Fuller, Sam(uel Michael) (1911–1997)

US director, screenwriter, producer, and novelist. His visually striking, sensational pulp culture films established him as one of the USA's first great independent film-makers. Fuelled by his experiences as a newspaper crime reporter, a pulp novelist, and a World War II veteran, Fuller's oeuvre is characterized by emotive and violent explorations of the darker side of the US psyche. Announced by tabloid-style titles, his films, from Park Row (1952) to Shock Corridor (1963) to White Dog (1982), constantly return to the motifs of the individual's struggle for personal freedom; his concern with the concepts of psychological, racial, and national identity; and mankind's never-ending propensity for violence.

Fuller first entered the film industry in the late 1930s as a writer, drawing from his background both as a crime reporter and pulp novelist. He made his directorial debut in 1949 with the Western I Shot Jesse James, a genre he would return to in Forty Guns (1957) and Run of the Arrow (1957), among others. It was, however, in the genre of the hard-hitting noirish thriller that he would produce some of his most accomplished work: Pickup on South Street (1953), The Crimson Kimono (1959), Underworld USA (1961), and The Naked Kiss (1964) all saw him holding a mirror to the darker side of US society.

Much admired by fellow film-makers, he has appeared in films by European directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders. Fuller was the subject of the documentary The Typewriter, The Rifle and the Movie Camera (1996).

Among his other films are The Steel Helmet (1951), Fixed Bayonets (1951), House of Bamboo (1955), and The Big Red One. His novels include Burn Baby Burn (1935), Test Tube Baby (1936), and The Dark Page (1944).