The A-side and B-side are the two sides of vinyl records and cassettes, and the terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings, which in purely technical terms of recording
A cassette tape
17929A Lucia di Lammermoor
A B movie, or B film, is a type of low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known
A-side and B-side
…compiled on expanded or "deluxe" editions of albums or may be compiled into a B-side compilation album across multiple periods of an artist's career. B movie…
The "King of the Bs", Roger Corman, produced and directed The Raven (1963) for American International Pictures. Vincent Price headlines a cast of veteran character actors along with a young Jack Nicholson.
Stony Brooke (Wayne), Tucson Smith (Corrigan), and Lullaby Joslin (Terhune) did not get much time in harness. Republic Pictures' Pals of the Saddle (1938) lasts just 55 minutes, average for a Three Mesquiteers adventure.
Often marketed as pure sensationalism, many films noir also possessed great visual beauty. Raw Deal (1948), writes scholar Robert Smith, is "resplendent with velvety blacks, mists, netting, and other expressive accessories of poetic noir decor and lighting". Directed by Anthony Mann and shot by John Alton, it was released by Poverty Row's Eagle-Lion firm.
Rocketship X-M (1950), produced and released by small Lippert Pictures, is cited as possibly "the first postnuclear holocaust film". It was at the leading edge of a large cycle of movies, mostly low-budget and many long forgotten, classifiable as "atomic bomb cinema".