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Samuel Fuller (1912-1997) carried in him the very spirit of American independent filmmaking. A longtime New Yorker and lifelong workhorse he began as a newspaper copyboy at age 12, was a crime reporter by 17, wrote his first of a dozen pulp novels at 22 – with titles like Test Tube Baby and Burn Baby Burn – his first of many screenplays at 24, fought in the United States Infantry in the Second World War, and began his directorial career – which would total 26 films across four decades – in 1949 with the western I Shot Jesse James.
A maverick in the confines of b-production his work spanned genres and styles but often sprang from the worlds of pulp violence, tabloid expose, and social protest, drawing from his journalistic sense and experiences on the crime beat, as well as war stories, which he would explore in films set in Europe, Korea, and Vietnam.