DVD: Samuel Fuller Film Collection

The Sam Fuller Film Collection packs seven films into a box set that examines Fuller's career as a writer then director of genre defining movies. Or as Martin Scorsese remarks, in a short commentary for one film, Fuller's style is its own genre. Films in this series include It Happened in Hollywood (1937), Adventure in Sahara (1938), Power of the Press (1943), Shockproof (1949), Scandal Sheet (1952), The Crimson Kimono (1959), and Underworld U.S.A. (1961). The latter two were directed and produced by Fuller, on the other five Fuller wrote or co-wrote the original story or script.
Four of the movies include featurettes with contemporary directors (Scorsese, Robbins, Wenders, Hanson) sounding off on Fuller. There's a load of insight that comes with watching the films in chronological order. You can see Fuller's journalist background and war experience seep into his stories.
Obviously the earlier films, mostly titles I'd never heard of, are the most transparent yet even at barely an hour they contain seeds of what will later become Fuller landmarks. It Happened in Hollywood includes a comic interlude where every major and many minor stars of 1937 make an appearance. Only the cameos are performed by lookalikes or body doubles for the stars. Then as now major actors had their stunt doubles.
Shockproof, helmed by Douglas Sirk, gives an emotional twist to a lovers on the run story by paring a parole officer with a woman parolee out of the pen after serving time for murder. Scandal Sheet features Broderick Crawford in a primal performance as a newspaper editor who's committed murder and tries to keep the facts from his top reporters. Fuller wrote the novel Scandal Sheet was based on. Later films like Crimson Kimono show a singular eye towards Japanese-American romantic relations at a time when Japan was still occupied by America and racial relations leaned unfairly against anyone or anything Asian. Viewers will take special delight in the way Fuller frames characters talking directly to the camera or offers conventions that go against the grain of pervading stereotypes.