The cinema of Samuel Fuller is implicitly alive, and this vivacity is engrossing enough that even his films that don't have that unique sheen of 'classic' still pulsate with a punchy dramatic percolation within them. Nothing proves this more than The Samuel Fuller Collection, a new 7-DVD set from Sony that liberates some of the director's lesser-known films and allows a vantage point into some of the director's underappreciated gems. None of the seven pictures here are Fuller's best, but what's truly exceptional about this set is that there isn't a stinker in the lot (usually compilations like this have a least a few turkeys).

We start with It Happened in Hollywood (1937), a Tinseltown tale a la Singin' in the Rain that focuses on the troubled waters that many actors swam through when the advent of sound hit movies. Richard Dix plays a western star who gets pushed to the side as new, sound-filled trends hit Hollywood, and he's forced to rethink and reprioritize his life now that the luxury of comfy stardom has passed. The film is perfectly Fuller-esque (even though he only wrote the screenplay here) - Fuller was notorious for introducing a classic hero archetype, then deconstructing it fully - and in addition to the film's witty dialogue and sassy interplay, it offers Dix a great romance with fellow cowgirl-turned-sound-star Fay Wray. Adventure in Sahara (1938), however, is less impressive - its tale of a powermad French Foreign Legion captain (C. Henry Gordon) who gets pretty much mutinied by his men (led by the strapping Paul Kelly) has hints of the kind of inquisitive presentation of war that Fuller would later knock out of the park in works like The Big Red One, but this hour-long film, aside from showcasing some lovely desert photography, is one of the thinnest offerings on this set.

It could also be argued that Power of the Press (1943) is quite Fuller-esque without actually having been directed by the man. This tale of an ethically gross newspaper editor (Otto Kruger) who exploits his paper for personal gains - and goes even farther as he starts to plan murderous schemes with his newfound wartime power as a spreader of 'news'. The film is short, and where Fuller's directorial efforts were mostly able to be symbolically blatant without being over-the-top, Lew Landers' direction here makes Power of the Press an on-the-nose affair that is obvious when it should be revelatory, precious when it should be probing. Yet where Power of the Press is beguiling and odd qualitatively, Shockproof (1949) is beguiling and odd as a hybrid of two marvelous (and not entirely overlapping) filmmaking talents that never really makes much sense. Written by Fuller (with Helen Deutsch) and directed by All That Heaven Allows auteur Douglas Sirk, this film noir about a tough-as-nails broad (Patricia Knight) who is granted parole but nevertheless breaks the rules of her release to stay close to her beau, a deeply flawed gangster/gambler type (John Baragrey), which is much to the chagrin of her parole officer (Cornel Wilde) has moments of intrigue as far as its life-and-death love triangle dramatic construction, but even though the film plays out intriguingly (you'll definitely want to see what happens next), it's more of a Hollywood curio than a solid piece of cinema.

Scandal Sheet (1952) is another newspaper-set drama that features Broderick Crawford as an editor who will do anything in order to get his headlines to connect with readers. But this desire to risk it all for prestige and readership is thwarted when reporter John Derek decides to take on a story about a bizarre 'singles club' - it turns out that if Derek investigates the story too far, he'll uncover some of his editor's more seedy editing 'techniques'. This is the least appropriate title on this set - even though the film moves along appropriately and houses a standout supporting performance from Donna Reed (a fellow writer at the paper), the film was based on Fuller's novel The Dark Page, and Fuller had no cinematic contribution to the film at all, aside from writing the source material. The relative disappointment of this is washed away, however, with The Crimson Kimono (1959), a racially-charged drama written and directed by Fuller that is as bombastic as it is intimate. This story of an interracial couple - a Japanese man (James Shigeta) and a white woman (Victoria Shaw) - has elements of excellent love-triangle drama (turns out Shigeta's colleague from the police force, Glenn Corbett, also has eyes for Shaw), yet is beguiling in addition to this. Fuller was a master of taking a hot-button issue and nearly subverting it, making it totally noticeable, to be sure, but far more part of the narrative than a tabloid-y stab at cultural notoriety.

Finally, we have Underworld, USA (1961), the highlight of The Samuel Fuller Collection. In this film, a kid witnesses the murder of his father at the hands of a nasty gangster mob, and the roots of revenge are planted immediately. The kid grows up (and is eventually played by Cliff Robertson), and makes it his life's goal to be granted entrance into said mob in order to avenge the murder of his beloved father. Fuller's treatment of obsession in his films is irresistible across the board, and his presentation of it here is completely engrossing. We as an audience want the poor guy to rise above his teeming anger and enjoy his life, but on the other hand, we completely understand his bloodlust. It's this push/pull that Fuller is famous for, and Underworld, USA has it in spades.