AllMovie

Honored by movie historian Don Miller as "the chief of staff of Columbia B operations," director Lew Landers began his Hollywood career calling the shots on such Universal serials as Red Rider (1934) and Tailspin Tommy (1936). Billed under his real name of Louis Friedlander during his first year at Universal, he was also responsible for the excellent Karloff/Lugosi chiller The Raven (1935). Travelling under the name Lew Landers from 1936 onward, he piloted several more Universal and RKO programmers before setting up shop at Columbia. Amidst such forgettable efforts as The Stork Pays Off (1942) and U-Boat Prisoner (1942), Landers made a commendable return to the horror genre with Return of the Vampire (1944, again with Lugosi), Cry of the Werewolf (1944) and Soul of a Monster (1944). After 1946, Landers free-lanced at several lower-rung studios, touched bases with the Columbia B unit again, and finally channeled his energies into television. Lew Landers' best-known small-screen work of the 1950s included two episodes of Superman, shot back-to-back in the space of a single week.