Latsploitation, Exploitation Cinemas, and Latin America (review)

The common object of scrutiny of the seventeen essays that comprise this welcome addition to the critical literature on Latin-American popular cinema is the kind of film so often disdained by critics for their absurdly low budgets, actors of often dubious talents and a dedication to largely debased genres of exploitation cinema that the editors have labeled “Latsploitation.” These are usually not the kinds of films that invite conceptual or theoretic reflection by serious scholars. Yet, as Ruétalo, Tierney and their fellow scholars handily demonstrate, there are productive ways to read beneath the literalness of bad acting, clichéd plots and poor production values that generally characterize these works to uncover subversive forms of cultural resistance to the established order of Latin America’s largely derivative popular film forms.

Through an array of often ingenious reading strategies, the various authors challenge the facile assumption that what we are talking about is simply trash and bad taste. Their approach, as the editors say in their introduction, is to “reinvent the frame” (1), that is, to contextualize exploitation genres in light of the larger picture of film production, exhibition and circulation by Latin-American filmmakers, especially as these films circulate across borders and even regions. It is precisely the international circulation of these works, perhaps enhanced by their heavy dose of violence, gore and sex, that the volume effectively tracks as a series of transnational cinematic tropes that apparently appeal to global audiences.

Two critical objectives clearly motivate the various authors. The first is to expand the space of critical discourse around Latsploitation cinema so as to provide a scholarly frame of reference within which to read these films as a more sizeable section of Latin American film production than one might otherwise have imagined. As one of the volume’s authors, Sergio de la Mora, observes of Mexican cinema, “genre boundaries between exploitation, mainstream and art cinema are porous . . . , with some films simultaneously residing in more than one of these categories” (248). The same may said of film forms throughout the Spanish-speaking world where popular and art-house forms often enjoy a curiously intimate reciprocity. The second goal, underscored in the ways in which Ruétalo and Tierney have organized the collection, is the effort to legitimate these works within groupings that mirror the aesthetic categories of conventional Latin-American film histories (auteurism, genre studies, the star system).

The volume is introduced by a forward from Eric Schaeffer, a trailblazing scholar of US exploitation cinema, who assures us that writing about debased movie genres and lurid subject-matter is more than merely critics indulging in their own guilty pleasures. Rather, it is an important and illuminating way to understand the dynamic interplay between local and global film cultures. His defense of the broad category of Latsploitation is further expanded by a historical introduction coauthored by the two editors which serves to identify the various chapters and genres within national and transnational contexts, thereby helping readers navigate through what might otherwise seem a collection of random views of regional exploitation cinema.

Their introduction is followed by what appears to be a third prologue, a chapter by noted Latin-American film scholar Ana M. López who writes on the origins of popular cinema production in Mexico in the early sound period. Her discussion of three Mexican precursors of the exploitation genres—Juan Orol, José Bohr and Ramón Peón. López effectively rehearses the key arguments to follow about industry, cinematic populism, national cinema and auteur exploitation, thus providing a useful historical framework to the anthology’s four sections, each of which is organized around a different subgenre of Latin-Exploitation: 1) Transnational circulation (Latsploitation beyond Borders); 2) Auteurs; 3) Politicizing Latsploitation; 4) Sexploitaiton. As a globalizing overview, this division works well to suggest but not exhaust the parameters of the field. The volume concludes with an epilogue by Gabriela Alemán which balances López’s earlier historical...