At the same time as exhibition venues for B films vanished, the independent film movement was burgeoning; among the results were various crossovers between the low-budget genre movie and the "sophisticated" arthouse picture. Director Abel Ferrara, who built a reputation with violent B movies such as "The Driller Killer" (1979) and "Ms. 45" (1981), made two works in the early nineties that marry exploitation-worthy depictions of sex, drugs, and general sleaze to complex examinations of honor and redemption: "King of New York" (1990) was backed by a group of mostly small production companies and the cost of "Bad Lieutenant" (1992), , was financed totally independently. Larry Fessenden's micro-budget monster movies, such as "No Telling" (1991) and "Habit" (1997), reframe classic genre subjects—Frankenstein and vampirism, respectively—to explore issues of contemporary relevance. The budget of David Cronenberg's "Crash" (1996), , was not comfortably A-grade, but it was hardly B-level either. The film's imagery was another matter: "On its scandalizing surface, David Cronenberg's "Crash" suggests exploitation at its most disturbingly sick", wrote critic Janet Maslin. Financed, like "King of New York", by a consortium of production companies, it was picked up for U.S. distribution by Fine Line Features. This result mirrored the film's scrambling of definitions: Fine Line was a subsidiary of New Line, recently merged into the Time Warner empire—specifically, it was the old exploitation distributor's arthouse division. "Pulp Fiction" (1994), directed by Quentin Tarantino on an budget, became a hugely influential hit by crossing multiple lines, as James Mottram describes: "With its art house narrative structure, B-movie subject matter and Hollywood cast, the film is the axis for three distinct cinematic traditions to intersect."