Challenging the myth that Fritz Lang's best work ended when he reached Hollywood, Reynold Humphries takes a new look at seventeen of the director's twenty-two American films. Made between 1936 and 1956, these films-- "Fury," "You Only Live Once," "You and Me," "Man Hunt," "Hangmen Also Die," "The Ministry of Fear," "The Woman in the Window," "Scarlet Street," "Cloak and Dagger," "Secret beyond the Door," "House by the River," "Rancho Notorious," "The Blue Gardenia," "The Big Heat," "Moonfleet," "While the City Sleeps," and "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt"--broadly validate the insights of "auteur" theory while emphasizing the importance of the narrative and representational codes peculiar to a given genre.

Humphries examines these films in light of semiotics and psychoanalysis, drawing on Freud's "Wolfman" case and Lacan's theories of "the subject" and "the look" to bring novel solutions to crucial theoretical problems in such areas as the spectator, classical film narrative, and genre. In applying critical theory to Lang's Hollywood-made "film noirs," melodramas, Westerns, and spy films, Humphries provocatively complicates "auteur" theory and revitalizes an unjustly neglected phase in the career of one of cinema's boldest visionaries.

Edgar G. Ulmer: Detour on Poverty Row illuminates the work of this under-appreciated film auteur through 21 new essays penned by a range of scholars from around the globe. Ulmer, an immigrant to Hollywood who fell from grace in Tinseltown after only one studio film, became one of the reigning directors of Poverty Row B-movies. Structured in four sections, Part I examines various contexts important to Ulmer's career, such as his work at the Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), and his work in exploitation films and ethnic cinema. Part II analyzes Ulmer's film noirs, featuring an emphasis on Detour (1945) and Murder Is My Beat (1955). Part III covers a variety of Ulmer's individual films, ranging from Bluebeard (1944) and Carnegie Hall (1947) to The Man from Planet X (1951) and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957). Part IV concludes the volume with a case study of The Black Cat (1934), offering three different analyses of Ulmer's landmark horror film.

Edgar G. Ulmer: Detour on Poverty Row illuminates the work of this under-appreciated film auteur through 21 new essays penned by a range of scholars from around the globe. Ulmer, an immigrant to Hollywood who fell from grace in Tinseltown after only one studio film, became one of the reigning directors of Poverty Row B-movies. Structured in four sections, Part I examines various contexts important to Ulmer's career, such as his work at the Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), and his work in exploitation films and ethnic cinema. Part II analyzes Ulmer's film noirs, featuring an emphasis on Detour (1945) and Murder Is My Beat (1955). Part III covers a variety of Ulmer's individual films, ranging from Bluebeard (1944) and Carnegie Hall (1947) to The Man from Planet X (1951) and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957). Part IV concludes the volume with a case study of The Black Cat (1934), offering three different analyses of Ulmer's landmark horror film.

In February 1931, Universal Studios released Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. As a result of the film's considerable-and unexpected-success, Universal and the other Hollywood studios quickly cashed in on this genre. In the following decade such classics as Freaks, Frankenstein, King Kong, White Zombie, The Mummy, The Wolfman, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, along with a number of lesser known but significant works, were produced. But these films tend to be neglected as a serious object of study. The main interest shown in them comes from fanzines whose critics often place the accent on the anecdotal at the expense of analysis. And serious studies undertaken by sociologists and specialists in cultural studies either prefer themes and content or choose to study the films as reflecting the concerns, albeit unconsciously, of the period. In The Hollywood Horror Film, 1931-1941: Madness in a Social Landscape, Reynold Humphries analyzes representative films of this era and discusses their impact upon audiences at the time. He evaluates what their success says about the society that consumed them and about the filmmakers who produced them-particularly the unconscious dimension of the films and their ideological ramifications. According to Humphries, prejudices of a social, racial, and sexual nature on the part of Hollywood's censors and the press went hand in hand with a sense of growing unease at what was being portrayed on the screen. Concentrating on abnormal and often sadistic acts, on an unbridled striving after power, and on the mad doctor/scientist's indifference to others, horror films of the era act out society's division along lines of class and economics. Brutal exploitation went beyond the monstrous acts of an individual to assume a social dimension where collective interests come to the fore by the way they are trampled on. One of the aims of this book is to pinpoint how the "political unconscious" of the films in question reveals points of contact