Variety's Justin Chang has described it as "A queasy exploitation picture masquerading as a serious dramatic treatment of teen suicide".
From start to finish this fast-moving Warner's release is shrewdly calculated and affirms the gifts of its director Jack in bringing style and meaning to the exploitation picture.
Among the established studios, Monogram was exploring fresh territory with what were being called "exploitation pictures."
Yet Obsessed is an exploitation picture, more concerned with playing on these fears than exploring them.
"Terror Firmer" was made by Troma Entertainment, which specializes in enthusiastic and inexpensive exploitation pictures.
He first relocated to Mexico in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and later to Spain, where he has appeared in many films, mostly horror and cheesy exploitation pictures.
It includes much swearing, graphic violence and a scene, de rigueur in a hip-hop exploitation picture, that takes place in a strip club.
"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" also bears a further distinction, as the first exploitation picture made at a major studio.
They might think this is simply a violent, sick, contrived exploitation picture, and that would certainly be an accurate description of its surfaces.
And they seem determined to check off all the to-do notes necessary for a prehistoric exploitation picture: we're missing only Raquel Welch in a yummy fur bikini.