The low-budget studio that kept Bela Lugosi making horror

Monogram Pictures was a small Hollywood studio formed in 1931, and it built its business on series of cheap films, among them the horror pictures of Bela Lugosi, the actor who starred in Dracula. Studios of its size were nicknamed Poverty Row, Hollywood's name for its cheapest producers, whose fast, low-budget pictures filled the bottom half of a double bill. Monogram's answer to a thin budget was repetition: recurring characters and familiar faces that audiences would pay to see again.

Relay has at least 5 Monogram releases, made between 1941 and 1943. All five are below.

How did a small studio get started?

W. Ray Johnston, the company's president, and Trem Carr, its head of production, formed Monogram in 1931 out of earlier low-budget companies. In 1935 it was merged into the new Republic Pictures. Johnston and Carr left, and in 1937 Johnston revived Monogram as an independent company. It was later renamed Allied Artists, and in 1946 it created an Allied Artists unit for costlier films.

How did cheap films become a business?

Monogram bet on series. Boris Karloff's Mr. Wong mysteries came first, and then the producer Sam Katzman signed Lugosi in 1941 for a run of thrillers. Lugosi appeared in many Monogram films through the 1940s. TCM says that poverty row work contributed to his being typecast in horror roles.

Katzman also created the East Side Kids, a low-budget imitation of the Dead End Kids, a group of young actors from the play and film Dead End. Monogram released the East Side Kids films from 1940, and in 1946 the series was reinvented as the Bowery Boys, with more emphasis on comedy.

Which Monogram films are on Relay?

Invisible Ghost (1941)

Lugosi plays Charles Kessler, a wealthy man who commits murders in trances set off by the sight of his wife, whom he believes is dead. It was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, later known for film noir. Senses of Cinema, a film journal, calls it the first sign that Lewis was an original voice. Lewis went on to direct Gun Crazy (1950), which the Library of Congress added to the National Film Registry in 1998.

Crime

Bowery Blitzkrieg (1941)

Huntz Hall, one of the original Dead End Kids, made his first East Side Kids picture here. Filming ran from mid-June to mid-July 1941. The story follows a cop trying to steer a kid street-fighter away from trouble while a petty hoodlum pulls a studious kid toward crime.

Comedy

Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Lugosi plays Professor Brenner, who teaches criminal psychology at a New York university. Under the name Karl Wagner he secretly runs a Bowery mission, a charity shelter, as a front for robberies and murders.

Thriller

The Ape Man (1943)

Filming began on 16 December 1942 and ran into early January. It is based on "They Creep in the Dark" by Karl Brown, a story published in The Saturday Evening Post. Lugosi plays Dr. James Brewster, a scientist whose experiment turns him into an ape-man who needs human spinal fluid to restore his humanity.

Horror

Ghosts on the Loose (1943)

The East Side Kids try to surprise newlywed friends by fixing up their new house, but get the address wrong and land in a supposedly haunted house that Nazi spies use as a hideout. Lugosi plays Emil, the spies' leader. Monogram borrowed Ava Gardner, then a young M-G-M contract actress, for the film. TCM says it was the first time M-G-M loaned her to another studio, and her first official screen credit.

Comedy

Where to go next

• For another studio built on cheap series films, see Republic Pictures.
• For a rival that made its own low-budget thrillers, see Producers Releasing Corporation.