In the mid-1980s, when a traveling retrospective of the famously obscure émigré filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer (“King of the Bs”) was making its way across the United States, the Houston Chronicle ran a review with the apt title “Edgar G. Who?” If he was known at all, it was mainly due to his breathtaking low-budget noir DETOUR (1945). But Ulmer’s near thirty-five-year career as a director encompassed everything from a doomed entry to the Universal horror cycle, four Yiddish features, a Mexican western (Truffaut called it “a small gift from Hollywood”), a few sci-fi quickies, and other minor wonders from Poverty Row. Programmed in collaboration with Noah Isenberg, the George Christian Centennial Professor and Chair of University of Texas at Austin’s Radio-Television-Film department, and author of the critical biography “Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins,” which Isenberg will have for sale at a discounted price at select screenings.
