A stunning reversal

Roger Ebert makes an interesting aside in his review of Torque today:

Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) was frankly intended as an exploitation picture by everyone involved, who all hoped to move up to the A-list and make better films (all except for the producer, Joe Solomon, who we will get to in a moment).

Torque (2004), I fear, considers itself to be a real movie....

What has happened between 1967 and 2004 is that Hollywood genres have undergone a fundamental flip-flop. Low-budget pictures are now serious and ambitious and play at Sundance. Big-budget exploitation work, on which every possible technical refinement is lavished, are now flashy and dispensable and open in 3,000 multiplexes. Little did Solomon suspect that he was making the major studio pictures of the future.