Biography
Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American screenwriter, novelist and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes. He was born Samuel Michael Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and Rebecca Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After immigrating to America, the family's surname was changed from Rabinovitch to "Fuller" possibly by inspiration of a Doctor who arrived in ...
Known For
Complete Filmography

A Fuller Life
2013
as Self
Friends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this unconventional documentary directed by Fuller's only child...

A Fuller Life
2013
Book
Friends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this unconventional documentary directed by Fuller's only child...

Scene Missing
2012
as Self
The unfinished documentary about the making of Dennis Hopper's mostly unseen feature film The Last Movie (1971).

Nuits transparentes
2011
Strolling through France (Roanne, Nice and Carcassonne) with some excursions abroad (Munich, Montreal, New York).

Sodankylä Forever
2010
as Self
The Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the arctic circle — where the sun never sets. Founded by ...

Carmel
2009
Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitaï offers a look impressionist long history of armed conflict in their nation.

Filmmakers in Action
2006
as Self (archive footage)
What is the state of cinema and what being a filmmaker means? What are the measures taken to protect authors' copyright? What is their legal status in...

Edge of Outside
2006
as Self (archive footage)
An hour-long documentary designed to celebrate the spirit of the independent filmmaker from D.W. Griffith to Quentin Tarantino. Interview footage and ...

The Big Red One: The Reconstruction
2005
as War Correspondent (uncredited)
A re-working, re-editing, and restructuring of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One bringing it closer as originally envisioned by the late filmmaker. It incl...

The Real Glory: Reconstructing 'The Big Red One'
2005
as Himself (archive footage)
Documentary about the efforts to reconstruct Sam Fuller's The Big Red One closer to the film Fuller had originally envisioned.

The Big Red One: The Reconstruction
2005
Director, Writer
A re-working, re-editing, and restructuring of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One bringing it closer as originally envisioned by the late filmmaker. It incl...

Necro not(to b)e
2003
as Sé stesso

The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller
2002
as Self
Samuel Fuller discusses his career as a filmmaker, illustrated by plenty of clips.

The End of Violence
1997
as Louis
In Hollywood, the lives of a successful film producer, his wife, a police detective and a surveillance agent intersect after a botched abduction.

The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera
1996
as Self
In a documentary about Samuel Fuller, the spectator gets different impressions about the Hollywood director and his films. The film is divided into th...

Somebody to Love
1994
as Sam Silverman
Mercedes is a taxi dancer who wants to be an actress. She's involved with the married Harry, who considers himself a respected actor. Ernesto is in lo...

Girls in Prison
1994
Writer
Framed for the murder of a record company president in 1952 Hollywood, young, aspiring singer Aggie O'Hanlon is sentenced to life in prison and tries ...

Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
1994
as Self
In 1993, Sam Fuller takes Jim Jarmusch on a trip into Brazil's Mato Grosso, up the River Araguaia to the village of Santa Isabel Do Morro, where 40 ye...
Un Américain en Normandie
1994
as Himself
Filmmaker Samuel Fuller tells the story of Corporal Samuel Fuller's landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and his subsequent campaign in Normandy (t...

Anything for John
1993
as Self
An intimate portrait of actor-writer-director John Cassavetes and a loving tribute to his genius for studying and depicting the human character. In-de...

Golem: The Petrified Garden
1993
as Sam
Danny Cornish, a sort of stateless man who arranges art exhibits, is called from Tel Aviv to Paris with the news that a great uncle has died, in Birob...

Golem, the Spirit of Exile
1992
as Elimelek
An allegory of the Golem, a Jewish mythical creature personifying displacement and exile, this film tells the story of a woman (similar to the biblica...

La Vie de Bohème
1992
as Gassot
Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with n...

Where Is Musette?
1992
as self
Documentary filmed on-set during the making of Aki Kaurismaki's "La vie de Boheme"

Shock Corridor
1992
as himself
Short 35mm experimental film featuring Sam Fuller.

The Madonna and the Dragon
1990
as Chef de bureau Newsweek
Exposé of two news photographers covering the People's Revolution in the Philippines.

The Madonna and the Dragon
1990
Director, Screenplay
Exposé of two news photographers covering the People's Revolution in the Philippines.

The Day of Reckoning
1990
Director, Screenplay
A young man begins to have terrifying nightmares after visiting his obsessive uncle's automated chicken farm.

Motion and Emotion: The Films of Wim Wenders
1990
as Self
Though very polite and British, this feature-length documentary about German filmmaker Wim Wenders offers the most penetrating insights and the best o...

Sons
1990
as Father
A trio of stepbrothers accompany their paralysed father on a jaunt to Normandy where the old boy saw combat and romantic action during the war.

Street of No Return
1989
as Police Commissioner
A rock star-turned-bum, his vocal chords severed at the height of his career for the love of a woman, drunkenly roams the city, torn apart by sponsore...

Street of No Return
1989
Director, Screenplay, Dialogue
A rock star-turned-bum, his vocal chords severed at the height of his career for the love of a woman, drunkenly roams the city, torn apart by sponsore...
Tell me Sam - Encounters with Sam Fuller
1989
as Himself

Falkenau, the Impossible
1988
as Samuel Fuller
Documentary stems from 1945, when infantryman Sam Fuller, member of the U.S. Army's "Big Red One," helped liberate the Nazis' Falkenau death camp. Ful...

Mer de Chine: Le pays pour mémoire
1988
as Le capitaine américain

Helsinki Napoli All Night Long
1987
as Boss
Alex is a Finnish taxi driver in Berlin. One evening pits two men feel comfortable in his taxi with a briefcase full of money, but unfortunately for A...

A Return to Salem's Lot
1987
as Van Meer
Joe Weber is an anthropologist who takes his son on a trip to the New England town of Salem's Lot unaware that it is populated by vampires. When the i...
Midnight Sun Film Festival
1987
The greatest film festival (anti)promotional short ever made which explains why Midnight Sun is a unique event for both film buffs in Finland and some...

The Bleeding Star
1987
An Englishman arrives in a remote French town near the coast to collect his broken-down car. What he sees there will change his life forever.

Let's Get Harry
1986
Story
Harry Burck has been kidnapped by South American terrorists, and when the US Government refuses to intervene, Harry's friends decide to take matters i...
Hooray For Holyrood
1986
as Self
Scottish Television's film on the 40th Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1986, starring Robbie Coltrane (a former EIFF chauffeur) and featuring...
A Travelling is a Moral Affair
1986
as Himself
Report from Hollywood
1985
“It may be worse than Portugal,” observes cinematographer Henri Alekan about a Los Angeles film lab while on the set of Wim Wenders’ The State of Thin...

Thieves After Dark
1984
as Zoltan
A crime story set in Paris about a Bonnie-and-Clyde couple -- how they got together and how they are pursued for a murder they never committed.

Thieves After Dark
1984
Director, Writer
A crime story set in Paris about a Bonnie-and-Clyde couple -- how they got together and how they are pursued for a murder they never committed.

Sam Fuller & the Big Red One
1984
as Self
A documentary shot during the production of Samuel Fuller's film The Big Red One.

Slapstick of Another Kind
1982
as Colonel Sharp
A rich, beautiful couple give birth to deformed alien twins who, when their heads are together, are the smartest kids on the planet.

White Dog
1982
as Charlie Felton
A trainer attempts to retrain a vicious dog that’s been raised to kill black people.

White Dog
1982
Director, Screenplay
A trainer attempts to retrain a vicious dog that’s been raised to kill black people.

Hammett
1982
as Old Man in Pool Hall
Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living...

The State of Things
1982
as Joe
On location in Portugal, a film crew runs out of film while making their own version of Roger Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956). The producer is...

The Big Red One
1980
as War Correspondent (uncredited)
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian P...

The Big Red One
1980
Director, Writer
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian P...

1941
1979
as Interceptor Commander
In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, panic grips California, where a military officer leads a mob chasing a Japanese sub.

Cinématon
1978
as N°602
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 y...

The Meanest Men in the West
1978
Director, Screenplay
Bronson and Marvin star as murderous half-brothers who are running from the law as well as each other. A climatic confrontation proves to each of them...

The American Friend
1977
as The American
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by ga...

Scott Joplin
1977
as Impresario
The life story of Scott Joplin and how he became the greatest ragtime composer of all time.

The Klansman
1974
Screenplay
A small southern town has just been rocked by a tragedy: a young white woman has been raped by a black man. When young black man Garth witnesses the K...

The Deadly Trackers
1973
Story
Sheriff Sean Kilpatrick is a pacifist. Frank Brand is the leader of a band of killers. When their paths cross Kilpatrick is compelled to go against ev...

The Young Nurses
1973
as Doc Haskell
Sexy young nurses apply special therapy in their daily rounds, as they work against a drug ring operating out of the hospital

Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
1972
Director, Writer
A private detective (Glenn Corbett) infiltrates a gang of drug-dealing extortionists who prey on politicians.

The Last Movie
1971
as Sam
After a film production wraps in Peru, an American wrangler decides to stay behind, witnessing how filmmaking affects the locals.

Shark
1969
Director, Screenplay
A gunrunner loses his cargo near a small coastal Sudanese town so he's stuck there. When a woman hires him to raid a sunken ship in the shark-infested...

Targets
1968
Screenplay
An aging horror-movie icon's fate intersects with that of a seemingly ordinary young man on a psychotic shooting spree around Los Angeles.
Cinéastes de notre temps : Samuel Fuller
1967
as Interviewee
Episode of the French television series about the work of American film director Samuel Fuller. (A 23-minute edited version of this show appears on th...

The Cape Town Affair
1967
Writer
South African secret agents attempt to save confidential microfilm before it falls into the hands of Communists. A color remake of the Sam Fuller film...

Made in U.S.A
1967
Thanks
Paula Nelson goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover, Richard Politzer, but finds him dead and decides to investigate his death. In her hotel room, s...

Brigitte and Brigitte
1966
as Self
Episodes in the lives of two country girls at school in Paris and their opinions.

Pierrot le Fou
1965
as Samuel Fuller (uncredited)
Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an ...

The Naked Kiss
1964
Director, Writer, Producer
A former prostitute works to create a new life for herself in a small town, but a shocking discovery could threaten everything.

Shock Corridor
1963
Director, Screenplay, Producer
With the help of his girlfriend Cathy and Dr. Fong, a psychiatrist, ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett poses as a madman in order to be admitted to a...

Merrill's Marauders
1962
Director, Screenplay
Brigadier General Frank D. Merrill leads the 3,000 American volunteers of his 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), aka "Merrill's Marauders", behind J...

Underworld U.S.A.
1961
Director, Writer, Producer
A bitter young man sets out to get back at the gangsters who murdered his father.

The Crimson Kimono
1959
Director, Writer, Producer
Two detectives clash over the hunt for a burlesque dancer’s killer in Los Angeles’ Japanese district.

Verboten!
1959
Director, Writer
A young American serviceman stationed in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, jeopardises his future after falling in love with a German woman.

Dogface
1959
Director, Writer, Producer
This unaired pilot for a series Fuller pitched to CBS about a U.S. infantry troop fighting its way through Nazi-held North Africa offers a fascinating...

Forty Guns
1957
Director, Screenplay, Producer
An authoritarian rancher rules an Arizona county with her private posse of hired guns. When a new Marshall arrives to set things straight, the cattle ...

Run of the Arrow
1957
Director, Writer, Producer
When the South loses the war, Confederate veteran O'Meara goes West, joins the Sioux, takes a wife and refuses to be an American but he must choose a ...

China Gate
1957
Director, Screenplay, Producer
Near the end of the French phase of the Vietnam War, a group of mercenaries are recruited to travel through enemy territory to the Chinese border.

House of Bamboo
1955
as Japanese policeman (uncredited)
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen...

House of Bamboo
1955
Director, Additional Dialogue
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen...

The Command
1954
Writer
Once the commanding officer of a cavalry patrol is killed, the ranking officer who must take command is an army doctor.

Hell and High Water
1954
Director, Screenplay
A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese...

Pickup on South Street
1953
Director, Screenplay
In New York City, an insolent pickpocket, Skip McCoy, inadvertently sets off a chain of events when he targets ex-prostitute Candy and steals her wall...

Park Row
1952
Writer, Director, Producer
In New York's 1880s newspaper district, a dedicated journalist manages to set up his own paper. It is an immediate success but attracts increasing opp...

Scandal Sheet
1952
Novel
A tabloid editor assigns a young reporter to solve a murder the editor committed himself.

Fixed Bayonets!
1951
Director, Screenplay
The story of a platoon during the Korean War. One by one, Corporal Denno's superiors are killed until it comes to the point where he must try to take ...

The Tanks Are Coming
1951
Story
An American tank crew fights its way into Germany in World War II.

The Steel Helmet
1951
Director, Writer, Producer
A ragtag group of American stragglers battles against superior Communist troops in an abandoned Buddhist temple during the Korean War.

The Baron of Arizona
1950
Director, Writer
The U.S. government recognizes land grants made when the West was under Spanish rule. This inspires James Reavis to forge a chain of historical eviden...

I Shot Jesse James
1949
Director, Writer
Bob Ford murders his best friend Jesse James in order to obtain a pardon that will free him to marry his girlfriend Cynthy. The guilt-stricken Ford so...

Shockproof
1949
Writer
Jenny Marsh, recently released from prison for killing a man, finds herself under the watchful eye of her parole officer, Griff Marat, who helps her s...

Gangs of the Waterfront
1945
Story
Gang Leader Dutch Malone goes on a hunting trip and is in a car wreck and is confined to the hospital, without the knowledge of any of his gang member...

V-E +1
1945
Director
The silent 16 mm footage that makes up "V-E +1" documents the burial of beaten and emaciated Holocaust victims found by Allied forces in the Nazi conc...

Margin for Error
1943
Screenplay
When police officer Moe Finkelstein and his colleague Officer Salomon are ordered to serve as bodyguards to German consul Karl Baumer by the mayor of ...

Power of the Press
1943
Story
During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist New York Gazette is murdered just as he was about to change the paper's policy and support the US war e...

Confirm or Deny
1941
Story
Newsman Mitch and teletype operator Jennifer, whose job is to see he doesn't send inappropriate stuff out of the country, dodge bombs during the blitz...

Bowery Boy
1940
Original Story
Dr. Tom O'Hara takes over a public clinic in New York's desperately poor Bowery section. Boy gangleader Sock Dolan resents Tom's interference in movin...

Gangs of Chicago
1940
Screenplay
A criminal uses his knowledge of the law for his not-very-legal purposes, betraying friends along the way.

She Married a Cop
1939
Writer
This comedy is set in New York and centers upon a singing Irish cop who causes quite a sensation among two producers when he sings at the annual Polic...

Federal Man-Hunt
1938
Story
By a daring ruse and inside help, Pete Rennick, a noted criminal behind bars on federal charges, escapes from the prison, and all of the law-agencies ...

Adventure in Sahara
1938
Story
Agadez is a lonely French outpost baking under the desert sun and commanded by the cruel and oppressive Captain Savatt. To it comes, at his own reques...

Gangs of New York
1938
Story, Screenplay
An undercover cop infiltrates a powerful New York based crime syndicate.

It Happened in Hollywood
1937
Screenplay
A silent Western star has trouble adjusting to the coming of sound.

Hats Off
1936
Screenplay, Story
The first musical comedy from the Grand National assembly line, Hats Off stars John Payne and Mae Clarke as rival press agents Jimmy Maxwell and Jo Al...