Detour · reception & legacy
1945 · Edgar G. Ulmer
How Detour has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
In 1945 it was just another Poverty Row programmer, shot for pocket change at PRC and dumped onto the bottom half of double bills. Decades of critics — Andrew Sarris championing Ulmer, Errol Morris calling it a favourite — turned it into the consensus pick for the greatest B-movie ever made, and it entered the National Film Registry in 1992.
What's debated
The eternal debate: are the cheap sets, rear projection, and stilted patches accidental limitations or the whole fatalistic point — flaws, or the purest expression of noir doom ever filmed?
Its footprint
Ann Savage's Vera is routinely cited as the most venomous femme fatale in all of film noir, and the film's public-domain afterlife — decades of murky dollar-bin prints before the 2018 restoration — became part of its grimy legend.
Where it stands
The definitive 'trash into treasure' cult object: a 68-minute Poverty Row quickie that cinephiles now treat as essential viewing and proof that budget has nothing to do with greatness.