Our guest blogger today is film historian Eric Grayson.
Detour (1945), tonight’s Winter Nights film, comes from a little independent studio despised for its cheap pictures. The studio, PRC, was said to be an acronym for “Putrid, Rotten Crud.” (Well, it wasn’t actually “crud,” but you get the idea!) This moniker was so pervasive that today, when a PRC movie is recovered, we often find that this phrase has been marked on the film can by an unhappy projectionist. Why then would the IMA choose to show a film from such a studio?
The answer is simple. Detour (1945) is an exception to the rule. Director Edgar G. Ulmer never let a tiny budget hamper him. Like many film noir directors, Ulmer had a background that stretched back into the German Expressionist era in the 1920s. The Black Cat (1934) was his first major American film as director, and it was made at a time when Universal was strapped for cash. Rather than shoot it as a traditional horror film in a drippy castle, with expensive sets, Ulmer rewrote the movie to take place in an ultra-modern fortress, with spartan interiors that cost little to make. The film was a hit, and Ulmer seemed on his way as a top director.
Shortly afterward, Ulmer met his future wife Shirley, who was married to producer Max Alexander, nephew of studio boss Carl Laemmle. Shirley and Max divorced, she married Ulmer, and the new couple were banned from the Universal lot. Ulmer’s career was over before it had really begun. He was banished to small studios for many years, where his talent for stretching a dollar was tested every day, especially at bottom-of-the-barrel PRC.
PRC specialized in westerns and cheap horror films. At the time, theaters would pay a flat fee for a movie that could play in the bottom half of a double feature. If PRC could make a movie for less than that fee, then it was profitable before it ever played in theaters. Their profits went up as the film budgets went down. Who cared if it was any good?
Filed under: Film, Public Programs, The Toby
