Edgar G. Ulmer: Essays on the King of the B's

This collection of 20 essays pays homage to a filmmaker who had a reputation for delivering the most movie for the least money. Edgar G. Ulmer, nicknamed "The King of the Bs" and "The King of Poverty Row," gave us classics like The Black Cat, starring Bela Lugosi. His stealing away the wife of a producer led to exile from Hollywood and, working outside the studio system and with low budgets, he turned out film noir, science fiction, and ethnic films that achieved cult status and critical acceptance.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Foreword by Arianné Ulmer Cipes      Introduction: The Return of Edgar G. Ulmer BERND HERZOGENRATH      Ulmer and Cult/ure BERND HERZOGENRATH      Camera Obscura, or Moments of Broken Economy in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Films STEFAN GRISSEMANN      The Ordinary Life of Ordinary People: Menschen am Sonntag PETRA LÖFFLER      Ulmer’s Anti-Syphilis Film: Damaged Lives and Its Novelization MARCEL ARBEIT      The Black Cat GREGORY WILLIAM MANK      In Search of Jewish Identity SHARON PUCKER RIVO      Moon of Alabama / Moon Over Harlem: African American Culture and German Imaginations from Brecht to Ulmer FRANK MEHRING      Detour’s History/History’s Detour DANA POLAN      The Strange Woman: An Analysis with Gilles Deleuze’s Notion of the Impulse-Image JULIA MEIER      The Logic of Contradiction and the Politics of Desire in Ruthless REYNOLD HUMPHRIES      The Man from Planet X MATTHEW SWENEY      Camp, Art Film, Classical Hollywood Cinema and Babes in Bagdad HERBERT SCHWAAB      The Pleasures of the “Not-Quite Movie”: Murder Is My Beat and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll EKKEHARD KNÖRER      Products of Circumstances STEFANIE DIEKMANN      The Naked Dawn: Production, Sources, and Mise-en-Scène BILL KROHN      The Effects of the Displacement of Home in Daughter of Dr. Jekyll MICHAL PEPRNÍK      What You See Is What You Get: Ulmer and the Nudist Picture PETRA HANÁKOVÁ      Geocinema and Geophilosophy: The Cavern PHILIPP HOFMANN      Ulmer in the Aquarium ADRIAN MARTIN      About the Contributors      Index     

About the Author :
Bernd Herzogenrath teaches American literature and culture at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Cologne in Germany. He is also the editor of The Films of Tod Browning: Essays on the Macabre and Grotesque (McFarland 2008).

Review :
“Herzogenrath...has a real affection for his subject”—Little Shoppe of Horrors; “A terrific director who honed his chops on German Expressionism and economic necessity, the legendary Edgar G. Ulmer set up aesthetic shop making six-day wonders in the cinema’s lower depths. Ulmerian mise-en-scène is synonymous with problem solving—and vice versa. No filmmaker ever demonstrated a more formidable capacity for making something from nothing and Bernd Herzogenrath’s anthology pays belated, serious tribute to his genius.”—J. Hoberman, film critic and author of Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film between Two Worlds, and co-author of Midnight Movies; “At last, here is a scholarly book in English about one of the key figures of low-budget and marginal cinema who has most eluded scholarship. Bernd Herzogenrath’s fascinating collection not only clarifies many particulars about the life, career, and art of Ulmer (including his birthplace); it also proposes some new and more fruitful routes we might take in understanding them.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, author of Discovering Orson Welles, and co-author of Midnight Movies.