1951 - FIXED BAYONETS, back to the Korean War.

Now working for 20th Century Fox and Darryl Zanuck,  Sam Fuller is getting bigger budgets for his films.  Although shot on a sound stage on the Fox lot, the film is a fairly gripping war film.

The story is about an American platoon left behind to fight a "rear guard" as the main division retreats.  The film in many ways covers the same territory as John Ford's The Lost Patrol as one by one the soldiers get picked off by the Chinese Army.

 

The film has an interesting cast starting with Richard Basehart as a corporal who has an aversion to killing the enemy.  There are the usual army soldier stereotypes, the know-it-all, the southerner, the green lieutenant etc.  Of course it wouldn't be a Sam Fuller war film without the appearance of Gene Evans playing tough guy NCO Sergeant Rock.

 

A good war film without the usual rah rah stuff these 50's war films usually contain.

Written by Fuller, the running time is 92 minutes 

1949 - I SHOT JESSE JAMES, Sam Fuller's first film.

The beginning of Sam Fuller's directing career.  With the exception of a few scenes this film really isn't that interesting.  Fuller wrote the screenplay about Bob Ford, the man who shot Jesse James in the back and interested the producer  Robert Lippert in it.  He basically gave the screenplay to Lippert for free providing he be allowed to direct it.

The film is actually a conventional love triangle story made on a small budget.  The film lacks Fuller's flamboyant camera style and kind of plods along to its inevitable conclusion.

 

The running time is 81 minutes.

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET - Fuller's Commie bashing spy story

Richard Widmark is pickpocket Skip McCoy who picks the purse of prostitute Jean Peters playing a character named Candy.  Little does Skip know, that Candy is also a courier for a Communist spy ring trying to smuggle a piece of microfilm out of the country.  With the help of Moe a snitch for the police the chase is on with the cops and the commies in hot pursuit of Skip.

And so starts another Sam Fuller film where everyone talks tough and Fuller's idea of a love scene is to have Skip punch Candy out and knock her into unconsciousness.

Widmark has played this kind of very tough guy many times but the fact is he is very good at it.  Peters who at times was a sensitive actress is also pretty good as the hooker, Candy.  But probably the best performance in the film is veteran character actress Thelma Ritter as the ultimately tragic stool pigeon, Moe.   

The film is filled with the usual flamboyant camera angles and it zips along at a quick 80 minutes.

1957 - FORTY GUNS, crazy Sam Fuller Western

 Barbara Stanwyck is Jessica Drummond the owner of a large ranch and the ruling power in the county. She has a gang (harem?) of 40 riders who zip around on their horses scaring the crap out of everyone.  Stanwyck also has a worthless brother who's a drunk and a coward and not adverse to a little back shooting so you know he's gonna be trouble.

Into this setup comes Barry Sullivan and  his brothers playing thinly disguised versions of Wyatt Earp and his brothers.  Let the gun play and perverse situations begin after all this is a Sam Fuller film.

Fuller never met a weird camera crane shot or closeup he didn't like.  He got his director of photography Joseph Biroc a cameraman who would go on to be associated with Robert Aldrich to enable him in his passion for at times outrageous photography.

Is the movie any good?  Beats me. But it's certainly flamboyant as only Sam Fuller can do.  Fuller wrote the screenplay. The film runs a brisk 80 minutes.

1951 - THE STEEL HELMET, interesting 50's look at the Korean War

Sam Fuller's take on the infantry soldier and the Korean War, has lots of supposedly tough realistic military stuff going on but it mostly is stuck in the obligatory rah rah we are here fighting to stop the spread of godless communism. 

Fuller worked on a very low budget and short production schedule supposedly shooting about 10 days.  The cast was mostly unknown actors who actually looked like soldiers. 

The platoon of American G.I.'s is the usual cross section of the country, one guy is black, another a conscious objector still another is a veteran of the D-Day landing etc.  They capture a North Korean soldier who attempts to spread dissension in the platoon but whatever else these dog faces might be they are still patriotic Americans. 

As usual the attraction with any Sam Fuller film is his blunt in your face style of film making.  The dialog and situations were a little tougher than the usual war movie cliches.  Audiences hadn't seen these kind of characters before, The Steel Helmet was a big hit. 

85 minutes.

1959 - THE CRIMSON KIMONO another tawdry mess from Sam Fuller

Fuller's crime film about two detectives is one big mess. The story is about a stripper who is gunned down on a busy street of Los Angeles and since it's a Sam Fuller movie he literally had a stripper running down a busy street.

 

 The two detectives, one a Caucasian the other a Japanese American are assigned to solve the murder. The detectives actually live together in some sort of weird gay subtext which Fuller raises and then drops that inference rather quickly.

Both of the detectives fall in love with a portrait painter who helps them solve the case. At this point the movie switches course and becomes the story of an interracial romance. The interracial romance causes the Japanese detective to turn into some kind of reverse racist and he attempts to beat his friend to death during a kendo match. The movie ends with a chase through a Chinatown parade where the Japanese detective shoots the killer of the stripper and simultaneously sees the error of his reverse racist ways.

 Yes this film was a total mess, but an interesting mess.

 98 minutes.

1959 - VERBOTEN, Sam Fuller's love story features teenage Nazi punks

The Director is Mr. Unsubtle, Sam Fuller. The film is about the American Army's challenges with the occupation of Germany after World War II. The film was shot on a very low budget, it is creepy and contemporary. Verboten starts with three American soldiers on patrol in a small German town, the soundtrack blasts Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as one by one each soldier is shot. The third soldier survives hidden by a German woman who he will eventually fall in love with and marry. He takes a job helping to feed hungry Germans, then all hell breaks loose.

 

Fuller touches on a lot of different issues, homegrown terrorism, the role of a civilian population governed by a totalitarian government, Nazi concentration camps, attacks on American troops by underground Nazi political groups. He doesn't do it with intelligent discussions of these issues, he bangs the viewer over the head with a shovel to get their attention first.

It's well known that Fuller was an infantry man during World War II serving with the 1st Infantry, also known as The Big Red One. Fuller was not a guy to put up with a lot of bullshit in his movies so he doesn't mess around.  He shows former Nazi's organizing terrorist cells called "Werwolfs." Fuller makes it very clear, he has some sympathy for the German people, but this was also a guy who liberated Jewish concentration camps and he's not about to let the Germans off the hook for that. These Werwolf groups actually existed and apparently the Allied Army didn't mess around when it came to dealing with them. General Eisenhower ordered them shot or thrown into forced labor camps without a trial. The French made them clear mine fields, the Canadians burned down the houses they were living in and the Russians just destroyed entire towns where they were suspected to be living.

This is not Fuller's best movie, the limitations of the budget and the large amount of stock footage work against it. But this is a very tough emotional film made by a guy who was actually a witness to this part of history.

 93 minutes, written by Samuel Fuller.