DETOUR cost peanuts and was shot in just days, primarily in just two locations. Most of it looks like a home movie, with B and C actors and acting, silly dialog, and crude camera and editing effects. Yet it's hailed by some as the best B noir film ever made. It's definitely one of the bleakest in style and content. Credit director Edgar G. Ulmer, who got his start as a set and production designer at the heart of German expressionism. The plot: chance events, including murder and blackmail by a screeching harridan named Vera (Ann Savage), ensnare a sad-sack hitch-hiker namedl Roberts (Tom Neal) in an ever-tightening net of nasty noirness. DETOUR's message (and for that matter, that of most of film noir) is nicely capsuled in Al's final voice-over speech, accompanied by a shot of him being picked up by the cops:
DETOUR (1946)
Hitch-hiking with fate
DETOUR cost peanuts and was shot in just days, primarily in just two locations. Most of it looks like a home movie, with B and C actors and acting, silly dialog, and crude camera and editing effects. Yet it's hailed by some as the best B noir film ever made. It's definitely one of the bleakest in style and content. Credit director Edgar G. Ulmer, who got his start as a set and production designer at the heart of German expressionism. The plot: chance events, including murder and blackmail by a screeching harridan named Vera (Ann Savage), ensnare a sad-sack hitch-hiker namedl Roberts (Tom Neal) in an ever-tightening net of nasty noirness. DETOUR's message (and for that matter, that of most of film noir) is nicely capsuled in Al's final voice-over speech, accompanied by a shot of him being picked up by the cops:
