I had a young lady over the other night and I made her watch Addio Zio Tom with me. It's the first film I'll be writing about for my new CHUDsploitation column, and it's one of the most insane and depraved movies ever made*. As I giggled my way through scenes of racism, torture and rape, she asked me why I liked movies like this. The question was a thinly veiled version of 'What the hell is wrong with you?', but it made me realize that an introduction to this new column might be in order.

My goal with CHUDsploitation is to write about the sickest, strangest movies ever made, films with almost no redeeming value. There will be no charming B-movies covered in this column, and very few (if any) tongue in cheek self-aware pictures. I'm going to write about the films that take themselves seriously, that were made for a particular sort of hardcore grindhouse and drive-in crowd, that were meant to titillate, shock and turn a quick buck. I'm hoping to write about more obscure films (although I know that out-obscuring some members of this reading public will be impossible) and to turn you on to the sort of movies that will have your friends and loved ones throwing you nervous glances.

CHUDsploitation will not be tied to any one genre but rather to an aesthetic. I'll be writing about dramas, horror films, hygiene movies, science fiction movies, biker films, samurai movies, blaxploitation, cannibal movies, romances, action films and movies that defy all classification (Let Me Die A Woman, I'm looking at you). I may even write up a porn movie or two. What all of these films will have in common is that they're racing to the bottom, looking to be the lowest common denominator so that you, the patron of 42nd Street's myriad scum theaters, would put your money down for their ticket over the other sick stuff vying for your attention.

But why exploitation movies at all? What is it about these films that have been intriguing me since I first started watching them on VHS in the mid 80s? Let's get this out of the way first: I like sick stuff. I have a dysfunctional outrage sensor, so things that would send most people over the edge - wanton animal cruelty, vicious misogyny, laughable production values - delight me. I look to be shocked, to be offended. I want to see things that I probably shouldn't be seeing. The uglier, the meaner, the more bizarre, the more I like it.

I get that out of the way first because a lot of people will make excuses for their love of exploitation films and will be almost ashamed to enjoy them on that lowest, basest level. I have other reasons for liking these kinds of movies, but I never want to forget the real reason I seek out certain titles - I hear that it's totally fucked up and I have to see it for myself.

But there are other reasons. There's a weird purity to the best of the exploitation movies. These films were financed by shady types looking to make a quick buck by cashing in on human misery or by aping popular releases of the time, but the money guys would often put their investments in the hands of truly odd and unique artists. The truth is that the money people didn't care what was in these movies - put the right title on it, throw in some tits, some blood, make a good poster and you could pad the rest of the running time with whatever you liked. Exploitation movies are bastions of auterist leanings, where the filmmakers, free from restraints like decency and coherent filmmaking, could pursue their own fetishes and kinks on celluloid. One of the highest things cinema can aspire to is the creatio of a personal connection between filmmaker and audience, and many exploitation directors could do that... even if the connection was pretty icky.

There's also an audacity to some of the filmmaking. That's rare, though; most exploitation movies are serviceably directed at best, but every now and again you'll find a movie that does something breathtakingly unexpected, strange or brilliant. My first film for the column, Addio Zio Tom, masquerades as the documentary footage of an Italian film crew who take a helicopter back in time to the pre-Civil War American South. That's just a wonderful and bonkers conceit. Then there's the other side of the equation, films that are so amateurish and poorly made that they become audacious in their presentation. When filmmakers don't even know the basic rules they break them without thinking; exploitation films can be very punk rock in that way.

Don't get me wrong - most exploitation films flat out stink. It's not uncommon to wade through 80 minutes of boring trash to get to ten minutes of glorious shock. Being a lover of exploitation means combing through lots and lots of dross; since there are so few reliable sources of criticism for these movies and since the real art of exploitation movies was their posters and trailers (check out the 42nd Street Forever DVD series to see how wonderful exploitation trailers could be. Rent some of the movies represented to see how dull the actual films could be), you can't be sure whether you're actually getting the juicy stuff advertised or a good old fashioned bait and switch. Since this column will be irregular (I'm going to try to do it twice a month, but we'll see), I'm going to focus on the best of the bunch, the movies that pack more greatness into their running time than the average grindhouse picture. I'm also going to try to widen my net a little bit; my personal favorite exploitation films are the ones made in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but I'll be also watching films from as far back as the 30s, when exploitation films hid under the guise of being 'educational.' I may even dip into the present day, although I find that modern exploitation films are too self-aware and too tongue in cheek. That's no fun.

I'm excited to start this column, and I hope you'll enjoy the guided tour through the creepy, scummy underbelly of cinema. In the meantime I recommend two invaluable resources for those just getting interestes in exploitation: Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford's amazing book Sleazoid Express (if this isn't on your shelf you're not a film lover) and the retail website xploitedcinema.com. Joe Bob Briggs' books Profoundly Disturbing and Profoundly Erotic, while not specifically about exploitation films, are also must-reads. I'll see you in a couple of days when CHUDsploitation starts with a bang, with one of the most offensive motion pictures ever committed to celluloid, the equal opportunity race baiter Addio Zio Tom.

*Note: my CHUDsploitation column will not be a list of good date movies.