towards the realistic representation of individuals from the New York middle-classes, which are driven to making their own justice themselves. In Messenger off death (Jack Lee Thompson, 1988)4, the chief of the New York City Police Department is introduced for the first time in the film at a socialite event. Once seated at the dinner table, he announces his decision to run in the municipal elections, and seems to make little of a telephone call from one of his subordinates informing him of a murder. A scathing I already told you not to disturb me unless its important seems to want to end this short conversation before it can be elaborated upon. In The Taking off Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 19745) a very similar situation arises when the mayor - confined to bed with the flu but absorbed in watching a reality TV game show on television - is extremely opposed when his assistant calls him and informs of a serious hostage crisis in the New York subway. Indeed, we are not literarily in typical post-apocalyptic situations, but the themes turning around anarchy are the foundation of exploitation movies and are frequent to describe a convincing apocalyptic future in a realistic (and worrying) way. For example, the exploitation film flirts thus with morality, but divides also the geography of the city of the apocalyptic life horizontally and vertically on two levels: the social with the dominated confined to the underground of the city (subway, sewers, underground locations, etc), and the racial (the plots of the most violent sci-fi and post-apocalyptic films exploiting the notion of creeping anarchy as related to the ghettoisation of certain districts). Judith B. Kerman observes films like Escape from New York and above all the Scotts Blade Runner represent the tip of this iceberg (16). John Beard confirms the Eighties have been a mirror for social representations of human poverty:

Besides James Cameron's The Terminator (1984)-which also presents a bombedout future but one where humanity is driven to the edge of destruction by fleshclothed killing machines-consider this same trend toward a similar future in movie after movie of lesser quality. These films lack the creativity of design or the budget to match the look of a Blade Runner, but cheaper versions of apocalyptic futures and junk technology attest to the popularity and commonality of all such futures in the audience's imagination. [] That punk future seems alive with possibilities (if also vaguely threatening) and much to be desired when compared to the imaginative poverty offered, unfortunately, by much of contemporary culture. Perhaps American audiences have already had their brush with fin-de sicle despair and disappointment. We had our end-of-the-century confrontation at the movies during the Eighties. (12-13)

In C.H.U.D. (Douglas Cheek, 1985) a SF low-budget production treating the topics of the trafficking of organs and/or radioactive waste under cover of suspicion deaths6, the city is threatened by mutants, in fact homeless people living in the sewers and victims of toxic effuse, who have been led there by less than scrupulous contractors. In the same vein, in Street Trash (Jim Muro, 1986), a strange liquid of unknown origin literally blows up the homeless living in refuse tip. Such pretexts allow Douglas Cheek and Jim Muro to stigmatize two urban figures: in the first place the figure of the homeless person, clearly an image for insecurity; and also the drifts of pollution and lack of hygiene supposedly typical in large American cities. The sci-fi or postapocalyptic exploitation film contributes to a view of individuals of a social class in a system where a certain distribution of wealth is at work along social and racial caste lines. The permeability of the two universes provides subject matter for creation of plots that denounce and finally condemn those who may go so far as to be freed from their social condition or their geographical and racial membership. This geography of justice attaches itself to certain places that come up again and again.

In Executive decision directed by Stuart Baird (1996), Arab terrorists divert a civilian aircraft and plot to explode a bomb over New York. Through the catastrophe and science fiction film genres (the two kinds tending to frequently cross over each other), New York becomes a symbolic cathartic emblem. It stands as the future of the United States. These films attempt to warn against the loss of the principles of democracy and of individual freedoms, founding elements of the American nation, as happens in The Siege (Edward Zwick, 1997). In the foreground, the Statue of Liberty is depicted as a rampart against fear and the unknown. It is not thus so astonishing that this monument is evoked in many other films (Planet of the Apes, New York 19977, Ghosbusters 28, X-Men). To this place so full of symbolism can be added the offices of the UN as well as the business district around the World Trade Center, also places frequently evoked, and pivots of national or international crises: The Peacemaker (Mimi Leder, 1997); The Interpreter (Sidney Pollack, 2005); 25 hours (Spike Lee, 2002) or Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2006) all employ this device. In these cultural productions of the Seventies and Eighties, New York seems a mythical place, its gigantic buildings confer on the city a titanic power in which allusion to biblical morals is never very far away (`God told me to', such is the refrain of the insane snipers of God, in an astonishing film by Larry Cohen (Gold told me to, 1976). This moralistic vision of the city one finds various versions of also when in question is police corruption, as in the two films by Sidney Lumet which tackle the subject: Serpico (1974) and Prince off the city (1981). The topics of political corruption and stock trading are not of course exclusive to exploitation films of the Seventies; they will in fact provide subject matter thereafter for the production of more ambitious films on the subject, as produced by Hollywood studios: Copland, City Hall, People I Know, Gangs of New York; Wall Street; etc). On the other hand, it may be noted that the great

majority of these films use the figure of the double: the figure of Apollo (a figure of intellect, moral direction and nobility) versus that of Dionysos (the god of revelry and satisfaction of the hidden impulse, even of corrupting evil). The confrontation between these two figures is presented as being inevitable and will be carried to conclusion in a final combat scene, as in Year off the dragon, (Michael Cimino, 1985) or Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1989). Of course, if the great majority of these films exploit this duality head on, for some they are their signature trademark (whether fantasy or realist), others, such as Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, 1975) or Abel Ferrara (The Driller Killer, 1979; Ms 45, 1981; Fear City, 1984; China Girl, 1987) do not hesitate to paint figures that are ambiguous and tragic, characteristic of crime films or of film noir (insofar as the main characters are often themselves victims devoured by the fantastic nebula of the Big Apple).

New York-based Anticipation movies, an apology for urban vigilante heros? If the blockbusters make of New York the space of a telluric combat, if the prestigious films of the studios of Hollywood employ the arsenal of all the great humanist causes, the exploitation film early on put forward into view the most manifest fears of the large urban metropolises via two sub-genera: the vigilante films of rape and those of revenge, both in fashion at the time of the success of the Death Wish films series, starring Charles Bronson (1974-1995). The urban vigilante film frontiers are close to the hard-boiled detective formula (Dirty Harry), but also anticipation and postapocalyptical movies because their common social representation of anarchy. Postapocalyptic storylines take place in the aftermath of a disaster that justifies a civilization's turn towards dystopian like behaviours, but its not an immutable requisite, and some post-apocalyptic or simply anticipation fictions are produced in a very

realistic way like the European/French productions La Jete (Chris Marker, 1962), The Last Battle (Luc Besson, 1983) or Jeunet's Delicatessen (1991). Concerning American production, films are built around the subject of the chronic insecurity of the American big cities, as the credits of the opening of Death Wish II (1982) show clearly. They also function as a deforming mirror of delinquency and of gangs, of precariousness (the vagrant appears in these productions as a nightmarish figure), prostitution, racism and xenophobia. The traditional reference points are deliberately scrambled since, in similar contexts elsewhere, the figure, usually a reassuring one, of the police officer can be transformed into a monstrous figure, as in the case of the main character in Bad Lieutenant (1991) by Abel Ferrara and especially in the Maniac COP series by William Lustig (1988-1995). In addition it is not so rare to find the majority of these elements all in the same exploitation film. This typology of criminality makes it possible for a whole side of exploitation cinema to give to New York the appearance of the urban jungle, screening the end of law and traditional justice power. Gary Hoppenstand observes the urban vigilante protagonist can defined simply as a middle-class hero who takes the law into his or her own hands in order counteract the vicious threat of crime and the terrible acts of evil, violence-loving criminals (150). The importance of the gun as an iconic symbol of the popular urban vigilante film is also underlined in such productions: in Death Wish III (1985), Charles Bronson goes down into the street with a rocket launcher and machine gun dating from the Second World War. He is helped in his purifying crusade by a militia of vigilantes girded with the goal of cleaning up' the town of its youth gangs. Hoppenstand notes also that A brief scene near the beginning of Dirty Harry nicely emphasizes not only the relationship in the film between Harry Callahan and his .44 Magnum, but also highlights how the urban vigilante hero's very identify is qualified by his gun (155). So, if the figure of the double (the hero against

his nemesis) is a skilful device and this especially for A-listed film, to remain within standards ideologically acceptable, the figure of the dispenser of justice must also be one of extreme and radical character. In Gold hold to me (Larry Cohen, 1976) anonymous individuals are struck with a quasi-mystical revelation and set out to kill without obvious reason the passers-by, from the tops of New York buildings. In a psychological thriller written by Larry Cohen and directed by Joel Schumacher, Phone Booth (2002), an arrogant and amoral officer clerk (Colin Farrell) is trapped by an invisible sniper (Kiefer Sutherland) in a phone booth and must, under threat of death, expiate his faults and sins in public. The insane sniper seems a purifying angel, sweeping by its action all the physical and moral corruption of the modern metropolises away. This idea is strongly present in many New York-based films, and is undoubtedly at the base of the self-defence genre. The feeling of impunity (felt by both criminals and juvenile delinquents), the chronic impotence and police inefficiency of the judiciary authorities (in Vigilante, by William Lustig, hooligan killers of children are released during the course of their trial for lack of evidence9), are bearers of anxiety-raising fear. This situation of extreme brutality leads the citys inhabitants to authorize acceptable alternatives (a purifying angel, dispensers of justice, armed militias, etc) and view these amoral solutions on the level of miracle cures. To understand how a genre as ambiguous as the cinema of self-defense could stigmatize at this juncture the figure of the young person to the point of confusing this with the figure of the delinquent, it is necessary to turn back a number of decades. In the Forties and Fifties, film noir and crime films were vehicles for the primary prototypes of urban decline. New York for this reason played a paramount role in this domain and was used by Sci-fi literature as backdrop for setting in scene a whole gallery of characters living in the margins of normality. Detached from these marginal types, a

new figure makes an appearance in the middle of the nineteen-fifties, the juvenile delinquent. Confined in the big crime films to characters of second rank (Dead End, William Wyler, 1939; Angel with dirty faces, Michael Curtiz, 1938), the teenager still remains, in the 50s, a figure that escapes ideological recovery. Although the subject of the accession of young New York teenagers to the statute of gangster is tackled in many crime films (China Girl, Abel Ferrara, 1987); Once upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1983); State of Grace (Phil Joanou, 1990); Sleepers (Barry Levinson, 1996), the exploitation film seizes on this phenomenon by sprinkling the grindhouse theatres with B-and Z-list films, these becoming sub-genera, with their own codes and prototypes: Hell's angels, biker movies, horror movies and especially the gang movies, whose sphere of action is frequently located in New York10. The various forms of New York delinquency find means of expression in the very least extreme apocalyptical representations: vigilant movies11, Rape and Revenge12, Survival Films13, Vetsxploitation14, Blaxploitation15, Gangxploitation16, Horror movies17, exploitation whodunnits18 and above all Nukesploitation (postnuke movies)19.

How to survive in New York post-apocalyptic life? : A political sociology of postnuke movies Recycling famous themes of science fiction literacy, the poverty row category known as nukesploitation (or postnuke for post-nuclear movies) was much in vogue in the 1950s but knows a revival in Italy and US in the beginning of the 1980, following the consecutive success of The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1978), The Road warrior (Georges Miller, 1981) and Escape from New York (John Carpenter, 1981), post-atomic films situated in a time of flux. The society described is that of men who, following an apocalyptic event of grand order which might be also a form of social apocalypse where the street takes the upper hand against the law -, return in a wild state, as

barbarians. The social structures are recreated around small communities of survivors, communities whose size depends primarily on the number of observers that the budget of the film makes it possible to pay, seldom more than twenty or so. An international genre par excellence, the films given the label postnuke remain all the same within the privileged field of the American Z-list production: Robot Holocaust (Charles Band, 1980); Gangland 2010 (Art Camacho, 2000) but also of certain Italian low budget productions situating New York as the theatre of this disillusioned vision (2019: After the fall off New York, Sergio Martino, 1983); Bronx Warriors 1 and 2 (Enzo G Castellari, 1982 and 1983); Rats : night of terror (Bruno Mattei, 1983). Of course, the anticipationist argument (a future merely a few years hence: 1997 for Carpenter, 2010 for Art Camacho, 2019 for Sergio Martino, etc.) functions with difficulty and is useful especially, in the large majority of the cases, as a pretext for the accumulation of extremely violent action scenes, more evocative for the spectator of a worrying reality which is lived already now in the present. While exploiting the disproportions typical of such futurist anticipatory films, postnuke movies offer an obvious denouement to the viewer, who can thus easily identify the recognizable figures of otherness by their getup, their modes of expression and their origins both racial and social. It is moreover a recurring theme in the great majority of urban exploitation films located in New York to stigmatize fear vis--vis aliens, such as the extraterrestrials in Brothers from another planet (John Sayles, 1982). This latter collides in particular with dimensions of social prejudice because the alien is a black person from Harlem, who furthermore is homeless. If the great majority of exploitation films do not bring to the surface any critical discourse, some testify, on the other hand, to a rather astonishing observation about New York society. In The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979), the principal couple in the film

meet in a subway car two other couples, from higher social classes. From the same city, of the same age, they remain all the same very different and end up confronting one another in glacial manner. The departure, precipitates as it is, of the yuppie couples, sets a seal on this impotence of intra-generational communication. In this film, confrontation between two worlds that oppose each other appears in the end inevitable, even if this is rather an ideological confrontation than a physical one, of class. The shock of cultures and the differences in social conditions are all the more captivating in that they are largely supported by the plots of these films. Other films also exploit this same motif. In Class 1984 (Mark Lester, 1982), the hard version of Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955), Perry King plays a professor of music (obviously sensitive to left-wing ideas, as shown by the dialogue he undertakes with Roddy McDowall) confronted in his college by a band of punk nihilists. In the first Death Wish (Michael Winner, 1974), Charles Bronson plays the role of an architect. His profession is all the more symbolic in that he works for the good of the community and takes part in good faith in the tentacular expansion of big cities (but also involuntarily in the creation of all the ghettos, which will, ironically, become the origin of his various problems). This confrontation takes a more combative and reactive turn when exploitation films portray a New York dispenser of justice who is also a Vietnam war veteran. In The Exterminator (James Glickenhaus, 1980), Robert Ginty depicts a former soldier who, after a few years, finds another veteran (Steve James) and decides to avenge his death. In the same vein, the actor William Devane in Rolling Thunder (a 1977 film written by the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader) plays one of the most disturbed characters of the vetsploitation genre, neurotic, suicidal, paranoiac and obsessed with weapons. On the other hand, when vetsploitaion combines with blaxploitation, the discourse changes tone and stigmatizes instead Afro-Americans reduced to becoming

powerful criminals by holding up, for example, a bank in Dead Presidents (Albert and Allen Hughes, 1995). The great force of exploitation cinema is its capacity to be in direct sync with the social events and social topics described. James Berger recalls this type of politico-apocalyptic thinking has had major political effects both through key figures like Ronald Reagan (who remarked in 1970 that everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ), Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson (135), while Mervyn F. Bendle draws attention to the effects via the extensive grassroots Christian organizations supporting them (13).When one looks carefully at the majority of these films, and notes that the filming conditions are generally makeshift and offer the advantage of providing the spectator with the authentic decor and realities of New York, as well as amateur actors recruited in the street the day of shooting and who have New York accents, a facet which is important for commercial exploitation, it becomes clear that the genre is also extremely localized. Films such as Maniac (William Lustig, 1980) or Basket Case (Frank Henenlotter, 1981) were filmed without any permits or authorization (the reason for changes in location of shooting and many other errors of continuity). According to NY moviegoing historians such as Eddie Muller, Norman O. Keim or Gregory A. Waller (270), beginning in the nineteen-nineties the knell rings for New York exploitation cinema, whose golden age had lasted, at most, about fifteen years. Two reasons are apparent for this. First, the expansion of the market for video, starting in the middle of the 1980s, made the grindhouses obsolete. For Muller, grindhouses have been notably replaced by the advent of VCRs correlated to the increase of hardcore pornography (177). By the end of the decade, the grindhouses had already completely disappeared from Broadway and Times Square (New York), Hollywood Boulevard (Los Angeles) and from Market

Street (San Francisco). By the middle of the 1990s, they had completely disappeared from the United States20. Next, regulatory policies took stock of the phenomenon, and a range of measures were deployed, both by Democrats and Republicans as Lawrence M. Friedman recalls in his overview of Crime and punishment in American history (11). In 1989, Rudolph Giuliani was the Republican candidate for the mayoralty of New York. He is beaten by a margin of 47,000 votes by the Democrat David Dinkins, out of a total of almost 2 million votes cast. But the themes of his campaign were already in the air at that time and ensured his election in 1993: the fight against crime, unemployment (the city lost more than 330,000 jobs in 4 years) and budgetary control of a heavily indebted city hall. Giuliani was especially known to have been the herald of the waning of urban insecurity, with the adoption in New York of the crime bill, voted in to effect one year after his election, in August 1994, by the Democrats of the Clinton administration. American law enforcement officer William J. Bratton, who served previously as Superintendent of Boston's Metropolitan District Commission Police, was appointed the 38th Commissioner of the NYPD in 1994. Bratton's policing style was clearly influenced by the broken windows theory21. As Convesque suggests, among the measurements of this vast program, that of the Three strikes and You' Re Out, inspired by the rules of the baseball, was undoubtedly most spectacular (65-66) . Even if
22

its modes of application were often debated heatedly, the results of the policy followed by Guliani caused a material change in New Yorks social fabric (resumption in hand of the centre of the city by commercial activity, development of the North-East of the metropolis, decompartmentalization of certain districts via the integration of educational and cultural programs (the municipal budget for culture tripled under the Guliani mandate). Certain films moreover deal with this period by painting a peaceful and

neopositivist view of the city culture programmes devoted to music learning, in effect the opposite of the motifs of the exploitation genre, examples being Rock Academy (Richard Linklater, 2003) or Music of the Heart (Wes Craven, 1999), an astonishing modest drama from the director of Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream and Vampire in Brooklyn if sometimes mired in clichs. Maybe peace can exists after Apocalypse? So after the Battle of Armageddon illustrate by exploitation movies during more than twenty years, New York are incongruously today sometimes painted as a New Jerusalem by the specialist of horror movies. An ironic sign of the times.

NOTES

1.

For an historic overview of grindhouse theatres, see Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris. Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1996. 11-12.

2.

An alternative to the myth of these movie halls depicts the origin of the term in the programs that these theatres that had offered previously in former times, of burlesque spectacles such as Bump and grind from where the Grindhouse term stems.

3. 4.

Planet Terror and Death Proof, directed in 2007 respectively by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, take up elements characteristic of the grindhouse genre. A film whose main role is played by Charles Bronson, an actor who will take on in the final years of his career many roles of the vigilant New Yorker type, for independent films produced by the Cannon Company headed by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan.

5.

This film will serve as inspiration for Quentin Tarantino for Reservoir Dogs (1992), a film which takes up on its account the use of colors in place of the code names of the hostage takers.

6. 7. 8.

Coma (Michael Crichton ; 1978), The ambulance (Larry Cohen ; 1990), Extreme Measures (Michael Apted; 1996) The irony of the film is all the more excruciating in that Manhattan is presented here as a gigantic prison dustbin. In the final sequence of this film, the Statue of Liberty is used as a saving weapon which emits from its `arm' a kind of malefic pink plasma which has the capacity to make the population fundamentally bad (inciting aggression, incivility, and criminality). One sees only with difficulty the subtle irony of this family film written by two comics, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, which makes in the end of the Statue of Liberty a purifying angel.

9.

This is also the principal subject of an A-list film , The Star Chamber (1983), directed by Peter Hyams, where the judge played by Michael Douglas is invited to join a group forming a strange secret judicial chamber in order to re-prosecute criminals acting with impunity.

10. Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955), Somedbody up there likes me (Robert Wise,
1955) and West Side Story (Robert Wise, 1961) have the appearance of precursory films.

11. Defiance (John Flynn; 1972), Vigilante (William Lustig;1983), The Star Chamber (Peter
Hyams; 1983).

12. MS.45 (Abel Ferrara; 1981), Class 1984 (Mark Lester; 1982). 13. The Warrior (Walter Hill; 1978), Judgment Night (Stephen Hopkins; 1993). 14. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorcese; 1974), The Exterminator (James Glickenhaus; 1980),
Rolling Thunder (John Flynn; 1974), 10 to midnight (Jack Lee Thompson; 1983).

15. Shaft (Gordon Parks; 1971), Coffy (Hill Jack; 1973), Foxy Brown (Hill Jack; 1972), Black
Caesar (Larry Cohen; 1973), Hell up in Harlem (Larry Cohen; 1973), Coonskin (Ralph Bakshi; 1975).

16. The Wanderers (Philip Kaufman; 1979), The Warriors (Walter Hill; 1978), Vigilante
(William Lustig; 1983).

17. Driller Killer (Abel Ferrara; 1979), Blue Sunshine (Jeff Lieberman; 1977), The sentinel
(Michael Winner; 1977), Maniac (William Lustig; 1980), Basket Case (Frank Henenlotter; 1981), Maniac COP 1,2,3 (William Lustig; 1988,1990,1993), The New York Ripper (Lucio Fulci; 1982), C.H.U.D (Douglas Cheek; 1984), Brain Damage (Frank Henenlotter; 1988), The ambulance (Larry Cohen; 1989).

18. Across in 110 HT street (Barry Shear; 1972), The policeman (Daniel Petrie; 1980),
Nighthawk (Bruce Malmuth; 1981), Out for justice (John Flynn; 1991).

19. Escape from New-York (John Carpenter; 1981), The Omega man (Boris Sagal; 1971), The
ultimate warrior (Robert Clouse; 1975), Soleynt Green (Richard Fleischer; 1973).

20. About the grindhouse revival nostalgia in the 1990s-2000s see Quentin Tarantino and
Robert Rodriguez, Grindhouse: The Sleaze-filled Saga of an Exploitation Double Feature. New York : Weinstein Books, 2007.

21. The broken windows theory asserts the existence of an important connection between
incivility and crime. The theory emerged in the early 1980s with the publication of an article and is one of the most popular theories of crime in recent history. For further details, see Wakefield, Alison, and Jenny Fleming. The SAGE dictionary of policing. London: Sage, 2009. 12-14.

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