the B melodrama. Television films inspired by recent scandals—such as ABC's The Ordeal of Patty Hearst, which premiered a month after her release from prison in 1979—harkened all the way back to the 1920s and such movies as Human Wreckage and When Love Grows Cold, pictures from low-budget studio FBO made swiftly in the wake of celebrity misfortunes. Some TV movies, such as Nightmare in Badham County (ABC; 1976), headed straight into the realm of road-tripping-girls-in-redneck-bondage exploitation. The reverberations of Easy Rider could be felt in Nightmare in Badham County, as well as in a host of big-screen exploitation films of the era. But perhaps its greatest influence on the fate of the B movie was less direct. By 1973, the major studios were clearly catching on to the commercial potential of genres that had once been consigned to the bargain basement. Rosemary's Baby had shown that a well-packaged horror "special" could be a box-office hit, but it had little in common with the exploitation style. Warner Bros.' The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin, was a different story. It showed that a heavily promoted and distributed film in the genre could be an absolute blockbuster. And more: In William Paul's description, "it is the film that really established gross-out as a mode of expression for mainstream cinema.... [P]ast exploitation films managed to exploit their cruelties by virtue of their marginality. The Exorcist made cruelty respectable. By the end of the decade, the exploitation booking strategy of opening films simultaneously in hundreds to thousands of theaters became standard industry practice." It was the biggest movie of the year and by far the highest-earning horror movie yet made. On behalf of its genre, Universal's American Graffiti did something similar. Released when writer-director George Lucas was twenty-nine years old, it is described by Paul as "essentially an American-International teenybopper pic with a lot more spit and polish"—a combination that made it the third biggest movie of 1973 and, likewise, by far the highest-earning teen-themed movie yet made. A-budgeted B-themed movies of even greater historical import would follow in their wake. Notes References Archer, Eugene (1960). "'House of Usher': Poe Story on Bill With 'Why Must I Die?'" The New York Times, September 15 (available online). Biskind, Peter (1998). Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock'n'Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon & Schuster. Cagin, Seth, and Philip Dray (1984). Hollywood Films of the