The Naked Kiss

A prostitute (Constance Towers) beats up her abusive pimp and takes what is owed to her before relocating to a small village where she is run out of town by a local police chief (Anthony Eisley) and lured back into the life before finding peace as a nurse at a children's hospital and getting engaged to a millionaire (Michael Dante), a situation that proves too good to be true. Highly suggestive and melodramatic Sam Fuller B-movie is sensationalist and shocking, especially for its time. The low budget affair is crisply edited and features several memorable sequences including the opening and the morbid culmination of a strange musical number.

*** 1/2 out of ****

The Big Red One

After serving for the 1st Infantry Unit in World War I and killing (not murdering) a Kraut after the war had expired, unbeknownst to him, the grizzled veteran (Lee Marvin) returns to command the same outfit during WWII and sees action all across the Western Theater, from North Africa to Normandy to Western Germany. Despite some brothers-in-arms movie cliches, a few wrought scenes, and one unfortunate sequences involving mentally disabled residents joining in on a monastery gunfight, Samuel Fuller's battle experience drawn film sets itself apart from other war movies with its varied stories, and a unique take on war and the call to serve. Great hardened though sympathetic performance from Marvin.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Pickup on South Street

A pickpocket, (Richard Widmark) casually plying his trade on a crowded subway, relieves a gangster's moll (Jean Peters) of the contents of her purse which just so happen to be government secrets she was unwittingly transferring to the Russians. Now, the pickpocket is the target of both U.S. agents and the gangster's deadly cohorts, and must decide what to do with his highly targeted acquisition and the equally jeopardized femme fatale who has also fallen into his lap. Sam Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" is a gritty crime thriller that features many jarring scenes and relies heavily on Widmark's characteristically nasty lead performance. Thelma Ritter is likewise excellent as an ill-fated police informant.

Park Row

In the gritty, bustling heyday of print news in 1880s New York, a hard-nosed newspaper man (Gene Evans) quits his job at The Star, a prestigious paper run by an unscrupulous editor (Mary Welch), to start his own publication. Made with little more than his own meager resources and industry know-how, the newsman runs The Globe with journalistic integrity while publicizing the arrival of The Statue of Liberty, the building of The Brooklyn Bridge, and fighting off his frequent and often brutal rivals. Once a correspondent himself, "Park Row" is Sam Fuller's tough, romanticized view of the prominence of the newspaper industry, which may hold special significance in this modern era of waning print journalism. The film is compacted though energetic  and highly entertaining, featuring fine performances from a largely unknown cast.