Samuel Fuller says in Pierrot le fou that “film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word, emotion.” Fuller wrote in his autobiography that he didn’t know what director Jean-Luc Godard expected from him on the set, that there hadn’t been any rehearsal, and the scene was done in a single take. It’s a nonetheless immortal moment, revealing so much of Fuller’s filmmaking philosophy. Sony recently released a Samuel Fuller Film Collection which I’ve just reviewed for DVD Times, and you can see traces of what he was saying in the five films included which used Fuller’s ideas but weren’t directed by him. The two pictures found in the set which he did make liberally apply the Fuller cinema theory to an exhilarating extent. The Crimson Kimono and Underworld U.S.A. are reason enough to want the collection, though the other films are never less than entertaining.

It’s been tough trying to more or less will Fuller’s films onto DVD. With these two now out, the focus hopefully will be on making Park Row available (perhaps via Criterion if it can be done) and finding Verboten! a disc in R1. I’d love to see China Gate and Run of the Arrow too.