A-movies before the '90s?

[Terf]

What movies before the '90s would one classify as A instead of B? Jaws? Star Wars? Alien? (I'm trying to figure this out.)

[zombie no.one]

that's an interesting question, dunno really...

anything with a significant budget and the resulting box-office reciepts to justify it, maybe?

not sure anyone could call Star Wars a B-Movie. It's too massive, although it does have a 'cult' appeal, which would suggest it fits into the category of a niche/underground movie somehow...

[Rev. Powell]

Before about 1960, it was easy to tell which movies were B-movies.  The B-movies were at the bottom of the bill in double or triple features.

Between 1960 and 1985 (the rise of the VCR), the double feature almost disappeared.  B-movies would sometimes appear on the bottom half of drive-in double features.  Most of the time, the low budget features that premiered in grindhouses or drive-in would be considered b-movies. 

JAWS and STAR WARS were both intended for first run theaters, so I would consider them A-movies. 

After the debut of the VCR when everything became first run, the distinction between A and B movies became one entirely of style and budget.

[Terf]

Would "Resident Evil" really be considered a B-movie?!

[Jack]

Back in the '70s you had stuff like the Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, Towering Inferno, Superman, all those Death Wish and Dirty Harry movies, Clint Eastwood Westerns, all those Airport Movies, Godfather movies, the Rocky movies, Saturday Night Fever.  In the '80s you had the Roger Moore James Bond movies, a lot of comedies like 9 to 5, Ghostbusters, Eddie Murphy movies, Crocodile Dundee movies, Back to the Future, Airplane! etc., then there were the Indiana Jones movies, all the Star Trek movies, ET, Top Gun.

[Justy]

There are quite a bit. I would add the following movies:

The Rocky series
The Mel Brooks comedies
The Goonies
National Lampoons Animal House and Vacation
The Star Trek series
Patton
The Breakfast Club


I would say that any movie that was successful and was seriously green-lighted. I am sure that there were A-list flops and B-movies successes. So I wouldn't just credit box office success, but there had to be the serious push of the studio or taken "seriously" by the critics and media. Something like Cannonball Run would that qualify a A-List? Smokey and The Bandit I would, but not so much Cannonball Run.

[Cult Movie Mania]

Would "Resident Evil" really be considered a B-movie?!

Yes.  B-movies really don't exist anymore, in the literal sense.  Being that there are hardly any drive-ins/double-triple features anymore, we've pretty much been stuck with "A" movies for the past twenty-something years.

If you hear the term B-movie now, it's a term of convenience to describe low-budget fantastic genre fare.  Though, I'd argue that most "B-movies" are much better than "A-movies".