B-movie

American  

[bee-moo-vee] / ˈbiˌmu vi /

noun

1. a low-budget movie made especially to accompany a major feature film on a double bill.

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B-movie British  

noun

1. a film originally made (esp in Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s) as a supporting film, now often considered as a genre in its own right

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Etymology

Origin of B-movie

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

Wouldn’t he be an enemy of the government, having led an uprising at the end of that Reagan-era B-movie?

From The Wall Street Journal

All in good fun for a B-movie, and “P: B” does not pretend to be anything else.

From The Wall Street Journal

And it made a lot of money, albeit as a critical sensation rather than a sensationalist B-movie.

From The Wall Street Journal

What one might expect to be a scrappy B-movie arrives with an assured grasp of film grammar that sharpens the simple, even elemental quality of the plot, in which unexplained assailants terrorize a desolate urban landscape and eventually focus their fire on the precinct.

From The Wall Street Journal

And yet, in the grand B-movie tradition, its flaws have become its crown jewels.

From Salon