Sam Fuller's first 3 films get a box treatment

by Terry Lawson

Detroit Free Press (MCT)

15 August 2007

If any director can be said to be underrated and overrated, it just might be Sam Fuller, a World War II Army veteran and journalist of the two-fisted variety portrayed so often in the crime movies of the 1940s.

Among cinemaphiles, especially those influenced by the French New Wave championing all things rough and tumble, Fuller’s reputation was based on his outsider status. A good introduction to his gruff charm can be had in Tim Robbins’ documentary “The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Camera,” or Fuller’s remarkable autobiography “The Third Face,” written before he died in 1997 at 85.

Even those who believe Fuller is something less than the great American maverick of movies might allow that films like “Pickup on South Street” and “Underworld USA” have a visceral impact that many crime movies and film noirs never achieve.

Fuller’s first three films as a director have been restored and brought together as “ The First Films of Samuel Fuller” ($44.95), the fifth installment of the Criterion Collection’s Eclipse series. This one forgoes most of the usually copious Criterion special features and supplements and presents the films themselves at a lower cost.

Fuller had been selling stories (some based on his reporting) and screenplays to producers for almost 15 years before he got behind the camera to make 1949’s “I Shot Jesse James” (3 stars), a pulp Western recounting the killing of the famous outlaw (Reed Hadley) by Robert Ford, who was played by John Ireland in a performance that pretty much cemented the image of Ford as a spineless coward.

The movie was a childhood favorite of Martin Scorsese, who wrote about how different it seemed from the Hollywood Westerns he was used to.

While detractors call it crude, Scorsese labeled it raw, a word that can also be aptly applied to Fuller’s third film, the low-budget but far more dramatically compelling 1951 Korean War drama “The Steel Helmet” (4 stars). It stars Gene Evans as a realistic sergeant trying to keep his men alive in the early months of the “police action.”

In between, in 1950, Fuller made the comparatively lighthearted “The Baron of Arizona” (3 stars), inspired by the true story of a con man, played with hammy but entertaining relish by Vincent Price, whose elaborate efforts to defraud the U.S. government almost allowed him to take possession of most of the Arizona territory.

This is the first home video release of “Baron”; “I Shot Jesse James” and “Steel Helmet” are far better looking than they were in previous transfers.

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Also new this week:

Crime dramas “The Lookout” (3 stars, Miramax, $29.99) and “Fracture” (3 stars, New Line, $28.98) should do well on DVD, where the well-crafted screenplays and excellent performances can be appreciated.

“The Lookout” stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young man who gets caught in a planned heist of the bank where he is a janitor.

“Fracture” is glossier but has even more twists and equally fine acting from Anthony Hopkins as a wealthy doctor who murders his adulterous wife and crafts what appears to be a foolproof plan for evading the consequences.

Ryan Gosling is the cocky D A determined to find the chink in his armor, and their battle of wits is suspenseful and all but irresistible.

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TV on DVD:

This week’s At Last award is easily won by “The Fugitive - Season One, Volume One,” a four-disc set containing the first 14 episodes, originally broadcast in 1963, of one of the greatest dramatic series of all time.

David Janssen created one of the most indelible characters in TV history in Dr. Richard Kimble, a man wrongly accused of murdering his wife. He spent the next four TV seasons being chased by determined Lt. Phil Gerard and trying to clear his name by searching for the real culprit, the mysterious “one-armed man.” There are no extras on this initial box set, though we do have the pleasure of playing “spot-the-famous-actor-to-be” in episodes featuring Robert Duvall and Jack Klugman.

Also boxed this week:

“McLeod’s Daughters: The Complete Third Season” (Koch Lorber, $79.98), 30 more episodes of the most popular dramatic TV series in Australian history. The show is developing a growing following in the United States.

“Dynasty” introduced the scheming Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins) in its “Second Season” (Paramount. $42.99), whose 22 episodes are available in a six-disc set that includes an interactive family tree as a bonus feature.

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Family pick of the week:

The excellent 1976 miniseries “Dickens of London” has finally found its way to DVD (3 stars, Koch Lorber, $59.98), featuring veteran British-born actor (and Tony Award-winner) Roy Dotrice in the dual role of the great Victorian novelist and his father.

He begins each of the 13 episodes as the writer, on his deathbed, recalling his life, and then reappears as John Dickens, the civil servant who went to debtors’ prison while his son was a child and who is believed to be the model for Micawber in “David Copperfield.”

The fine supporting cast includes Ben Kingsley as Dr. John Ellitson and Diana Coupland as Dickens’ mother.

The five-disc set includes as a bonus the 1996 TV adaptation of “An Audience with Charles Dickens” (3 stars), with actor Simon Callow re-creating one of the author’s celebrated public appearances, reading “A Christmas Carol.”