Of all the so called “Poverty Row” studios that flourished in Hollywood from the 1920s through the 1940s, none was cheaper than PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation). They specialized in westerns, action melodramas, and horror pictures and never spent more than $100,000 on any film. Most of their movies were shot in a week or less. Bela Lugosi made THE DEVIL BAT there in 1941 but the studio had no real stars under contract. The Austrian born director Edgar G. Ulmer made several films there of which two, BLUEBEARD w/John Carradine (1944) and the feverish film noir DETOUR (1945) are now classic B Pictures that have developed cult status.
THE STRANGLER OF THE SWAMP (1946) should have developed a cult following but as it has no stars of name value like Lugosi, most people (including fans of ghost stories) have never heard of it. It actually does contain a famous name in the person of Blake Edwards who was briefly a B movie actor before becoming a well known director in the 1960s. Fans of old movies and serials will instantly recognize Charles Middleton as the swamp ghost by his voice (you never clearly see his face). He was Ming the Merciless in the Buster Crabbe FLASH GORDON series. The female lead Rosemary LaPlanche, a former Miss America, is actually quite good.
The film is a remake of a 1936 German film about a woman ferry operator who sacrifices herself in order to end a curse (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, anyone?). The director is Frank Wisbar a German immigrant who made the original. He moves the setting to a swamp in the Deep South and uses light, shadow, and lots of studio fog to create a wonderfully oppressive atmosphere. A much later British film, HORROR HOTEL, contains the same kind of atmosphere. Long unavailable, STRANGLER is now part of Amazon’s FAT-W (Films Around The World) series of public domain films. If you like old B&W films that drip with atmosphere, look no further. It’s even available on Amazon Prime.
The Capsule Critic 