Samuel Fuller on Blu-ray

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The Naked Kiss just might have the most memorable opening four minutes in the history of film:

"The Naked Kiss" Opening Titles (1964) - YouTube

Now that I have your attention (haha).......

In case you are not familiar with the late great Samuel Fuller, please allow me to start you on a path of righteous discovery. Meet the original master of pulp fiction on film. As both writer and director of most of his movies, Fuller was an outsized talent whose well-crafted stories and film style were an inspiration to his contemporaries in the French New Wave and had a strong influence on future directors such as Scorsese and Tarantino. It is this association with younger filmmakers later in his life that may be his greatest legacy.



In my years of seeking out Fuller's movies, here is what I have learned: I suggest sitting down in front of your display with a fat stogie between your teeth, a glass of whiskey in your hand, and letting the world of Sam Fuller engulf you. Scratch the surface of his awesome two-fisted dialogue, gripping action, tough guys and even tougher dames, dramatic stories often revolving around combat, crime, or human failings, and you will uncover remarkable social commentary. Few filmmakers could match Fuller for the stylistic and narrative poetry that elevated his pulp inspired stories of the evil that men do. He takes us on a journey into the heart of darkness, into the absurdity and hubris accompanying the crash and burn of modern society, shows us the bitter depths of conflict and alienation, casts his camera's eye into the lives of the lost and the damned wandering amid the wreckage...... and makes us love it all. He was ahead of his time and his filmic voice spoke from a place of authority based on his own life's experiences.

Fuller spent the 1930s and early 1940s as a crime reporter and screenplay writer. When the U.S. entered the Second World War in 1941, he enlisted as a private in the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division (the Big Red One) and fought with his unit as a combat infantryman across North Africa and Sicily before landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He fought across France and into Germany, ending the war as a corporal and winning the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and a Purple Heart. His final days of the war were spent in the liberation of Falkenau Concentration Work Camp, Czechoslovakia, where he shot film footage from a handheld camera he had picked up along the way.

Fuller was a writer first and foremost, and after returning to the U.S. he headed to Hollywood where he became a full-time screenwriter before making the jump to writer/director. His first three films were I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona (starring Vincent Price), and what would become his breakout film, The Steel Helmet, a war movie set during the then current Korean War. Fuller's years as a crime journalist and decorated soldier made their way into his stories and his movies, giving them a hard realistic edge and a sense of narrative independence that eventually made him a maverick director with a cinematic vision uniquely his own. Fuller's frequent in-your-face attitude, wickedly dark sense of humor, and carefully crafted central themes - the brutality of war, the corrosiveness of bigotry, the consequences of the abuse of power, and the tragedy of innocence lost - are like a fist slamming down on a table. He just might topple your whiskey bottle while making his point.








Region B Only





Region Free (U.K. Release, Region Free)





DVD

(Yeah, I know this is a Blu-ray thread, but this set is too good to leave off and contains Fuller's first three films as a director, including his third movie and one of his best, the classic The Steel Helmet. The picture quality for the three films ranges from very good to excellent).