Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen

Edgar G. Ulmer: The Man Off Camera (2004)

** (out of 4)

After having its Turner Classic Movie premiere canceled for some reason, this documentary is finally seeing the light of day through Kino. I'm not sure why it was canceled but the thing comes as a major disappointment. Greg Mank, Tom Weaver, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Wim Winders, John Saxon, Peter Bogdanovich and other discuss the "B" movie director who many consider a genius. I'm not that big of a fan of Ulmer so I was hoping this documentary would show me what I was missing but it certainly didn't do that. All of those giving interviews seem to not know what to say and for the most part they don't say a thing. We get clips from films like The Black Cat, The Man From Planet X and various others but that's about it. I'm sure Mank and Weaver had stuff to say about these films but they give comments like "that was creepy". Bogdanovich has a taped interview with Ulmer, which gets played some throughout the documentary but not enough because what he says is a lot more interesting than anything else here.