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Producers Releasing Corporation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
One of the larger
Hollywood production conglomerates of Poverty Row of the late 30s-mid 40s, which
made the Frank Buck movie Tiger Fangs. Along
with Republic Pictures and Monogram Pictures and smaller companies, PRC, as it was
commonly known, intentionally shot mostly low-budget B-movies. Still, the
company was substantial enough not only to produce but also to distribute its
own product and some imports from the UK, and operate its own studio facility.
The company loosely evolved from the earlier Producers Distributing Corp. (PDC)
of Ben Judell, which had hired brothers Sigmund Neufeld and Sam Newfield to make
its films. (Sam Newfield directed Frank Buck in Tiger Fangs.) After the collapse of PDC, the brothers established and ran PRC,
which was later bought up by Pathé Industries Inc., though the only noticeable
change was of the name of the company's production arm to P.R.C. Pictures Inc.
The company otherwise continued to flourish within its own element until after
World War II. The distribution arm of the company was absorbed in the formation of
Eagle-Lion Films Inc. in 1947, and the production arm (and, therewith, the
entire company) followed shortly thereafter.
Most of the movies PRC made were westerns or action melodramas, plus an occasional
horror movie, and took a week or less to shoot. German director Edgar G. Ulmer
began working for the studio in 1942 and directed three films noir there -
Bluebeard (1944), Strange Illusion (1945) and Detour (1945) -
which have been recognized more recently as minor artistic achievements. MGM
picked up another
of their productions, Hitler's Madmen, for
distribution, and one of their regular music composers, Leo Erdody, was
nominated for an Academy Award for his musical score for PRC's Minstrel Man
in 1944.
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