“The Naked Kiss” (1964)
Reuniting almost immediately with some of his key collaborators from “Shock Corridor” (among them DoP Stanley Cortez and lead actress Constance Towers), Fuller went back to his neo-noir roots for a film that arguably sees the peak of his career. “The Naked Kiss” stars Towers as a prostitute on the run who arrives in the small town of Grantville and tries to start anew, becoming a nurse and falling for the heir to the town’s wealthiest family (Michael Dante). But the town sheriff (Anthony Eisley), who knows of her past, doesn’t trust her, and when she kills her fiance on discovering that he’s a child molester, she has to face all her enemies down at once. In its depiction of the rotten core beneath a perfect Americana town, the film forges the path for all kinds of films to come (“Blue Velvet” being one of the most obvious descendants), but Fuller’s sense of good and evil has never been stronger, even if his heroine’s morals are more flexible — the helmer being, as ever, a great director of women). Indeed, it’s many ways the purest of all the Fuller films; his journalistic eye for detail married with an ever-bolder approach to filmmaking, bold POVs joined by fractured jump cuts influenced, presumably, by the French Nouvelle Vague. The kind of film you feel you need to shower after seeing, it just might have been Fuller’s finest hour.
“White Dog” (1982)
Vilified, maligned and pilloried upon the time of its release, Sam Fuller’s controversial 1982 drama “White Dog” died a slow painful death once it limped into theaters (if you can call it a release at all — it had a few preview screenings in various cities, but Paramount essentially didn’t release the film in the U.S.). Written by Fuller and a very young Curtis Hanson, and based on Romain Gary‘s 1970 novel of the same name, the film centers on a black dog trainer (Paul Winfield) trying to untrain the “white dog” tendencies out of the canine (i.e. it’s been bred to be racist and it viciously attacks all African-Americans on sight). Hounded by the NAACP and the Black Anti-Defamation Coalition (BADC) before the film could even see release, the pressure was enough for Paramount to delay and then eventually give up on the film. Fuller was so dumbfounded and hurt, he moved to France (where the director was already beloved) and never made a movie on American soil again. Starring ubiquitous ’80s teen actress Kristy McNichol as the young girl who adopts this mutt, unaware of its dangerously biased tendencies, there’s no doubt “White Dog” is provocative and sometimes so outrageous in concept it can be seen initially as unintentionally funny. But dubious politics aside (whether it’s “misunderstood” may be in the eye of the beholder), “White Dog” is actually a super engaging piece of work that also has some fantastically thriller-ish and creepy overtones thanks to both its sinister score by the great Ennio Morricone, and Fuller’s deft camera work. Featuring some ominous low-level tracking shots of the animal, “White Dog” is Hitchockian and even “Jaws“-like in its tension and suspense. While politically correct humanists (and dog lovers too) will find lots to be offended by, there’s no denying “White Dog” is actually a trenchant and even heartbreaking cautionary tale about the teachings of hate (and one that hadn’t been available for ages other than in bad bootlegs until Criterion finally released it in 2008). Not to mention it’s a fascinating and absorbing piece of cinema, and easily Fuller’s last great film.
“Honorable Mention” or simply great films we left on the cutting room floor…
We fully realize that these five picks are a subjective five and we do realize that this list could start some serious fisticuffs. But we made ourselves stick to five choices so five choices we made, for better or worse. Personally, the film that just fell outside the cut for us was the awesome 1951 Korean War film, “The Steel Helmet.” It’s cigar-chomping tough guy performance by Gene Evans as the gruff Sergeant Zack is indelible. Another “missing” picture from this list, probably the one considered his biggest to the general film populace, is the WWII film “The Big Red One,” starring Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine, and it’s as solid as any picture he ever made, but if we’re picking war films, we’ll take “The Steel Helmet” over it by a hair. Then of course there’s “Park Row,” which Gene Evans also starred in. Tarantino is a noted fan of that salient riff on the sleazy business of trying to sell newspapers. Other important works include his other Korean war picture “Fixed Bayonets” (which features James Dean‘s brief debut film role), the color film noir “House of Bamboo” (which starred the great Robert Ryan and Robert Stack), the Cinemascope-shot “Hell And High Water” (starring Richard Widmark again), 1962’s Cinemascope war film “Merrill’s Marauders,” and the previously mentioned Westerns “I Shot Jesse James” and “The Baron of Arizona,” starring the great Vincent Price. There’s a lot to love and admire with Samuel Fuller. Seven of his films are in the Criterion Collection and that’s a good place to start.
– Oliver Lyttelton and Rodrigo Perez
