Old B Pictures Get the A Treatment : Movies: Once regarded as schlock, B films are now often looked upon as cinematic poetry. The eight-week, 39-film series ‘Bombs, Babes and Beasts’ begins Saturday at UCLA.

When you call them B pictures, smile.

Denigrated, derided and dismissed, these feisty products of the low end of Hollywood were considered schlock when they were released but are now often deified as cinematic poetry direct from the gutter.

Characterized mainly by low budgets and an unstoppable passion for the medium, B pictures often made up in energy and enthusiasm what they lacked in financing and finesse. And as “Bombs, Babes and Beasts: A ‘B’ Movie Sampler,” a sprightly eight-week, 39-film series organized by Andrea Alsberg and set to begin Saturday night at UCLA’s Melnitz Hall shows, during their heyday Bs were omnipresent, invading almost every genre with their economy and drive.

B pictures came into their own during the Depression, when the rise of the double bill demanded that short, inexpensive films be made to occupy the bottom half of the program. Perhaps because they were all relatively short, Bs fit most smugly into traditional genre forms.

This was especially true with B Westerns, celebrated in UCLA’s Sunday matinee showing of “Frontier Marshal,” starring Randolph Scott, and two John Wayne films, “Dark Command” and “Randy Rides Alone.”

Until blockbusters like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Star Wars” forced a rethinking of the genre, science-fiction films were almost by definition B pictures. Aside from old friends like “Them!” and “The Thing,” the series offers 1958’s “Monster on Campus,” in which a prehistoric fish from Madagascar spawns a two-foot dragonfly.

B pictures often operated on that edge of hysteria and improbability, with preposterous plots that defied description, let alone belief. What the best of them did have was compulsive watchability grounded in narrative drive. B pictures had to have grabber plots and no-frills storytelling that got right down to it.

Yet despite these limitations, or possibly because of them, a number of very talented filmmakers made Bs. Three directors have nights to themselves in the series, although one, William Castle, is considered more a horror impresario whose films like “The Tingler” (for which theaters were asked to wire seats to jolt unsuspecting patrons) depended as much on gimmicks as skill.

Sam Fuller is perhaps the best known of the B monarchs. Accurately praised by critic Andrew Sarris as “an authentic American primitive whose works have to be seen to be understood,” Fuller made no-holds-barred potboilers that practically grab you by the neck. Especially notable is “Shock Corridor,” the story of an ace reporter (is there any other kind?) who gets himself confined to a psycho ward in pursuit of a scoop and then wishes he hadn’t.

The series also offers four films by the coolly intelligent Joseph H. Lewis, starting with a 35mm nitrate print of the crackling “My Name Is Julia Ross,” a psychological thriller that toys with our nerves as it tests the sanity of its much-put-upon lead character, played by Nina Foch.

Though he doesn’t get a night of his own, director Edgar G. Ulmer is represented in the series by his astonishing “Detour,” which tells of the unhappy relationship between Al, a musician trying to get across the country to his girl in L.A., and Vera, the most fatal femme in B history, played by the aptly named Ann Savage. Partly because Tom Neal, who played Al, ended up going to prison for murdering his wife, the cult around this film is considerable. Sarris calls it “this most despairing and most claustrophobic of all B pictures.”

Though it would be hard to be as unsettling as “Detour,” several other films have considerable individual reputations:

* “Thunder Road.” This tale of moonshiners fighting Feds and racketeers is a Robert Mitchum epic all the way: He produced it, wrote the original story, wrote and sang the title song and gave the ultimate Mitchum performance, smoldering, sexy and tough.

* “Hitler’s Children.” “Children” describes an ill-fated love affair between a peppery American gal (Bonita Granville) and a robotized Nazi storm trooper (Tim Holt). Most spooky is the parade of police-state horrors, including the (gasp!) shameless breeding of illegitimate children for the glory of der Fuehrer.

* “Criss Cross.” B pictures had a special affinity for film noir, and this, one of the best-written of the noirs and starring Burt Lancaster, has a nail-biter ending that fully lives up to its potential.

If these films are more or less well-known, the series also features B pictures that few have heard of. Some are so bizarre it’s a wonder they don’t have cults of their own, including 1940’s “The Monster and the Girl.” Susan, a small-town girl turned bad in the big city, testifies for her brother, who has been framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Susan’s testimony goes for naught, but just before his execution, her brother agrees to let his brain be transplanted into an ape, who promptly avenges Susan’s honor by squashing everyone in sight. Variety felt “the ape steals the picture,” but others will vote for Skipper the Dog, who plays himself.

The Festival of the Bs

The schedule for “Bombs, Babes and Beasts: A ‘B’ Movie Sampler” at UCLA: Saturday, 7:30 p.m.: “Murder My Sweet,” “Eyes in the Night,” “Criss Cross.”

Sunday, 7 p.m.: “Shock Corridor,” “I Shot Jesse James,” “The Crimson Kimono.”

Oct. 21, 7:30 p.m.: “Mr. Sardonicus,” “When Strangers Marry,” “The Tingler.”

Oct. 24, 2 p.m.: “Hitler’s Children,” “Night Plane From Chungking,” “A Letter for Evie.”

Oct. 26, 7:30 p.m.: “Thunder Road,” “Queen of the Mob,” “King of Alcatraz.”

Oct. 31, 7 p.m.: “The Monster and the Girl,” “I Walked With a Zombie,” “The Wolf Man.”

Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m.: “Rocket Ship X-M,” “The Thing,” “This Island Earth.”

Nov. 7, 2 p.m.: “Frontier Marshal,” “Dark Command,” “Randy Rides Alone.”

Nov. 9, 7:30 p.m.: “My Name Is Julia Ross,” “Detour,” “The Great Flamarion.”

Nov. 13, 7:30 p.m.: “They Live by Night,” “High School Confidential,” “The Young Stranger.”

Nov. 14, 2 p.m.: “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “Them!,” “Monster on the Campus.”

Nov. 28, 2 p.m.: “Shack Out on 101,” “Split Second,” “The Red Menace.”

Dec. 4, 7:30 p.m.: “So Dark the Night,” “Gun Crazy,” “The Big Combo.”

Screenings are at Melnitz Hall on the northeast corner of the UCLA campus, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue. Tickets, available one hour before screening time, are $5, $3 for students and seniors. Matinees are $3 and $1.50. Parking on campus is $5.