Detour

Edgar G. Ulmer’s existential and almost surreal 1945 thriller may be the darkest waking nightmare movie from the film noir period. Shot on a tiny budget for PRC—Hollywood’s cheapest studio—on their backlot and surrounding desolate desert highways, Detour stars flat B-movie leading man Tom Neal as Al Roberts, a gloomy New York pianist who hitchhikes to Los Angeles and takes a ride in the wrong car. When his traveling companion suddenly dies, Al drags the body off the road, takes the dead man’s vehicle and identity, and ends up being blackmailed by feral femme fatale Vera (played by the aptly named Ann Savage, who creates the hardest, most bitter femme in Hollywood’s rogue’s gallery). Under Ulmer’s direction, however, Al is less a victim of bad luck and poor choices than he is a passive puppet whose strings are pulled by a sadistic deity, and Ulmer fuses his Poverty Row minimalism with the out-of-control desperation of the bleakest of noir thrillers. Bland sets and generic locations morph into an austere, unreal world and the limited performances from Hollywood washouts are transformed into minimalist characters in an existential universe. Detour has achieved cult film status over the years and is considered a minor classic of film noir, but has only previously been available in substandard home video releases. Restored in 2018 by the Academy Film Archive and the Film Foundation, it is here presented in a gorgeous 4K restoration, with extras including the 2004 documentary "Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen," an interview with Ulmer scholar Noah Isenberg, a featurette on the restoration, and a booklet with an essay by critic Robert Polito. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)