The acclaimed Forgotten Horrors series of movie-genre history and criticism lurches into the turning-point stretch of 1949-1954. This 300-plus-page study of the independent studios' forays into horror, S-F, film noir -- and some unclassifiable oddities -- tackles the most conflicted and paranoid period of American cultural history in terms of such breakthrough pictures as these: Mikel Conrad's "The Flying Saucer," the oddly matched set of George Pal's "Destination Moon" and Kurt Neumann's "Rocketship X-M," Edgar G. Ulmer's "The Man from Planet X," Ivan Tors' "Office of Scientific...