Mexploitation
Image:El Mariachi 01.jpg|thumb|El Mariachi is a noted Mexplotiation film
Mexploitation is a film genre of low-budget films that combine elements of an exploitation film and Mexican culture or portrayals of Mexican life within Mexico often dealing with crime, drug trafficking, money and sex.
Mexican narco-cinema
The Mexican narco-cine or narco-películas, are a subgenre of the Mexploitation style films, focused solely on the violence and luxurious lives of drug lords and cartels. The title and the storyline of these films are usually inspired by popular narco corridos, and are marketed as low budget tie-in merchandising to the narcocorrido songs. Sometimes these films feature famous narco-corrido singers on them, and are rumored to be financed by drug lords themselves. However, only a few such cases have been proven.Common qualities
Mexploitation movies made in the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico were closer to their American exploitation film counterparts, with low-budget science-fiction films that often starred Mexican professional wrestlers such as El Santo and Huracan Ramirez.In the early 1980s and 1990s there was a notable change with films increasingly dealing with real-life issues such as drug cartels and the murders of their rivals. Notable actors in these films include Mario Almada, Hugo Stiglitz, Sergio Goyri, Valentin Trujillo, Jorge Reynoso, Rodolfo de Anda, Fernando Almada, Rosa Gloria Chagoyán and David Reynoso.
The director Robert Rodriguez has been considered a pioneer of Mexploitation in the United States. His first film, El Mariachi, contains many Mexploitation elements and his 2007 film, Planet Terror, contained a fake trailer which developed into a feature film called Machete, which contains many familiar elements of the genre.