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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...

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,...

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.

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,...