Chiller-dillers for the shiver-and-shudder set: The Whistler film series

This article explores the serial dynamics behind and within the succession of B-films Columbia Pictures developed from the popular CBS radio program The Whistler. It examines how this anthology series developed within Columbia’s ongoing strategy of low-budget production, while responding to specific industrial challenges facing 1940s B-films. Besides looking at broader synergies between radio and cinema during this period, the article also qualifies the tendency to categorize the Whistler movies as films noir, suggesting it is more productive to view them as products of a broader pulp serialscape that is shaped by alternative cultural and industrial logics.