Poverty Row Horrors

Poverty row horror films were usually inexpensively (some would say cheaply) produced with writing that ranged from bad to atrocious. Yet these movies with their all-star horror casts (Carradine, Lugosi, Karloff, et al.) and their ape men, mad monsters, devil bats and white zombies still have a loyal audience 50 years after their release.Essays contain full filmographic data on the 31 horror chillers made by the three studios from 1940 through 1946 and are arranged by year of release. Each entry includes the date of release, length, production credits, cast credits, interview quotes, and a plot synopsis with critical commentary. Filmographies for prominent horror actors and actresses, from John Abbott to George Zucco, are provided in the appendices.

From the beginning of the sound era until the end of the 1930s, independent movie-making thrived. Many of the independent studios were headquartered in a section of Hollywood called "Poverty Row." Here the independents made movies on the cheap, usually at rented facilities where shooting was limited to only a few days. From Allied Pictures Corporation to Willis Kent Production, 55 Poverty Row Studios are given histories in this book. Some of the studios, such as Diversion Pictures and Cresent Pictures, came into existence for the sole purpose of releasing movies by established stars. Others, for example J.D. Kendis, were early exploitation filmmakers under the guise of sex education. The histories include critical commentary on the studio's output and a filmography of all titles released from 1929 through 1940.

In 1948, the Australian government banned the production, importation and exhibition of horror films in a move to appease religious communities and entertainment watchdogs. Drawing upon previously unseen government documents, private letters and contemporary newspaper accounts, this book is the first to extensively cover the history of censorship and the early production of horror movies in Australia. Beginning its examination in the late 19th century, the book documents the earliest horror films like Georges Melies' The Haunted Castle (1896), and how Australians enjoyed such films before the ban. The book then explains how certain imports, like 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon, were able to circumvent the ban while others were not. It also reveals how Australian television, though similarly impacted by government censorship, was occasionally able to broadcast films technically banned from cinematic release. The work concludes with a look at the first Australian horror films produced after the ban was formally lifted in 1969, like Terry Bourke's Night of Fear (1973).

From the grindhouse oddities to major studio releases, this work details 46 horror films released during the genre’s golden era. Each entry includes cast and credits, a plot synopsis, in-depth critical analysis, contemporary reviews, time of release, brief biographies of the principal cast and crew, and a production history. Apart from the 46 main entries, 71 additional “borderline horrors” are examined and critiqued in an appendix.

The 1940s is a lost decade in horror cinema, undervalued and written out of most horror scholarship. This collection revises, reframes, and deconstructs persistent critical binaries that have been put in place by scholarly discourse to label 1940s horror as somehow inferior to a “classical” period or “canonical” mode of horror in the 1930s, especially as represented by the monster films of Universal Studios. The book's four sections re-evaluate the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors informing 1940s horror cinema to introduce new theoretical frameworks and to open up space for scholarly discussion of 1940s horror genre hybridity, periodization, and aesthetics. Chapters focused on Gothic and Grand Guignol traditions operating in forties horror cinema, 1940s proto-slasher films, the independent horrors of the Poverty Row studios, and critical reevaluations of neglected hybrid films such as The Vampire’s Ghost (1945) and “slippery” auteurs such as Robert Siodmak and Sam Neufield, work to recover a decade of horror that has been framed as having fallen victim to repetition, exhaustion, and decline.

He was born Béla Ferenc Dezso Blasko on October 20, 1882, in Hungary. He joined Budapest’s National Theater in 1913 and later appeared in several Hungarian films under the pseudonym Arisztid Olt. After World War I, he helped the Communist regime nationalize Hungary’s film industry, but barely escaped arrest when the government was deposed, fleeing to the United States in 1920. As he became a star in American horror films in the 1930s and 1940s, publicists and fan magazines crafted outlandish stories to create a new history for Lugosi. The cinema’s Dracula was transformed into one of Hollywood’s most mysterious actors. This exhaustive account of Lugosi’s work in film, radio, theater, vaudeville and television provides an extensive biographical look at the actor. The enormous merchandising industry built around him is also examined.

Universal Studios created the first cinematic universe of monsters--Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and others became household names during the 1930s and 1940s. During the 1950s, more modern monsters were created for the Atomic Age, including one-eyed globs from outer space, mutants from the planet Metaluna, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the 100-foot high horror known as Tarantula. This over-the-top history is the definitive retrospective on Universal's horror and science fiction movies of 1951-1955. Standing as a sequel to Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas's Universal Horrors (Second Edition, 2007), it covers eight films: The Strange Door, The Black Castle, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, Revenge of the Creature, Cult of the Cobra and Tarantula. Each receives a richly detailed critical analysis, day-by-day production history, interviews with filmmakers, release information, an essay on the score, and many photographs, including rare behind-the-scenes shots.