Although he could boast thirty directing, and over fifty writing credits, Sam Fuller was more than just a cinematic hack for hire. Niall Kitson looks at the career of the American maverick who inspired filmmakers from Godard to Jarmusch.

Steeped in bloodshed and psychosis Sam Fuller's flawed WWII epic The Big Red One starring Lee Marvin and Mark Hamill has been a subject of constant debate among fans of the cult director. A brutally honest, if sometimes implausible story of mayhem and redemption across the frontlines of Europe, BR1 is a confrontational and abrasive work with a strong human interest angle to sweeten the pill – in other words a classic example of the Fuller aesthetic. A war veteran and journo with an eye for a story, whose cohiba cigar was never far from his lips, Sam Fuller became known as an iconoclast chronicaling the underbelly of the American dream, and getting away with it for nearly forty years. Turning the constraints of B-movie into a badge of honour, Fuller churned out his own brand of outsider fiction until his death in 1997. Throughout his fifty-year career he amassed a huge volume of work, some of which remains to be produced. Unfairly labeled a moral anarchist, Fuller has been cited as an influence on filmmakers from Godard to Tarantino to Jarmusch. His work, with its themes of patriotism, racism and corruption, still makes relevant viewing today. With The Big Red One now available in a restored version on DVD, a whole new generation of cinephiles can now strap in for the Fuller treatment. So here's the skinny...

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 105.