Attack of the Killer Bs
Cult, Kitsch and Schlock in the '50s American 'B' Movie

LONDON, 12 August 1998 - London's Barbican Centre will screen some thirty films in a two-week retrospective devoted to the American 'B' movie. With the post-war rise of the teenager as an identifiable social group, film makers attempted to cash in on the new affluent subculture and its hopes and anxieties with low budget teenage crime thrillers, rock n' roll movies and ever popular horror and science fiction films. Classics such as Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Attack of the 50ft Woman (1958), Jack Arnold's The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Andre de Toth's House of Wax (1953) Rebel Without a Cause, Jailhouse Rock and Forbidden Planet have long since achieved cult status.

Additional highlights of the programme include a tribute to director William Castle with a special presentation on Saturday 22 August by 'B' movie expert Jonathan Ross of William Castle's The Tingler (1959) and The House on Haunted Hill starring Vincent Price. Castle devised special auditorium effects for audiences such as low voltage wired up seats to aid the screaming process. The programme also includes tributes to director Roger Corman of Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), The Little Shop of Horrors (1961, starring Jack Nicholson) and 'B' movie platinum blonde Mamie Van Doren, and the legendary Ed Wood Jr, whose world famous Plan 9 From Outer Space is universally acknowledged as the worst movie ever made.

Barbican Centre Dates: 21 August - 3 September 1998
Information and Tickets Tel: (44) 171 382 70 00
Barbican Centre website film schedule: http://www.barbican.org.uk