Reception and Impact

On this page, I explore what happed after The Velvet Vampire was released and examine why Stephanie Rothman has fallen into obscurity. I will do so from the viewpoint of feminist and queer theory.

The Velvet Vampire was the last film Rothman made for Roger Corman. Though working with him offered her thematic and artistic freedom, he also paid little. In search of better pay, Rothman and her husband (who worked with her on films) went to work for Dimension Pictures. She was appointed as the Vice President of Production and went on to make three feature films. In them, she continued to incorporate feminist themes, but she wanted to break out of the exploitation genre. Unfortunately, as a woman and exploitation producer, she wasn't taken seriously, even with the support of her prolific filmmaker husband. Rothman spent a decade trying to break into mainstream media before giving up, exhausted.

Some will try to argue that Rothman never became popular simply because her films weren't good. However, this is an unfair accusation. Her exploitation films reflected complex themes and experimental techniques, but stylistically, were limited to strict budget and time constraints. Working in exploitation, Rothman was limited by the boundaries of the convention. Mainstream film didn't start to acknowledge the success of B-movies until the release of films like Jaws (Spielberg 1975) and Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (Lucas 1977). These movies relied on B-movie-like premises, but were made with massive budgets, stifling Corman and other independent filmmakers (after Star Wars, Corman turned to making slasher movies). Hollywood was a man's world, so despite Rothman's expertise, companies were uninterested in her feminist themes, preferring to hire men or those with connections within the film industry.

Additionally, the unpracticed acting and cheesy scripting found in The Velvet Vampire and similar exploitation films are hallmarks of the genre that made these types of movies so popular. These aspects partially define camp aesthetic. I suspect that Rothman's use of such elements wasn't just a consequence of working in exploitation film, but that she made a deliberate choice to cater to her audience. Such decision-making demonstrates her expertise – imagine if Rothman had been given the budgets afforded to Hollywood filmmakers.

Thankfully, Rothman and her women contemporaries are starting to gain more recognition. Students started watching her movies in the 1990s, eventually allowing her work to become popular worldwide. She has been invited to speak at film festivals, and in 2016, The Student Nurses ran at the New York Museum of Modern Art's Metrograph Theater. Distributors such as the Criterion Collection have added women's B-movies to their repertoire, legitimizing them and giving them a broader contemporary audience.