White Dog, The Baron of Arizona, Forty Guns, The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets!, Hell and High Water, & Merrill's Marauders

Apparently, about two years ago, when Eclipse released a collection of Samuel Fuller films, I decided to add a bunch to my queue, and thus, you're going to be reading brief (or not so brief) reviews of a bunch of Samuel Fuller films. Starting with White Dog, a movie about a racist dog. Which, considering the recent episode of 30 Rock with the Black Dog was kinda useful. It's a pretty 80s film, with some completely unnecessary slow-motion, and the confrontation with the original owner was kinda hilarious in an unintentional way, but I liked the film more than the message. Which I get is a little bit of that people can be horrible to animals and it's better to kill those animals rather than try to fix them. Because that's about the only thing I got of it.

The Baron of Arizona is his second film as director, after I Shot Jesse James, and it's the weird, but true, story of a con man who tried to steal Arizona. Yeah, you read that right: back in the mid-late 1800s, a con man started to forge a huge amount of documents (and rock carvings) in order to convince people the King of Spain had given this family almost all of Arizona, and then he married "the last remaining" one, and tried to pull one over. It failed, and the movie simplifies his redemption (in reality, it's not clear if he ever was redeemed, and it's more of a depressing penniless begger ending than in the movie where he still has the love of a good woman and he confesses. Interesting movie from a historical standpoint, but it's pretty darn on the nose for most of it. The lynching scene was really well done, and Vincent Price (yes, Vincent Price!) as the con artist makes the film much more worthwhile than it should be. Also, screw Arizona.

Forty Guns is a mediocre western, with Barbara Stanwyck. With musical interludes. It's very odd to think of Samuel Fuller directing this. And yet, not only did he direct it, he wrote it. Sure there's violence and the movie is pretty messed up, but that musical interlude at the open-air bathhouse is painful. And a lot of the dialogue is horribly cheesy. And extremely Freudian.

The Steel Helmet is the first film made about the Korean War and it's also a lot about race relations in the first integrated war. It's not a particularly subtle movie, with the North Korean they capture explicitly talking about how we mistreated both blacks and Japanese, especially during their service in WWII. I'm impressed that it was made at all, what with some soldiers being cowards, the racist actions of America being such an important plot point, and the fact that the black guy doesn't die, but the temple scenes would never have been made today, what with all the shooting at Buddhas.

Fixed Bayonets! is about a rear guard action during the initial retreat in Korea. A platoon is left behind to stop the North Korean advance, and the troops are slowly freezing to death and dying one at a time. The main star of The Steel Helmet is one of the gruff sargeants here. I really didn't care for most of it, and the fact that the North Koreans didn't attack in force, or even try very hard before they did surprised me. But the scene in the minefield and the final North Korean push weren't too bad.

Hell and High Water has Richard Widmark as a submarine captain who is enlisted by a civilian group of scientists who are interested in stopping the Communists from starting WWIII. And there's a woman aboard a submarine, which, thanks to a friend of where I work, there will be many more of next year. Which is completely ridiculous that it hasn't happened before now. Submarine films are always exciting, and this one is about average for a submarine film. The use of Cinemascope in a submarine film was an interesting choice, but it definitely contributes to the claustrophobia that is very important to cover in a film.

Merrill's Marauders is based on an Army unit of about 3,000 volunteers in Burma who went behind enemy lines and beat the crap out of the Japanese under the ultimate command of General Joe Stilwell. He rode them as hard as he could before they succumbed to the jungle and the superior number of Japanese forces, soon after the movie ended. I am pretty sure I watched this back in the days when I'd watch anything that was about a war, but I didn't remember anything in particular about it. I did enjoy seeing Stilwell be a hardass.