Monday, September 5, 2011

Sam Fuller Fest

I've always been a big fan of Sam Fuller, but just didn't know until this year.  Two movies steered me toward him.  First, Pulp Fiction.  I'd always felt that Quentin Tarrantino was copying (or at least borrowing way heavily) from an older genre.  Then there's my Dad, who put me onto Fuller's The Big Red One.  Dad, a WWII vet in the 1st Division, always liked that movie as one of the least romanticized WWII flicks made in the post-war period.  Watching the extended cut, then watching the additional features on the disk steered me straight into the maw of Fuller's works.
I've been watching my way through them ever since.  To date, The Big Red OneThe Steel HelmetI Shot Jesse JamesPickup on South Street, and just last night The Baron of Arizona.  I'm not going into individual reviews, but place them all in the 3 to 3.5 star range.  The titles above are Wikipedia links if you want to see what they're about.  Caution though, they do have some spoilers.  Next up in the Netflix queue is The Naked Kiss.  Although I haven't done an exhaustive search, pretty much everything he made can be found over at Netfilx.
So if you're a Tarrantino fan who's always been slightly disappointed since the glory days of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and can do with a little less of the oh-so-90's irony, go look up some Fuller movies.

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