Sexploitation film: History and Key Facts

A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films. The term "sexploitation" has been used since the 1940s.

In the United States, exploitation films were generally exhibited in urban grindhouse theatres, which were the precursors to the adult movie theaters of the 1970s and 1980s that featured hardcore pornography content. In Latin America (most notably in Argentina), exploitation and sexploitation films had meandering and complex relations with both moviegoers and government institutions: they were sometimes censored by democratic (but socially conservative) administrations and/or authoritarian dictatorships (especially during the 1970s and 80s), and at other times they enjoyed an important success at the box office.

The term soft-core is often used to designate non-explicit sexploitation films after the general legalisation of hardcore content. Nudist films are often considered to be subgenres of the sex-exploitation genre as well. "Nudie" films and "Nudie-cuties" are associated genres.

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