Producers Releasing Corporation
Producers Releasing Corporation was one of the smallest and least prestigious Hollywood film studios of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoestring film producers based their operations. However, PRC was more substantial than the usual independent companies that made only a few low-budget movies and then disappeared. PRC was an actual Hollywood studio – albeit the smallest – with its own production facilities and distribution network, and it even accepted imports from the UK. PRC lasted from 1939 to 1947, churning out low-budget B movies for the lower half of a double bill or the upper half of a neighborhood theater showing second-run films. The studio was originally located at 1440 N. Gower St. from 1936 to 1943. PRC then occupied the former Grand National Pictures physical plant at 7324 Santa Monica Blvd., from 1943 to 1946. This address is now an apartment complex.
Logo in 1945
A B movie, or B film, is a type of low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second half of a double feature, somewhat similar to B-sides in the world of recorded music. However, the production of such films as "second features" in the United States largely declined by the end of the 1950s. This shift was due to the rise of commercial television, which prompted film studio B movie production departments to transition into television film production divisions. These divisions continued to create content similar to B movies, albeit in the form of low-budget films and series.
The "King of the Bs", Roger Corman, produced and directed The Raven (1963) for American International Pictures. Vincent Price headlines a cast of veteran character actors along with a young Jack Nicholson.
Stony Brooke (Wayne), Tucson Smith (Corrigan), and Lullaby Joslin (Terhune) did not get much time in harness. Republic Pictures' Pals of the Saddle (1938) lasts just 55 minutes, average for a Three Mesquiteers adventure.
Often marketed as pure sensationalism, many films noir also possessed great visual beauty. Raw Deal (1948), writes scholar Robert Smith, is "resplendent with velvety blacks, mists, netting, and other expressive accessories of poetic noir decor and lighting". Directed by Anthony Mann and shot by John Alton, it was released by Poverty Row's Eagle-Lion firm.
Rocketship X-M (1950), produced and released by small Lippert Pictures, is cited as possibly "the first postnuclear holocaust film". It was at the leading edge of a large cycle of movies, mostly low-budget and many long forgotten, classifiable as "atomic bomb cinema".