Fedor Tot Vague Visages Nov 7, 2023

Detour plays like a fever dream powered by guilt and dread; an existential noir about an American male lost in the nothingness and vastness of the country.

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Sean Axmaker Stream on Demand Dec 3, 2022

I like to think of Edgar G. Ulmer’s waking nightmare Detour (1945), an existential, almost surreal thriller, as the “B”-est film noir ever made.

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Josh Larsen LarsenOnFilm Apr 6, 2021 3.5/4

...a quick, grimy, and above all else guilty picture.

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Mildred Martin Philadelphia Inquirer Dec 29, 2020

Tom Neal does extremely well in the long, difficult role of the petrified pianist whose misadventures are told in flashback; while Ann Savage all but blisters the screen with her venoemous, snarling performance as the vicious Vera.

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Sara Hamilton Photoplay Dec 29, 2020

Ann Savage, who plays a no-good, does a beauty of a job... We feel you will have a bond of sympathy for Neal, both in person and story and that always makes for a good show.

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Film Daily Staff The Film Daily Dec 29, 2020

How fate can play tricks on a man is satisfactorily demonstrated in a melodrama with enough bite to command the attention closely throughout.

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Wanda Hale New York Daily News Dec 29, 2020 2/4

[Detour] is a morbid melodrama, depressing and uninteresting.

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Herbert Cohn Brooklyn Daily Eagle Dec 29, 2020

It Is a not-too-late-believable story of a piano player who ruined his life by hitch-hiking from New York to Los Angeles to marry his girl -- but it is told bluntly and briskly by Director Edgar Ulmer.

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Mandel Herbstman Motion Picture Herald (Exhibitors Herald) Dec 29, 2020

Venturing far from the familiar melodramatic pattern, director Edgar G. Ulmer has turned out an adroit, albeit unpretentious production about a man who stumbles into a series of circumstances which seal his doom.

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LA Times Staff Los Angeles Times Dec 29, 2020

One of the most poignant and disturbing stories to reach the screen in any year is this one. You're not just looking at a picture; you're right in it and suffering along with the man whose troubles are being told.

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Tony Sloman Radio Times Dec 29, 2020 4/5

A remarkably pacey and stylish B-movie thriller that's now rightly recognised as a minor classic.

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Stephen Danay Under the Radar Dec 29, 2020

As effective as Neal's performance is, it's not the one for which Detour is best remembered. His foil is Ann Savage as Vera, living up to her surname as one of the most vicious, despicable femme fatales in noir history.

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David Nusair Reel Film Reviews Dec 8, 2020 2.5/4

...a compelling setup that's employed to watchable yet pervasively erratic effect by Ulmer...

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Nicholas Bell IONCINEMA.com Aug 14, 2020 4/5

The inevitable fatalism of the oblivious heterosexual male remains at its most disconsolate zenith in Edgar G. Ulmer's timeless odyssey of anxiety.

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Mike Massie Gone With The Twins Aug 5, 2020 9/10

Table-turning, bluffing, hilarious verbal observations, and vitriolic insults compound with laugh-out-loud coincidences for a truly unique thriller.

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P.S. Harrison Harrison's Reports Jul 8, 2020

Well produced and directed, the picture sustains a tense mood throughout.

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Bryant Frazer Film Freak Central Jun 25, 2019

Detour is about as threadbare as they come: a small film, shot on a shoestring over a handful of days at a Poverty Row film studio. And yet, the finished product is uniquely compelling.

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James Kendrick Q Network Film Desk Apr 8, 2019 3.5/4

one of the darkest and most fatalistic of the postwar film noir-to the point that, if it didn't work so well, it could be mistaken for a postmodern parody of the genre

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Eric Melin Scene-Stealers.com Apr 5, 2019 4/5

Ulmer brings an enormous amount of impressionistic creativity and (what are now considered) infamous noir tropes into the project without spending more money.

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Matt Brunson Film Frenzy Mar 23, 2019 3.5/4

One of the most dour, dank and despairing of all film noir offerings.

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