B movies (exploitation boom)

The 1960s and 1970s marked the rise of exploitation-style independent B movies; films which were mostly made without the support of Hollywood's major film studios. As censorship pressures lifted in the early 1960s, the low-budget end of the American motion picture industry increasingly incorporated the sort of sexual and violent elements long associated with so-called ‘exploitation’ films. The demise of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1968, coupled with the success of the exploitation film Easy Rider the following year fueled the trend throughout the subsequent decade. The success of the B-studio exploitation movement had a significant effect on the strategies of the major studios during the 1970s.^{[citation needed]}