About 20 years ago I was in a kind of partnership with another film historian who told me that, no, there wasn’t a market for a book on pre-code movies. I can only wonder what he thinks today after ...

Despite only lasting four short years from 1930 to 1934, the pre-code era of Hollywood’s Golden Age produced films that pushed the boundaries of cinema and storytelling, even by today’s standards.

A good definition of the term “exploitation film” is: “a film designed by its producers to ‘exploit’, via clever marketing and promotion, the notoriety of certain sensational current events and trends ...