Samuel Fuller

Samuel Fuller

Born: August 12, 1912
Died: October 30, 1997
in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American screenwriter, novelist and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes.

He was born Samuel Michael Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch, a Jewish immigrant  from Russia, and Rebecca Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After immigrating to America, the family's surname was changed from Rabinovitch to "Fuller" possibly by inspiration of a Doctor who arrived in America on the Mayflower.  At the age of 12, he began working in journalism  as a newspaper  copyboy. He became a crime reporter  in New York City at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the story of Jeanne Eagels' death.  He wrote pulp novels and screenplays  from the mid-1930s onwards. Fuller also became a screenplay  ghostwriter  but would never tell interviewers which screenplays that he ghost-wrote explaining "that's what a ghost writer is for".

During World War II, Fuller joined the United States Army infantry. He was assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and saw heavy fighting. He was involved in landings in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy  and also saw action in Belgium and Czechoslovakia. In 1945 he was present at the liberation of the German concentration camp at Falkenau  and shot 16 mm footage which was used later in the documentary Falkenau: The Impossible. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart.  Fuller used his wartime experiences as material in his films, especially in The Big Red One (1980), a nickname of the 1st Infantry Division.

After his controversial film "White Dog" was shelved by Paramount pictures, Fuller moved to France, and never directed another American film. Fuller eventually returned to America. He died of natural causes in his California home. In November 1997, the Directors Guild held a three hour memorial in his honor, hosted by Curtis Hanson, his long time friend and co-writer on White Dog. He was survived by his wife Christa and daughter Samantha.

Movies for Samuel Fuller...

A Fuller Life
Title: A Fuller Life
Character: Self
Released: August 28, 2013
Type: Movie
Friends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this unconventional documentary directed by Fuller's only child, Samantha.
bee
Scene Missing
Title: Scene Missing
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 2012
Type: Movie
The unfinished documentary about the making of Dennis Hopper's mostly unseen feature film The Last Movie (1971).
bee
Nuits transparentes
Title: Nuits transparentes
Released: April 14, 2011
Type: Movie
Strolling through France (Roanne, Nice and Carcassonne) with some excursions abroad (Munich, Montreal, New York).
bee
Sodankylä Forever
Title: Sodankylä Forever
Character: Self
Released: August 5, 2010
Type: Movie
The Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the arctic circle — where the sun never sets. Founded by Aki and Mika Kaurismäki along with Anssi Mänttäri and Peter von Bagh in 1985, the festival has played host to an international who’s who of directors and each day begins with a two-hour discussion. To mark the festival’s silver anniversary, festival director Peter von Bagh edited together highlights from these dialogues to create an epic four-part choral history of cinema drawn from the anecdotes, insights, and wisdom of his all-star cast: Coppola, Fuller, Forman, Chabrol, Corman, Demy, Kieslowski, Kiarostami, Varda, Oliveira, Erice, Rouch, Gilliam, Jancso — and 64 more. Ranging across innumerable topics (war, censorship, movie stars, formative influences, America, neorealism) these voices, many now passed away, engage in a personal dialogue across the years that’s by turns charming, profound, hilarious and moving.
bee
Carmel
Title: Carmel
Released: July 12, 2009
Type: Movie
Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitaï offers a look impressionist long history of armed conflict in their nation.
bee
Filmmakers in Action
Title: Filmmakers in Action
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: September 15, 2006
Type: Movie
What is the state of cinema and what being a filmmaker means? What are the measures taken to protect authors' copyright? What is their legal status in different countries? (Sequel to “Filmmakers vs. Tycoons.”)
bee
Edge of Outside
Title: Edge of Outside
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: June 11, 2006
Type: Movie
An hour-long documentary designed to celebrate the spirit of the independent filmmaker from D.W. Griffith to Quentin Tarantino. Interview footage and film clips are blended together to form a chronological approach to the subject matter.
bee
The Real Glory: Reconstructing 'The Big Red One'
Title: The Real Glory: Reconstructing 'The Big Red One'
Character: Himself (archive footage)
Released: May 3, 2005
Type: Movie
Documentary about the efforts to reconstruct Sam Fuller's The Big Red One closer to the film Fuller had originally envisioned.
bee
The Big Red One : The Reconstruction
Title: The Big Red One : The Reconstruction
Character: War Correspondent (uncredited)
Released: May 3, 2005
Type: Movie
A re-working, re-editing, and restructuring of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One bringing it closer as originally envisioned by the late filmmaker. It includes forty-seven additional minutes which was not utilized in the film's original release. Supervised by Richard Schickel, Peter Bogdanovich, and editor Bryan McKenzie.
bee
The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller
Title: The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller
Character: Self
Released: July 2, 2002
Type: Movie
Samuel Fuller discusses his career as a filmmaker, illustrated by plenty of clips.
bee
The End of Violence
Title: The End of Violence
Character: Louis
Released: May 11, 1997
Type: Movie
Mike Max is a Hollywood producer who became powerful and rich thanks to brutal and bloody action films. His ignored wife Paige is close to leaving him. Suddenly Mike is kidnapped by two bandits, but escapes and hides out with his Mexican gardener's family for a while. At the same time, surveillance expert Ray Bering is looking for what happens in the city, but it is not clear what he wants. The police investigation for Max's disappearance is led by detective Doc Block, who falls in love with actress Cat who is playing in ongoing Max's production.
bee
The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera
Title: The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera
Character: Self
Released: June 28, 1996
Type: Movie
In a documentary about Samuel Fuller, the spectator gets different impressions about the Hollywood director and his films. The film is divided into the three sections: The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera. The first segment covers Fuller's past as a newsman where he began as a copy boy and ended as a reporter. Part two describes Fuller's experiences in World War II, in which he participated as a soldier. The last section focuses on Fuller as director. Tim Robbins interviews Samuel Fuller revealing the director's own memories and impressions. Beside the interview, Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino accompany the documentary with their comments.
bee
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
Title: A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
Character: Self
Released: May 21, 1995
Type: Movie
Martin Scorsese celebrates American movies from the silent classics to the Hollywood of the seventies.
bee
Somebody to Love
Title: Somebody to Love
Character: Sam Silverman
Released: September 27, 1994
Type: Movie
Mercedes is a taxi dancer who wants to be an actress. She's involved with the married Harry, who considers himself a respected actor. Ernesto is in love with Mercedes, but he doesn't dance or have money.
bee
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
Title: Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
Character: Self
Released: March 25, 1994
Type: Movie
In 1993, Sam Fuller takes Jim Jarmusch on a trip into Brazil's Mato Grosso, up the River Araguaia to the village of Santa Isabel Do Morro, where 40 years before, Zanuck had sent Fuller to scout a location and write a script for a movie based on a tigrero, a jaguar hunter. Sam hopes to find people who remember him, and he takes film he shot in 1954. He's Rip Van Winkle, and, indeed, a great deal changed in the village. There are televisions, watches, and brick houses. But, the same Karajá culture awaits as well. He gathers the villagers to show his old film footage, and people recognize friends and relatives, thanking Fuller for momentarily bringing them back to life.
bee
Un Américain en Normandie
Title: Un Américain en Normandie
Character: Himself
Released: January 1, 1994
Type: Movie
Filmmaker Samuel Fuller tells the story of Corporal Samuel Fuller's landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and his subsequent campaign in Normandy (the "hedge war").
bee
Anything for John
Title: Anything for John
Character: Self
Released: September 6, 1993
Type: Movie
An intimate portrait of actor-writer-director John Cassavetes and a loving tribute to his genius for studying and depicting the human character. In-depth, candid interviews with his wife and muse Gena Rowlands as well as his most trusted friends and co-workers like Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, Seymour Cassel, etc. Clips from Cassavetes' greatest films, and many rare photos illustrate this touching documentary.
bee
Golem: The Petrified Garden
Title: Golem: The Petrified Garden
Character: Sam
Released: January 1, 1993
Type: Movie
Danny Cornish, a sort of stateless man who arranges art exhibits, is called from Tel Aviv to Paris with the news that a great uncle has died, in Birobidjan, the autonomous Jewish zone in Russia, leaving him a valuable art collection and the hand of a huge sculpture of a Golem. The uncle's will instructs Danny to find the rest of the statue, so Danny, who speaks no Russian, embarks on a trip that takes him (and the Golem's hand) to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Siberia, fumbling with hotel clerks, taxi drivers, and bureaucrats, following leads, and making discoveries about myth, story telling, art, and hope.
bee
Golem, l'esprit de l'exil
Title: Golem, l'esprit de l'exil
Character: Elimelek
Released: September 24, 1992
Type: Movie
An allegory of the Golem, a Jewish mythical creature personifying displacement and exile, this film tells the story of a woman (similar to the biblical Ruth) and her sisters, who are forced into exile after the death of their husbands. It is set in 1990s Paris, where the director was living in self-imposed exile following the ban on his 1982 documentary in Israel. The recurring theme of the film is migrations and unrooting, like the legendary Golem.
bee
La Vie de Bohème
Title: La Vie de Bohème
Character: Gassot
Released: February 27, 1992
Type: Movie
Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.
bee
Where Is Musette?
Title: Where Is Musette?
Character: self
Released: January 1, 1992
Type: Movie
Documentary filmed on-set during the making of Aki Kaurismaki's "La vie de Boheme"
bee
Shock Corridor
Title: Shock Corridor
Character: himself
Released: January 1, 1992
Type: Movie
Short 35mm experimental film featuring Sam Fuller.
bee
The Madonna and the Dragon
Title: The Madonna and the Dragon
Character: Chef de bureau Newsweek
Released: September 1, 1990
Type: Movie
Exposé of two news photographers covering the People's Revolution in the Philippines.
bee
Motion and Emotion: The Films of Wim Wenders
Title: Motion and Emotion: The Films of Wim Wenders
Character: Self
Released: April 25, 1990
Type: Movie
Though very polite and British, this feature-length documentary about German filmmaker Wim Wenders offers the most penetrating insights and the best overall critique of his work that I have encountered anywhere. Paul Joyce, who directed it, has also made documentaries about Nicolas Roeg, David Cronenberg, Nagisa Oshima, and Dennis Hopper, and he knows the conventional format well enough to get the most out of it. There are good clips and interesting commentaries from the interviewed subjects, who include Wenders himself, cinematographer Robby Muller, filmmaker Sam Fuller, novelist Patricia Highsmith, musician Ry Cooder, actors Harry Dean Stanton, Peter Falk, and Hanns Zischler, and critic Kraft Wetzel, who is especially provocative. A must-see for Wenders fans, highly recommended for everyone else. –Jonathan Rosenbaum, 1989
bee
Sons
Title: Sons
Character: Father
Released: January 1, 1990
Type: Movie
A trio of stepbrothers accompany their paralysed father on a jaunt to Normandy where the old boy saw combat and romantic action during the war.
bee
Street of No Return
Title: Street of No Return
Character: Police Commissioner
Released: May 17, 1989
Type: Movie
A rock star-turned-bum, his vocal chords severed at the height of his career for the love of a woman, drunkenly roams the city, torn apart by sponsored race riots. When accused of murder, he may have the chance to get revenge on the magnate who maimed him.
bee
Title: David Lansky
Released: April 30, 1989
Type: TV
bee
Tell me Sam - Encounters with Sam Fuller
Title: Tell me Sam - Encounters with Sam Fuller
Character: Himself
Released: January 9, 1989
Type: Movie
bee
Falkenau, the Impossible
Title: Falkenau, the Impossible
Character: Samuel Fuller
Released: October 5, 1988
Type: Movie
Documentary stems from 1945, when infantryman Sam Fuller, member of the U.S. Army's "Big Red One," helped liberate the Nazis' Falkenau death camp. Fuller shot footage of his commanding officer's marching Czech locals, who denied knowing of the genocide, out from town to view the horrors of the death house. 40 years later, French documentary filmmaker Emil Weiss brought Fuller, who became a famous film director after World War II, back to the death camp to tell the story of the camp's liberation. Fuller's original footage is incorporated in the film.
bee
Mer de Chine: Le pays pour mémoire
Title: Mer de Chine: Le pays pour mémoire
Character: Le capitaine américain
Released: September 8, 1988
Type: Movie
bee
Helsinki Napoli All Night Long
Title: Helsinki Napoli All Night Long
Character: Boss
Released: November 13, 1987
Type: Movie
Alex is a Finnish taxi driver in Berlin. One evening pits two men feel comfortable in his taxi with a briefcase full of money, but unfortunately for Alex's money stolen and a group of gangsters are at the nape of the two. Soon it comes to shooting, and when the two men being killed, is good advice costly for the beleaguered driver.
bee
A Return to Salem's Lot
Title: A Return to Salem's Lot
Character: Van Meer
Released: September 11, 1987
Type: Movie
Joe Weber is an anthropologist who takes his son on a trip to the New England town of Salem's Lot unaware that it is populated by vampires. When the inhabitants reveal their secret, they ask Joe to write a bible for them.
bee
The Bleeding Star
Title: The Bleeding Star
Released: January 1, 1987
Type: Movie
An Englishman arrives in a remote French town near the coast to collect his broken-down car. What he sees there will change his life forever.
bee
Midnight Sun Film Festival
Title: Midnight Sun Film Festival
Released: January 1, 1987
Type: Movie
The greatest film festival (anti)promotional short ever made which explains why Midnight Sun is a unique event for both film buffs in Finland and some of the stellar international talents who attend it and also appear in this hilarious guide to a very Finnish way of showing films.
bee
Hooray For Holyrood
Title: Hooray For Holyrood
Character: Himself
Released: August 13, 1986
Type: Movie
Scottish Television's film on the 40th Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1986, starring Robbie Coltrane (a former EIFF chauffeur) and featuring interviews with Bill Forsyth, Samuel Fuller and Barry Norman, among many others.
bee
A Travelling is a Moral Affair
Title: A Travelling is a Moral Affair
Character: Himself
Released: January 1, 1986
Type: Movie
bee
Report from Hollywood
Title: Report from Hollywood
Released: January 1, 1985
Type: Movie
“It may be worse than Portugal,” observes cinematographer Henri Alekan about a Los Angeles film lab while on the set of Wim Wenders’ The State of Things (1984). A legendary production and a transitional work for the New German Cinema director as his work became increasingly international, Wenders set out to make a film about filmmaking as funding stalled on the American production of Hammett. The State of Things deals with American and European sensibilities about cinema, and he enlisted Lachman to film and document the film being made in Los Angeles. Made for German television, completed in 1985 and unseen outside of Germany, Lachman’s portrait of Wenders at work features striking filmmaking and location photography of Los Angeles in the 1980s, and serves as a candid glimpse into European encounters with American culture at the time.
bee
Thieves After Dark
Title: Thieves After Dark
Character: Zoltan
Released: February 27, 1984
Type: Movie
A crime story set in Paris about a Bonnie-and-Clyde couple -- how they got together and how they are pursued for a murder they never committed.
bee
Sam Fuller & the Big Red One
Title: Sam Fuller & the Big Red One
Character: Himself
Released: February 4, 1984
Type: Movie
A documentary shot during the production of Samuel Fuller's film The Big Red One.
bee
Slapstick (Of Another Kind)
Title: Slapstick (Of Another Kind)
Character: Colonel Sharp
Released: December 9, 1982
Type: Movie
A rich, beautiful couple give birth to deformed alien twins who, when their heads are together, are the smartest kids on the planet.
bee
White Dog
Title: White Dog
Character: Charlie Felton
Released: July 7, 1982
Type: Movie
A trainer attempts to retrain a vicious dog that’s been raised to kill black people.
bee
Hammett
Title: Hammett
Character: Old Man in Pool Hall
Released: June 9, 1982
Type: Movie
Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.
bee
The State of Things
Title: The State of Things
Character: Joe
Released: March 22, 1982
Type: Movie
On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956). The producer is nowhere to be found and director Munro attempts to find him in hopes of being able to finish the film.
bee
The Big Red One
Title: The Big Red One
Character: War Correspondent (uncredited)
Released: January 22, 1980
Type: Movie
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.
bee
1941
Title: 1941
Character: Interceptor Commander
Released: December 14, 1979
Type: Movie
In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer leads a mob chasing a Japanese sub.
bee
Cinématon
Title: Cinématon
Character: N°602
Released: December 20, 1978
Type: Movie
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.
bee
The American Friend
Title: The American Friend
Character: The American
Released: June 24, 1977
Type: Movie
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
bee
Scott Joplin
Title: Scott Joplin
Character: Impresario
Released: February 11, 1977
Type: Movie
The life story of Scott Joplin and how he became the greatest ragtime composer of all time.
bee
Title: Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
Character: Self
Released: January 12, 1975
Type: TV
A talk show presented by Michel Drucker
bee
The Young Nurses
Title: The Young Nurses
Character: Doc Haskell
Released: March 1, 1973
Type: Movie
Sexy young nurses apply special therapy in their daily rounds, as they work against a drug ring operating out of the hospital
bee
The Last Movie
Title: The Last Movie
Character: Sam
Released: September 29, 1971
Type: Movie
After a film production wraps in Peru, an American wrangler decides to stay behind, witnessing how filmmaking affects the locals.
bee
Cinéastes de notre temps: Samuel Fuller, Independent Filmmaker
Title: Cinéastes de notre temps: Samuel Fuller, Independent Filmmaker
Character: Interviewee
Released: September 30, 1967
Type: Movie
Episode of the French television series about the work of American film director Samuel Fuller. (A 23-minute edited version of this show appears on the Criterion Collection release of "The Naked Kiss."
bee
Brigitte and Brigitte
Title: Brigitte and Brigitte
Character: Self
Released: December 17, 1966
Type: Movie
Episodes in the lives of two country girls at school in Paris and their opinions.
bee
Pierrot le Fou
Title: Pierrot le Fou
Character: Samuel Fuller (uncredited)
Released: November 5, 1965
Type: Movie
Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.
bee
House of Bamboo
Title: House of Bamboo
Character: Japanese policeman (uncredited)
Released: July 1, 1955
Type: Movie
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.