Sam Fuller: newspaperman, movie writer, novelist, soldier, war survivor, filmmaker, and now the subject of a seven-film DVD box set that collects his work at Columbia Pictures as writer and director. Only two of those are really considered to be Fuller movies in the auteur sense, and, ideally, his fans would be able to just purchase The Crimson Kimono and Underworld U.S.A. if they wanted. Not in the cards for the time being, with this fairly expensive collection being the only way to obtain any of these films on DVD. Four of the other five involved Fuller as a direct participant, typically credited for the story, while the fifth - Scandal Sheet - was based on his novel The Dark Page and directed by Phil Karlson. The two Fuller-directed pictures should be available separately, as it borders on ridiculous to have to buy movies directed by the likes of D. Ross Lederman, Lew Landers and some cat named Douglas Sirk just to have the pair of aces, but the others actually aren't too bad. Indeed, while the films not directed by Fuller may lack some of his grit and street level genius they're nonetheless frequently recognizable as having originated from the same mind as the more characteristic works.


(possible spoilers throughout)

The set begins chronologically with 1937's It Happened in Hollywood, a comparatively upbeat name change from Fuller's title Once a Hero. His idea was based on the predicament of silent western hero Tom Mix, who made hundreds of pictures before the advent of talkies essentially took away his screen career. It's a fascinating premise, and one touched upon years later in Singin' in the Rain. The protagonist here is Tim Bart (Richard Dix), a movie cowboy first seen in 1928 on a promotional tour that's stopped at a children's hospital. A telegram brings everything to a screeching halt and announces that the studio will henceforth focus on talkies. Bart already has financial struggles so when a sound test with the lovely Gloria Gay (Fay Wray) goes sideways he should theoretically be worried. But the simpleminded Bart seems more protective of his integrity than his leading man status. He quits a gangster picture when required, as the bad guy, to shoot someone in cold blood because he's afraid of confusing his fanbase. Things keep spiraling downward until one of the little boys Tim had met at the hospital pays him an unexpected visit in Hollywood.

Not wanting to let the kid down, our cowboy stages a huge party full of celebrities at his old, by now foreclosed upon, estate. The catch is that, aside from him and Gloria, all of the movie stars are the doubles of more famous actors. So while "Mae West" and "Charlie Chaplin" look similar to the film icons, they aren't the genuine article. Visually, it's really something to see all of these lookalikes who actually were the stand-ins of the various stars in real life. The sequence doesn't necessarily fit with the rest of the film, but it's by far the most memorable. While the story, presumably carved out by Fuller, of a principled cowboy unable to adjust to the modernity of talking pictures is refreshing, the bumpkin performance by Dix crushes any hopes of sophistication or seriousness. A rushed final three minutes either seem to collapse Bart's steadfast integrity or highlight the desperation he can't avoid. It's nice to consider whether Bart was more image conscious than morally committed here, with the film clearly shading him as the latter. You also have to chuckle at just how spineless the studio people are shown to be. Right off, it's easy to see that Fuller's cynicism was well developed prior to the war.


Some of these same themes of incompetent authority and rebellion by the individual are furthered in a story Fuller claimed to have pitched as "William Bligh meets Victor Hugo." According to his highly entertaining and informative autobiography A Third Face (an indispensable source for all things Sam Fuller), the young writer responded to the head of Columbia's request for an adventure story with this idea to combine parts of Hugo's French Foreign Legion novel Ninety-Three with Mutiny on the Bounty. The result became Adventure in Sahara, a picture with a level of brutality and toughness which might catch viewers of this set by surprise. Originality isn't a strong suit of the film but it really need not be either. Derivative as the basic elements might be, there's an obvious sense of defiance in the plot which Fuller must have relished. American Jim Wilson (Paul Kelly) learns that his Legionnaire brother has died so he drops everything to enlist, lining things up to serve under a particular officer named Captain Savatt (C. Henry Gordon). The methodical execution of his revenge theory resembles a crude trial run for what Fuller gave Cliff Robertson's Tolly Devlin character years later in Underworld U.S.A.

Savatt is sketched as a military coward with a streak of sadism. He pushes the men beyond reason and leaves them vulnerable to various forms of danger. The cruelty on display here, especially for an obscure 1938 adventure less than an hour in length, seems downright shocking, and feels like an ancestor to Paths of Glory. When the mutiny does occur it's lead by Wilson, but this is when the picture founders a bit, seemingly unsure or perhaps constricted as to where it wants to go. Savatt's serpentine penchant for survival results in a court-martial trial and Fuller's story and/or Maxwell Shane's screenplay paints itself into a corner by letting Savatt get little more than an official tongue-lashing. Wilson and cohorts, who've been our guiding lights in the film and whose actions have been portrayed as necessary and justified, receive punishment, albeit a reduced slap in comparison to what could have been. Things seem unsatisfying, like the wrap-up is neatly done but missing a sense of justice and the subsequent bitterness. Adventure in Sahara is still the one film in the set which most positively defied my expectations. It isn't as mediocre as its fairly anonymous cast and director would suggest, and there's a distinct current of outrage and determination familiar from Fuller's other work.


If Adventure in Sahara was better and more interesting than expected, Power of the Press comes down on the opposite end of the spectrum as a disappointingly soft and cliched depiction of, again, malfeasance by the ostensibly legitimate sectors of society. The villain this time is Otto Kruger's Howard Raskin, a newspaper executive whose interests lie in manipulating the news with the intention of keeping the U.S. out of World War II. The 1943 film has a sufficiently complex, timely and considered plot. It could've been quite special. Instead, director Lew Landers bungles every point of emphasis and nuance that can be imagined from Fuller's original story (which he'd actually sold in the late thirties, a couple of years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor). Power of the Press turns into an odd piece of propaganda aimed at...anti-isolationists? The particularly hawkish? Advocates of the First Amendment? The film presents what would appear to be a conflicting view of encouraging the power of the press while nonetheless advocating a restrictive approach to exactly what newspapers should print. The paper in the film gets portrayed as essentially anti-American (not to mention murderous) for questioning the country's post-Pearl Harbor inclination to go to war. This is Raskin's dastardly plan, that the news stories are skewed against war. A character even states that newspapers shouldn't question the government's decisions regarding military conflict.

For 1943, this sort of thinking might not have had detrimental consequences, but the modern viewer will no doubt make a very different connection to the idea of media being reluctant to offer dissent against an administration's plans of war. That being said, a line like "[h]e who fakes the news is entitled to perish by false news" is a delicious rejoinder and has its own connotations nowadays. The position offered by Power of the Press is ultimately one which feels dangerously simplistic and puts far too much faith in our leaders. It is, more or less, saying that we should all follow our leaders during times of conflict and trust them implicitly and without dissent. I have to think something in Fuller's story got lost in translation from page to screen. His patriotism always seemed grounded and unafraid of asking questions. It doesn't help matters that Kruger's character in Power of the Press has evil intentions of his own. He's met, first, by a renewed editor who comes to disagree with the paper's direction before getting killed and, then, by a small-town newspaper man (Guy Kibbee) who hopes to lessen the tabloid element. These editors represent a moral right intent on rescuing the paper's slide into yellow journalism. They are the good guys. Unfortunately, they also represent an unsettling message of restricting the national discussion in favor of rallying 'round the troops, a sadly necessary political reading of the film which hasn't aged well.


Fuller and Columbia at least found a better director for Shockproof, the 1949 film noir that became his first postwar script to go before the cameras. Auteurists' collective heads might explode at the idea of Douglas Sirk making a Sam Fuller story. On the surface, the two men made wildly different movies, but their interests were probably not terribly dissimilar. In just a few more years, Sirk would become unparalleled at transforming glossy melodrama into masterpiece-level depictions of a crumbling American facade obsessed with all that glitters in the superficial deception of the 1950s. Fuller, of course, embraced conflict and internal destruction across his career. When Shockproof was made, Sirk was still establishing himself in Hollywood. It would be five more years before the breakout success of Magnificent Obsession signaled a major re-imagining of the American dream.

Shockproof, though it has its fans, is perhaps a less than ideal merging of the sensibilities of Sirk and Fuller, with some degree of tinkering by credited co-writer Helen Deutsch (a capable scribe on much different, more female-oriented pictures like National Velvet, Lili, I'll Cry Tomorrow, and Valley of the Dolls). The filmmaking itself is exquisitely proficient. Sirk's usual interest in a sort of forbidden romance is represented by Cornel Wilde's probation officer Griff Marat and the ex-con Jenny Marsh, played by Patricia Knight. She's an effective, if passive, femme fatale who succumbs to Griff's persistence rather than showing herself as the usual female open to ideas of rescue. Knight's performance is distressingly guarded. Is Jenny falling for Griff or is it all an elaborate ploy designed by her gangster boyfriend Harry Wesson (John Baragrey)? This cuts both ways. Her lack of clear direction plays tricks with our heads while withholding whether she even prefers one man over the other. We don't trust her yet we can't dismiss her either. It's a strange example of what is basically a performance lacking in any real distinction but nonetheless effective as a blank canvas beholden to the plot. Confused yet?

Two things about Shockproof really bother me, to the point where I struggle to enjoy it. Foremost is Cornel Wilde, who must be the unlikeliest noir hero to have put his footprints in a small handful of the style's more noteworthy entries. (See The Big Combo and Leave Her to Heaven but don't expect Wilde to dazzle or do much beyond suck the angst from his characters.) He's such a bland actor whose line deliveries always lack emotion. Wilde in Shockproof is supposed to be a good guy parole officer with political aspirations. This part, the uninteresting strive for nominal professional success, is believable. Problem is, it destroys the big turn taken by the film, where Wilde's character chooses to give up everything for Jenny. No way would a guy like this join a lovers on the run caravan. Ambitious individuals simply don't sacrifice themselves especially for a frigid dame like her. I can't accept the direction Shockproof takes, but those who apparently can might also accept the absurd ending apparently concocted by Deutsch and regretted by Fuller and Sirk. The far more fitting idea of Griff being punished for his decision to cling to the no-good Jenny would have at least acted as the usual noir cautionary tale against conniving women. We're instead left with something grotesque in its own right. Sympathy is a mean beast. Sirk pretends to like the characters while Fuller surely would have preferred a comeuppance. No fatalism, no compromise.


The one film which probably belongs the least in this set is Scandal Sheet, made after Fuller became a reasonably successful director but helmed at Columbia by Phil Karlson. Put succinctly, the problem with Scandal Sheet is that it wasn't directed by Sam Fuller. The film is a reasonably entertaining yarn, to use a Fuller word, but it's missing that pistol fire charge Sam would have provided. He'd written the book The Dark Page prior to joining the military and it became a success in print while Fuller was seeing combat. A true incident of him seeing a fellow soldier with a paperback of his book was even recreated in a scene from The Big Red One. The movie rights were bought by Howard Hawks, but the Silver Fox never filmed Fuller's novel and he instead made a profit by selling to Columbia. That studio responded by putting Broderick Crawford, John Derek and Donna Reed in a too tame rendering of what should be a study in the fetid side of journalism coupled with an unrelenting murder mystery. Karlson could be an effective filmmaker with the likes of Kansas City Confidential, 99 River Street and The Phenix City Story, and his treatment is far from terrible, but it's a shame Fuller couldn't have been allowed to direct. He would simply call the film "disappointing" in his memoir. Watching the picture now, the obvious weak spot is John Derek, a young actor at the time who'd nearly ruined Nicholas Ray's Knock on Any Door a couple of years earlier and someone completely lacking the ability to convey weariness or any degree of gravity. It's like putting a Hardy Boy in a hard boiled wonderland, and it's a distraction.

Beyond those quibbles, Scandal Sheet has a strong noirish plot concerning a New York City newspaper editor's killing (more manslaughter than murder) of his estranged wife. Crawford plays the increasingly successful editor while Derek is the rising reporter and Reed the seasoned journalist type unhappy with the paper's direction into tabloid sensationalism. The milieu reeks of Fuller's fascination with the inky trenches of the newspaper world. His cigar-chomping surrogate might even be the reporter played by Harry Morgan. A secondary strand emerges pitting the new, more ambitious focus shown by Crawford and his protégé Derek against the desire of Reed and an alcoholic ex-reporter played by Henry O'Neill for steady and solid reporting in line with setting the tone rather than appealing to the basest instincts of the public. Karlson gives this less emphasis than Fuller's jackhammer style might have, and you could probably even argue that Scandal Sheet's narrative remains cleaner and more crisp when compared against the typical Fuller-directed picture. This is largely why I think the film shouldn't really be in a set devoted to Sam Fuller. Regardless of its quality (and I'm not intending to lessen the importance of simple availability at this point), Scandal Sheet, when considered strictly for its Fuller attributes, can be more easily defined in terms of his absence rather than his contribution.


Skip ahead a few years on the time line, comparing everything else in the set with The Crimson Kimono (1959) and Underworld U.S.A. (1961), and suddenly the intense glare of Fuller's throbbing, emotionally heightened filmmaking technique reveals itself. As we see in the opening scene of each film, Fuller grabbed his audience by their collective balls from the start and didn't let go until he right well had everyone's attention. My, what tight close-ups you have, Mr. Fuller! "The better for me to choke the life into you," he might say. Other directors made better, more layered and nuanced films than Sam Fuller but I can't think of any who were so visceral, so dramatic. The finale in Underworld U.S.A. is operatic in its heightened world of tragedy and poetry on the mean city streets. Fuller's methods of pulp violence and sex played like the American cousins of Japanese pink movies with more character development. If there's another Hollywood-financed feature from the 1950s that begins with a stripper (given the distinctly Fullerian name of "Sugar Torch") hearing a gunshot in her dressing room, then running out into L.A. night traffic only to be briskly murdered, I don't know what it would be. A mere morsel of the genius of Sam Fuller.

It's easy enough to be a Fuller convert. Here was a guy who volunteered for military service at wartime because, despite being 29 years old, he wanted to cover the biggest news story of his lifetime up close and personal. Instead of enlisting as a journalist, Fuller made sure to embed himself in the middle of raw combat. He survived, unwounded and undeterred, and less than a decade later, in 1953's Pickup on South Street, the filmmaker battled with censors to make sure his pickpocket hero played by Richard Widmark could more or less defy an anti-communist call to arms by scowling the line "Are you waving the flag at me?" to his fed questioners. A guy who saw the water turn red at Omaha Beach and lived to tell about it could damn well question the insulated rabble-rousers when they dared to determine patriotism along political lines.

When The Crimson Kimono was being readied at the end of the decade, Columbia didn't much go for the idea that a pretty white woman (played by Victoria Shaw) would choose a Japanese-American (James Shigeta) cop to become romantically involved with over his white partner (Glenn Corbett). It was gutsy enough to put Shigeta, a Hawaiian of Japanese descent who'd never before made a movie, in a leading role during a time when Hollywood was still casting the likes of Marlon Brando and Mickey Rooney as Asians. The studio thought the white guy should have some obvious character flaws indicative of why he was being passed over in favor of an Asian-American. Fuller wouldn't budge. Columbia responded by marketing the film using a tagline of "Why Does She Choose a Japanese Lover?" Unbelievable. I think back to those guys at the end of It Happened in Hollywood.


If there's anything to denigrate The Crimson Kimono with, I'd lean towards it being not hardly as enjoyable as the best Fuller-directed pictures. The investigation into who killed Sugar Torch gets halfway abandoned in favor of the Shaw-Shigeta-Corbett triangle, with the latter two best friends since the Korean War and current roommates working the Sugar Torch murder. Shaw's character is an artist and potential target while Anna Lee steals most every scene she's in as a painter friend who enjoys the company of alcohol. The split focus seems to often be the point, with greater emphasis even placed on the dynamic among the leads over the MacGuffin-like case. Fuller actually did this quite a bit, pushing the main strand to the back in favor of digging inside his characters. The relationship between Barbara Stanwyck and Barry Sullivan in Forty Guns or Widmark and both Jean Peters and Thelma Ritter in Pickup underlined some of the depth in Fuller's work, I think. Crimson Kimono, either because the actors were of a lower caliber or maybe due to the racial aspect being relied upon too heavily at the expense of meaningful exchanges, doesn't land with the same impact as other Fuller films. Only in the kendo fight scene between Corbett and Shigeta do we get a true sense of what's at stake for the men. Corbett wants the girl, though not as a detriment to his friend, while Shigeta is really battling against himself, against his own demons and his cultural identity. It's the best, most emotionally resonant scene in the film.

To his great credit, Fuller also goes somewhere we just never see in Hollywood films - an ethnic section of a major city. Here it's the Nisei, or Japanese-American, populated area of Los Angeles. Shigeta's character is both working the case and somewhat coming to terms, consciously or not, with who he is, where he comes from, etc. There might be a tad too much crammed into what is a relatively short film at just 81 minutes, and it's Shigeta's inner confusion and turmoil which seems particularly compelling against a murder case to which even Fuller gives fleeting attention and a pair of other main characters who have very little backstory. To be clear, I still see The Crimson Kimono as a compelling and characteristic work from Fuller. He made better pictures, but there's nonetheless always something elegant amid the gutter vagrants. This too is virtually the only Fuller movie where law enforcement personnel are treated with total respect and understanding. His other movie with a cop protagonist, House of Bamboo, counters Robert Stack against Robert Ryan in an odd battle of machismo where no one quite registers as sympathetic or, unfortunately, all that interesting. The Crimson Kimono, by contrast, is entirely focused on those on the more proper side of the law, and it's a weird Fuller jazz riff straddling between what he has to show and what he really, really wants to convey.


A huge jolt forward in quality, Underworld U.S.A. is by far the best film in this set and rests comfortably among the finest films Sam Fuller ever made. It's a tough picture that reminds us how Fuller, ever the newspaperman, enjoyed telling stories with headlines more than details. The film originated with a title and its creator filled in the barest of main plots about a kid, Tolly Devlin (played as an adult by Cliff Robertson), who inadvertently witnesses his father being brutally beaten in an alley (an act shown entirely in shadows) and vows as an adult to make sure the four men responsible find death at his hands. What lets the film thrive amid a crowded landscape of similar ideas is, firstly, Fuller’s storytelling, but just as important is his protagonist. Tolly is no one’s idea of a hero. He’s essentially a calculating thug playing both sides (the government and organized crime) against each other for his own benefit. Yet, the game Fuller has constructed allows Tolly to be far preferable to the men he’s after, and his actions often resist judgment in the face of a vengeance most everyone would, on some level and at some point, desire if put in the same situation. Tolly is such a closed figure in his pursuit of these men that Fuller doesn’t even let us really stomp around in the muck he’s created. There’s minimal empathy to be had, making the film somewhat troubling in its narrative focus. Certainly Fuller is presenting Tolly as the hero or protagonist of the story, and the director’s frequent distrust of authority and law enforcement is in full bloom here, but I’m not sold on accepting Tolly’s actions as tolerable. Importantly, Fuller doesn’t seem to always be either, and this makes the film all the more interesting as a result.

The necessary monkey wrench is Dolores Dorn as beautiful, damaged blonde Cuddles. Tolly incidentally rescues her. His motivations are partially, perhaps mostly, self-serving. At times it seems like he has overlooked any potential for romance on solely practical terms. Other actions indicate he’s just not interested in her, maybe since she’s a distraction or, as he alludes to in one scene with his caretaker (Beatrice Kay), because Cuddles is no stranger to men. In dismissing Cuddles’ attention, including one memorably staged scene in a park which begins with her provocatively sucking on a piece of ice, Tolly struggles to recognize both his own obvious negatives and a future where his longstanding goal, occupying over half his life at this point, will be completed. I think this is where Fuller tips his hand most obviously in the direction of Tolly. These are the humanizing emotions which eventually stagger out of an otherwise vulgar and, frankly, vile character. Fuller sympathized with crazed determination. Along with the cynical survivor, the other half of Fuller’s male protagonists - and you could argue that these two types also revealed much about the director himself - were in the mold of Tolly or Shock Corridor’s Johnny Barrett.

Even with the relationship Fuller sets up between Tolly and Cuddles and the hot-blooded motivation in going after what are undeniably wretched men (the three of which are given representational avatars signifying that each controls his own realm of criminal activity, thus making the men embody the full respective evils of narcotics, labor and prostitution), Tolly remains the director’s most difficult and ambiguous hero. This may be less instructive of Fuller’s mindset at the time than a product of circumstance surrounding, as mentioned, the movie literally being built around a title, as well as the original idea Fuller had come up with being rejected by the studio and an actor in Robertson who was just breaking into leading man territory but still comfortable enough to embrace an antihero role. Maybe not even ten years later and Fuller could have had the opening he wanted. The ever-evolving Hollywood carousel seemed to never quite let Sam on at the right time. Fuller’s absurd balance of anachronism and modernity in his films remains downright strange. It may be part of why people get that feeling of camp from them. Look deeper and I think you’ll find a unique filmmaking style based around the excitement of experience with the itchy desire to share and a fascination with thematically mature, adult undercurrents. There’s virtually no one in the filmmaking pantheon I’m familiar with who can claim those same primary interests. Fuller's voice remains refreshingly unmistakable.

The Discs

Sony's Samuel Fuller Film Collection contains seven discs, all NTSC and encoded for R1. It's packaged in a digipak where six of the discs overlap with a partner while the seventh, Underworld U.S.A., gets its own card. Unlike the recent film noir set from Sony, these figure-eight monstrosities have an extra piece of plastic hovering over the bottom discs which make it a bit more frustrating to safely remove them. One would think a better solution must exist to release a seven-disc set. I also can't figure out why the film titles are nowhere to be found on the disc menus.

To some extent, any complaints about packaging, pricing, exclusivity, film quality, etc. take a significant backseat to the mostly exceptional image quality of these movies. Across all seven films, damage is negligible and grain, almost without exception, teeters around ideal levels of being present but not too heavy. They are all on single-layered discs, but the digital noise I saw on Sony's noir set is far less troublesome, probably because of the shorter running times. Shockproof, clocking in at around eighty minutes, and Adventure in Sahara, with a tiny bitrate, exhibit some slight noise. Detail on the earlier films is still quite good actually, though Power of the Press can look rather soft. All are progressive transfers.

Only The Crimson Kimono presents anything resembling a nagging problem - it's mainly the contrast, which is both inconsistent and downright ugly at times. A few scenes frustratingly alternate between having an acceptable black and white contrast and looking far too greenish. This happens in the middle of a scene at least once. Strangely enough, the contrast is most often like looking through a green filter similar to what we see on the box set packaging stills. Underworld U.S.A. has none of those flaws. It's spectacular, rich in detail and contrast. Close-ups are especially beautiful. Both The Crimson Kimono and Underworld U.S.A. are in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, enhanced for widescreen televisions, while the other five are 1.33:1.


All audio tracks are in English mono, with optional yellow subtitles in both English and French. I found nothing of much surprise in any of these aside from the uncanny resemblance a musical piece in Adventure in Sahara has to John Williams' Superman theme. Dialogue sounds clear and consistent in volume. It Happened in Hollywood contains the strongest hiss, like a rainstorm at times, while Shockproof has a noticeably clean track.

The cover of the Fuller box advertises the collection as being "introduced by" Martin Scorsese, Curtis Hanson, Tim Robbins, and Wim Wenders. This is about as misleading as the set's name. All four of these accomplished filmmakers do indeed make appearances across the four featurettes included, but there are a couple of snags. Robbins shows up first (7:06), on the Power of the Press disc, but it's fairly clear that he's not talking about this particular movie at all and the long clips which do run from it are distracting, obvious attempts to pad the piece. I was taken aback at how ineptly done this is. A "Samuel Fuller Storyteller" (24:14) featurette is better and has the promised individuals as well as interviews with Fuller's widow Christa and daughter Samantha. It's basic information, which maybe doesn't deserve any complaint, and somewhat unorganized in presentation, but a competent watch all the same. My favorite of these extras is "Curtis Hanson: The Culture of The Crimson Kimono" (9:23), which reminds us how articulate and insightful the L.A. Confidential director (and co-writer of White Dog) can be. Martin Scorsese speaks quickly but his contribution (5:09) to the Underworld U.S.A. is still far too short. No trailers are included for these films but disc one does have several previews for other Sony/Columbia product.

Final Thoughts

This is a long-awaited collection for Sam Fuller fans, who will want The Crimson Kimono and Underworld U.S.A. and might be curious to see the realization of some of his stories on screen. I wonder, though, if viewers less familiar with Fuller, either people lukewarm on what they've seen or those still unacquainted with him, might be better off starting with Criterion's Eclipse set of his first three films or perhaps Pickup on South Street or Fixed Bayonets! or Forty Guns. Sony's contribution is a neat way of including movies like It Happened in Hollywood and Adventure in Sahara which probably wouldn't receive editions otherwise, but it's expensive as well as being somewhat misleadingly titled. (And I feel almost uncomfortable giving something called the "Samuel Fuller Film Collection" only a 7 under the film rating.) I don't feel like people should have to shell out that kind of money if what they really want is just the two Fuller-directed pictures, but everyone looking to own Shockproof, Scandal Sheet and the others should be pleased at the quality of the transfers and, most importantly I think, having the opportunity here in late 2009 to buy pressed discs of classic films from a major studio. That's starting to feel distressingly rare.

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