1945’s Detour Gets a 4K Restoration and an Updated Trailer

Filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer’s low-budget thriller, Detour is one of the finest examples of gritty film noir, and on November 30, 2018 a restored 4K version will hit US theaters thanks to funding from George Lucas.

Arguably Ulmer’s most appreciated work, Detour was part the first group of films to be selected by the Library of Congress for preservation. For those who have never seen the film, the story tells the tale of nightclub musician Al Roberts, who finds himself on the run with a dead body. When he meets the seductively conniving Vera, things go down hill fast.

Janus Films Synopsis

From the gutters of Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run—a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage’s snarling, monstrously conniving drifter Vera. Working with no-name stars on a bargain-basement budget, B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry. Long available only in substandard public domain prints, Detour haunts anew in its first major restoration.