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Recently released by Criterion, Detour is --- from what I understand --- a criminally underseen, Poverty Row film noir. I was pleased to see the restoration on the big screen at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Ma shortly before receiving a review copy, and I'm happy to say that on the second viewing at home, Detour is still excellent.  The film is imperfect to be sure, but nonetheless riveting due to its direction, story, and performances. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Detour was released in 1945, and follows pianist Al (Tom Neal), who is the most worried-looking protagonist I think I've ever seen. He hitchhikes across America from New York to Los Angeles in a road trip sure to turn the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Stars: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Edmund MacDonald, Claudia Drake | Written by Martin Goldsmith | Directed by Edward G. Ulmer

Thanks to its absurd plotting and an even more absurd running time (it’s not even seventy minutes long), Detour is a breeze of a watch. Essentially a noir road movie, it’s fast, funny, grimy and atmospheric, and it comes with an absolute belter of a last ten minutes.

We meet our protagonist Al (Tom Neal) as a dishevelled drifter, hitchhiking his way across Nevada. He remembers his glory days in New York. He was a pianist and she – Sue (Claudia Drake), the love of his life – was a singer. One day she decided to jet off to L.A. to chase her Hollywood dream. Al wanted to chase his dream of Sue. He was flat broke but determined to marry her, so off he went.

On the way he hitches...

An old American proverb reads “Excuses are merely nails used to build a house of failure.” It’s also a succinct paraphrase for the trajectory of the woeful protagonist of Edgar G. Ulmer’s seminal B-noir, Detour (1945), the Poverty-Row production which continues to flex its hopelessness and dread as it portends to depict a fitful dance with fate. Only the hapless character played by Tom Neal, whose trenchant passivity dictates his demise, isn’t so much building a house but his own coffin. Made vulnerable by his misguided understanding of what love and desire are supposed to look like, a myriad of poor decisions lead him into the maw of victimhood from which he can never seem to escape, despite all the agency in the world right at the tips of his white, heteronormative universe.…...

This is a big one, the restoration we long thought would never come. CineSavant tries to explain what makes Edgar G. Ulmer’s masterpiece uniquely memorable, how it works its Loser Noir magic, and why this particular restoration bodes well for a certain class of picture mired in murky rights issues. Meet Al Roberts, a hard luck case happy to bend your ear for an hour, explaining how Fate has Done Him Wrong. This Prc gem transcends Noir pessimism, because a sensible read forces us to conclude that Al is his own worst enemy, a self-made misery man. This hitch-hiking epic carries an extra added jolt: Ann Savage delivers what has to be the boldest, most caustic hell-to-pay performance of ‘forties Hollywood.

Detour

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 966

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 69 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 19, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald,...

Detour, a film noir that is considered one of Poverty Row’s most distinguished features, hits Blu-ray March 19 via The Criterion Collection.

The feature centers on a pianist (Tom Neal) whose fate takes a turn for the worse thanks to a chance meeting with a cunning drifter named Vera (Ann Savage, delivering an iconic femme fatale [...]

The post Criterion Charts A March Blu-Ray Release For Poverty Row Classic ‘Detour’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

"Jacques Tourneur, Fearmaker" runs from December 14 – January 3, 2019 at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center.A man twists and contorts himself to fire his tommy gun from the front seat of a prop plane, strafing an escaping yacht in Jacques Tourneur’s Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939). The action scenes of the first (of only two) of MGM’s detective programmers starring Walter Pidgeon as a blasé, blowhard private dick go a long way to set thrilling standards of danger and energy in a prescient pre-war mystery of aviation espionage and sabotage. The opening scene in the desert of a foiled aircraft hijacking is already that Christopher Nolan-style of concept, grandeur and stark visuals, but the boat-gunning climax, created through great, swooning back projection and Carter’s nearly absurd violent technique, lends great character to an otherwise unpromising crime series.A gang leader huddled among anonymous criminals on a prison boat as “the Rock,...

"One of the most poignant and disturbing stories to reach the screen!" Janus Films has released a trailer for the new 4K restoration of this 1945 film noir classic, Detour, directed by filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer. The Academy Film Archive helped restore this film, which has been available mostly on crappy public domain prints, and it first premiered at the TCM Festival in April. The story follows Tom Neal as a hitchhiker who ends up picking up another hitchhiker, a vicious femme fatale played by Ann Savage who blackmails him in order to maintain the upper hand as they head towards Los Angeles. "Working with no-name stars on a bargain-basement budget, B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry." It's always a good time to catch up with some vintage film noir. Here's the new 4K trailer (+ original poster) for Edgar G.

In the last decade of his career, John Ford produced and directed this ode to crony politics, with Spencer Tracy as an old-fashioned mayor who uses underhanded ploys to do right by his constituents. Tracy is backed by a veritable army of supporting actors, neatly orchestrated in Frank Nugent’s screenplay. We’re talking scores of John Ford stock company players; it’s like old home week, with Ford in firm control.

The Last Hurrah

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1958 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date September 18, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Spencer Tracy, Jeffrey Hunter, Dianne Foster, Basil Rathbone, Pat O’Brien, Donald Crisp, James Gleason, Edward Brophy, John Carradine, Willis Bouchey, Basil Ruysdael, Ricardo Cortez, Wallace Ford, Frank McHugh, Carleton Young, Frank Albertson, Anna Lee, Ken Curtis, Jane Darwell, O.Z. Whitehead, Charles B. Fitzsimons, Arthur Walsh, Bob Sweeney, William Leslie, Danny Borzage, Richard Deacon, James Flavin,...

A Skin So SoftIt's 95 degrees in the shade here in the Swiss city of Locarno, where, nestled between lake and mountain, the 70th edition of the Locarno Festival is beckoning with the promise of several international competitions, a retrospective of B-Hollywood auteur Jacques Tourneur, screenings in the open-air, 8,000-person capacity Piazza Grande, special prizes for Jean-Marie Straub and Todd Haynes, and that quintessential lure of the cinematic experience: air-conditioned theatres.With so much to choose from there is no correct schedule or pathway through such a bounty; one can't see everything, and the delight of discovery must mingle with the pang of missing something unexpected—or, more likely, a movie impossible to fit into a day’s schedule already jammed with five to seven different screenings.Already the films have run together in my mind, the effect most definitely of the withering heat at once baking and steaming the hillside city,...

Edgar G. Ulmer movies on TCM: 'The Black Cat' & 'Detour' Turner Classic Movies' June 2017 Star of the Month is Audrey Hepburn, but Edgar G. Ulmer is its film personality of the evening on June 6. TCM will be presenting seven Ulmer movies from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, including his two best-known efforts: The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). The Black Cat was released shortly before the officialization of the Christian-inspired Production Code, which would castrate American filmmaking – with a few clever exceptions – for the next quarter of a century. Hence, audiences in spring 1934 were able to witness satanism in action, in addition to other bizarre happenings in an art deco mansion located in an isolated area of Hungary. Sporting a David Bowie hairdo, Boris Karloff is at his sinister best in The Black Cat (“Do you hear that, Vitus? The phone is dead. Even the phone is dead”), ailurophobic (a.

Did Republic’s serial-makers lose their marbles? This is an endurance test of a thriller, with 12 chapters that refuse to advance a story beyond the same repetitive ambushes and fistfights. It’s got monsters in the form of giant crawfish bred to… well, bred for almost no reason at all. With Phyllis Coates and Myron Healey. I tell you, watching this feels like watching an endless loop. But hey, it’s quite handsomely filmed!

Panther Girl of the Kongo

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1955 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame (originally widescreen) / 168 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95

Starring: Phyllis Coates, Myron Healey, Arthur Space, John Day, Mike Ragan, Morris Buchanan, Roy Glenn, Archie Savage, Ramsay Hill, Naaman Brown, Dan Ferniel, James Logan, Steve Calvert.

Cinematography: Bud Thackery

Film Editor: Cliff Bell

Original Music: R. Dale Butts

Written by Ronald Davidson

Produced and Directed by Franklin Adreon

Ah yes.

Virginia Bruce: MGM actress ca. 1935. Virginia Bruce movies on TCM: Actress was the cherry on 'The Great Ziegfeld' wedding cake Unfortunately, Turner Classic Movies has chosen not to feature any non-Hollywood stars – or any out-and-out silent film stars – in its 2015 “Summer Under the Stars” series.* On the other hand, TCM has come up with several unusual inclusions, e.g., Lee J. Cobb, Warren Oates, Mae Clarke, and today, Aug. 25, Virginia Bruce. A second-rank MGM leading lady in the 1930s, the Minneapolis-born Virginia Bruce is little remembered today despite her more than 70 feature films in a career that spanned two decades, from the dawn of the talkie era to the dawn of the TV era, in addition to a handful of comebacks going all the way to 1981 – the dawn of the personal computer era. Career highlights were few and not all that bright. Examples range from playing the...

After watching (and writing about) Out of the Past earlier this week, I had an itch to watch a little more film noir. So, last night, before bed, I started doing a little searching and decided on Edgar G. Ulmer's 67-minute feature Detour starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. It should be said, before Ulmer started directing films he worked in the art department as set designer on Fritz Lang's Metroplis and M as well as assistant art director on F.W. Murnau's silent classic Sunrise. We've also featured a previous film of his here on this site when Matt Risnes wrote about his 1934 classic Black Cat (read that here) a spectacularly dark and eerie feature featuring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, each of them chewing up the big screen, attempting to outdo one another. That aside, when it comes to Detour, like Out of the Past we're talking about another femme fatale,...

Detour

Written by Marin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

U.S.A., 1945

The women of film noir, those seductive, cruel creatures baptized ‘femmes fatales’ (French for ‘deadly women’) present a unique sort of challenge for the male protagonists. All too often the latter is at least somewhat aware of the former’s cold intentions yet takes the bait anyways out of some delusional belief that they can outwit her and end on top, pardon the pun. Despite that the batting average for said vixen is incredibly high with respect to making the man’s life a living hell, there is usually a semblance of level footing, the male protagonist for the most part believing in his ability to counter his opposite’s mischievous.

In that sense, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour is a fitting title for many reasons which shall be explored shortly. The story opens...

Forty 1940s Films: ‘Detour’

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, and Edmund MacDonald

USA, 67 min – 1945.

“Money. You know what that is. It’s the stuff, you never have enough of. Little green things with George Washington’s picture that men slave for, commit crimes for, die for. It’s the stuff that’s caused more trouble in the world, than anything else we’ve ever invented, simply because there’s too little of it.” – Al Roberts

Stripped of the glamorousness that gives other film noir pictures their appeal, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour presents us with the genre, in its rawest form. This B picture, from Prc (Producer’s Relations Corporation) has every element of classic noir films, from the use of flashback, to a doomed romance, to the femme fatale, and of course, a murder. Unlike Detour’s larger budgeted, star-studded counterparts, these elements aren’t seamlessly disguised,...

In celebration of the Blu-ray release of Due Date this week, Owf was challenged to come up with our top ten best road movies of all time!

The road movie has been a staple within many film genres and has generally become synonymous with freedom, providing an avenue for violent, comical, romantic or dramatic release. Characters both discover and lose themselves on their celluloid trips. Friends and partners are gained and lost. Ultimately though, the road is an avenue for discovery. Many exceptional road movies have found their way on to the screen and into the forefront of audiences’ consciences. This list could easily be twice as long, but read on to discover what I consider the ten funniest, scariest, strangest, romantic and most touching road films out there…and then go buy Due Date!

10. Love On The Run (1936)

When American heiress Sally Parker (Joan Crawford) flees her planned wedding to a Prince,...

'No matter what you do, no matter where you turn, fate sticks out its foot to trip you." I quote Al Roberts in "Detour," Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 cult noir, which is unreeling tomorrow at 7 p.m. and Tuesday at 9 p.m. at Anthology Film Archives. Roberts, played by Tom Neal, is a pianist at a New York City dive called Break o'Dawn who decides to thumb his way to Los Angeles, leaving behind a girlfriend. On the road he hooks up with a...