Samuel Fuller on DVD

Written by Steve Rhodes
Published May 06, 2003

Adam Jahnke reviews the four (out of 23) films by Samuel Fuller available on DVD over at the Digital Bits. He opens:


For hard-core movie buffs, there are two kinds of people. There are Sam Fuller fans and there are people who don't realize they're Sam Fuller fans yet. Beginning in 1949 with the western I Shot Jesse James, Samuel Fuller crafted an iconoclastic, highly stylized body of work that is instantly recognizable as belonging to no one else. His movies are tough, frequently violent, and without exception, totally without glamour and the Hollywood notion of romance...Fuller's American profile has always been hampered by the frustrating unavailability of most of his movies on home video. DVD's sudden surge of popularity has given new life to a wide array of cult filmmakers...But this wave has passed Sam Fuller by. As of this writing, only four (four!) of his twenty-three theatrical movies have been released on DVD... At this point, you can actually see more of his appearances in movies by other directors on disc than you can Fuller's own films. These include Steven Spielberg's 1941, Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou, and Wim Wenders' The American Friend and The End of Violence, which featured Fuller's very last work before his death in 1997. I'm here to tell you that this is a crime against cinema and a situation that must be changed.

He then reviews Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss, The Big Red One and Street of No Return.

The excellent Australian film website Senses of Cinema has a profile of Fuller.

Boston Phoenix critic Gearl Peary has a 1980 interview on his excellent site.

The Houston Chronicle reviewed Fuller's autobiography. "He was some kind of great man, and he wrote a book worthy of his life."

Charles Taylor had a longer review in Salon.

You can read an essay on the Naked Kiss and an essay on Shock Corridor on the Criterion website.

Steve Rhodes is a journalist and photographer in San Francisco.
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Samuel Fuller on DVD
Published: May 06, 2003
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Section: Video
Writer: Steve Rhodes
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