Gary D. Rhodes, a master at making out-of-the-way topics both accessible and appealing, performs a grand service with this savvy forum on the strange and necessary filmmaking career of Edgar G. Ulmer. From the martyred brilliance of The Black Cat through the unlikely finery of Bluebeard and Detour—with his own tangle of detours into ethnic cinema, symphonic soap opera, and drive-in schlockery—Ulmer comes into view for the first time as a compleat artist, perhaps the most influential forebear of the New Century's independent-cinema movement.