Samuel Michael "Sam" Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997)[1] was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, actor, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget genre movies with controversial themes, often made outside the conventional studio system.

Fuller shifted from Westerns and war movies in the 1960s with his low-budget thriller Shock Corridor in 1963, followed by the neo-noir The Naked Kiss (1964).

He was inactive in filmmaking for most of the 1970s, before writing and directing the semi-autobiographical war epic The Big Red One (1980), and the drama White Dog (1982), whose screenplay he co-wrote with Curtis Hanson.

Several of his films would prove influential to French New Wave filmmakers, notably Jean-Luc Godard, who gave him a cameo appearance in Pierrot le Fou (1965).

[8] He wrote pulp novels, including The Dark Page (1944; reissued in 2007 with an introduction by Wim Wenders),[9] which was later adapted into the 1952 movie Scandal Sheet.

He was unimpressed with Douglas Sirk's direction of his Shockproof screenplay, and made the jump to writer/director after being asked to write three films by independent producer Robert Lippert.

The studio wanted a more prominent star such as John Wayne, but Fuller was adamant that Evans be used because he was impressed by his fellow veteran's authentic portrayal of a soldier.

All gave him advice on tax shelters, except for Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century-Fox, who replied, "We make better movies," the answer Fuller was seeking.

[20] Other films Fuller directed in the 1950s include House of Bamboo, Forty Guns, and China Gate, which led to protests from the French government and a friendship with writer Romain Gary.

After leaving Fox, Fuller started his Globe Productions that made Run of the Arrow, Verboten!, and The Crimson Kimono, and produced, wrote, and directed a television pilot about World War II soldiers to be titled Dogface, which was not picked up.

Shock Corridor (1963) is set in a psychiatric hospital, while The Naked Kiss (1964) featured a prostitute attempting to change her life by working in a pediatric ward.

[24] He returned in 1980 with the epic The Big Red One, the semiautobiographical story of a platoon of soldiers and their harrowing experiences during World War II.

It's like someone putting your newborn baby in a goddamned maximum-security prison forever ... Moving to France for a while would alleviate some of the pain and doubt that I had to live with because of White Dog."

Known for being a staunch integrationist and for his regularly giving Black actors nonstereotypical roles, Fuller was furious, finding the studio's actions insulting.

[27][29] After the film's completion, Paramount refused to release it, declaring it did not have enough earnings potential to go against the threatened NAACP boycotts and possible bad publicity.

Fuller made a cameo appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965), where he famously intones: "Film is like a battleground ... Love, hate, action, violence, death.

He also appeared in Larry Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot (1987), and played a businessman in La Vie de Bohème (1992) by Aki Kaurismäki.

Fuller's work has been described as primitive by Luc Moullet and by the influential American critics Manny Farber and Andrew Sarris.

Fuller was known for using intense close-ups, off-centered framings, and shock editing in many of his films, which were often about men facing death in combat.

The lead female characters of Pickup on South Street, China Gate, and The Naked Kiss are prostitutes or gun molls.

A number of Fuller's films, including The Naked Kiss, The Baron of Arizona, Shockproof, House of Bamboo, Forty Guns, and The Big Red One, feature a leading character with the same name, Griff.

In the early 1990s, Samuel Fuller, along with his wife, Christa, and their daughter Samantha, settled into a small apartment at 61 rue de Reuilly in the 12th arrondissement of Paris,[37] but after he suffered a stroke in 1994, they returned to the States the following year.

In November 1997, the Directors Guild held a three-hour memorial in his honor, hosted by Curtis Hanson, his longtime friend and co-writer on White Dog.

[42] In the 1996 Adam Simon-directed documentary The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera, Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch credited Fuller as influential upon their works.

[46] The archive has preserved several of Samuel Fuller's films, including The Crimson Kimono, Underworld U.S.A., and Pickup on South Street.