NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (September 2026): Criterion have transferred their Eclipse Series 5: The First Films of Samuel Fuller to Blu-ray consisting of three films; I Shot Jesse James (1949) / The Baron of Arizona (1950) and The Steel Helmet (1951). We reviewed the original DVD set in 2007, HERE. The three films come on two dual-layered Blu-rays. I Shot Jesse James and The Steel Helmet share Blu-ray 1, and The Baron of Arizona has Blu-ray 2 to itself. All three are in 1080P in the original 1.33 aspect ratio, and, happily, the pictureboxing of the 2007 DVDs is gone. The Kit Parker Films logo still opens each film, so the source elements appear to be the same, but these are clearly new HD transfers, and the improvement is significant. The DVDs' boosted black levels and hot, brightened contrast have been corrected. The Blu-rays show deep, rich blacks and a far wider grayscale, and the digital noise that plagued the SD transfers has been replaced by a natural, film-like grain structure. Detail is vastly superior on all three. It shows in the check of Cynthy's dress and the weave of Bob Ford's coat in Jesse James, in the textured plaster walls, beadwork and beards of Baron, and in the stained shirt of Short Round and the sweat on Richard Loo's brow in The Steel Helmet. James Wong Howe's (Hud, Shanghai Express, Chandu the Magician, The Thin Man, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, They Made Me a Criminal, A Dispatch from Reuters, Out of the Fog, Hangmen Also Die!, Passage to Marseille, Objective, Burma!, Nora Prentiss, Pursued, Body and Soul, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Eagle and the Hawk, He Ran All the Way, Come Back, Little Sheba, Jennifer, The Rose Tattoo, Picnic, Sweet Smell of Success, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, Bell Book and Candle, Seconds, This Property Is Condemned, Hombre, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Molly Maguires,) photography on Baron benefits most. His shadowy interiors finally have the density they need, although this is the grainiest of the three. There is no sign of an extensive restoration: the same light speckles and minor damage marks I noted on the DVDs are still present on Jesse James and Baron. They are rarely distracting, though, and The Steel Helmet remains the cleanest of the three. The bitrates are very high throughout. Baron, alone on its disc, runs only about 3%-4% higher than the two films sharing Blu-ray 1, which are within 1% of each other. The encodes are consistently strong and show no compression issues. This is a major upgrade from the DVDs, and it finally does justice to Fuller's early work in the home theater.

NOTE: We have added 120 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use linear PCM mono tracks (24-bit) in the original English language. This is a considerable step up from the lossy Dolby of the 2007 DVDs. The results are clean and consistent. Dialogue is clear, and the faint background hiss I mentioned on the DVDs is minimal to non-existent here. I noted no dropouts or other flaws. Albert Glasser's (Tormented, The Cyclops, Attack of the Puppet People, Abilene Town, The Spider, Behind Locked Doors,) emphatic Western score for Jesse James, and the troubadour's haunting ballad of the "dirty little coward," come through with more body than before. Paul Dunlap's (Castle of Evil, City of Shadows, Black Tuesday, How to Make a Monster, Shack Out on 101, Portland Expose, Big House U.S.A., Target Earth, Park Row, Cry Vengeance,) romantic, sweeping music for Baron and his much sparer score for The Steel Helmet also sound fuller. The Steel Helmet benefits most, as its sniper fire, mortar blasts and clipped GI chatter now carry real impact within the limits of the original mono. There are optional English subtitles on all three films. That includes The Baron of Arizona, which had none on the DVD. Criterion offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A'-locked Blu-rays.

In keeping with the Eclipse line's no-frills approach, The Blu-rays follows suit and there are no digital supplements on the discs. The only extra is an essay by film critic Nick Pinkerton - author of Goodbye, Dragon Inn: 1 (Decadent Editions) - which places the three films in the context of Fuller's early career and his partnership with Robert L. Lippert (The Fly (1958), Curse of the Fly (1965), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Quatermass Xperiment (1955,) Unknown World (1951.) It's a shame nothing more substantial was added, since a featurette on Fuller's newspaper and infantry years, or a commentary on The Steel Helmet, would have been welcome. But the Eclipse series was always about getting neglected films into collectors' hands, and the essay is a worthwhile companion.

Robert L. Lippert (The Fly (1958), Curse of the Fly (1965), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Quatermass Xperiment (1955,) Unknown World (1951,) ran his outfit as a lean, fast-turnaround operation that fed the second half of double bills. Samuel Fuller was a screenwriter who wanted to direct. The deal they made in 1948 gave Lippert a script at a bargain price, and Fuller got to direct it for a reported $5,000. The films that came out of that arrangement are cheap, fast and blunt. They are also unmistakably personal, and that is what makes them fascinating to watch together. The same small group of collaborators turns up again and again. Carl K. Hittleman produced the first two. Ernest Miller shot I Shot Jesse James and The Steel Helmet, and Paul Dunlap scored The Baron of Arizona and The Steel Helmet. Reed Hadley (Big House, U.S.A. (1955,) Highway Dragnet (1954), The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), He Walked by Night (1948), T-Men (1947), Boomerang! (1947), The Dark Corner (1946), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), The House on 92nd Street (1945), I Married a Witch (1942), Now, Voyager (1942), The Flame of New Orleans (1941), Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941,) Margia Dean (The Quatermass Xperiment,) Barbara Woodell (Silver Lode, Sudden Danger,) and Robin Short all appear in both of the first two films. It feels like a stock company learning Fuller's shorthand on the job. Set side by side, the three films form a surprisingly coherent triptych about American myth-making. Bob Ford profits from a legend, re-enacting Jesse's killing on stage, and is destroyed by it. James Reavis manufactures a legend out of forged ink and nearly gets away with it. Sgt. Zack cuts through every patriotic myth about the fighting man, and the film forces its audience to face the country's own hypocrisies on race. Each lead is an outsider who operates by his own code and ends up isolated. Each film looks back at a piece of U.S. history (the outlaw West, territorial expansion, the new Cold War) with a reporter's skepticism rather than a mythmaker's awe. What changes across the three is Fuller's confidence. Jesse James is a talented debut, Baron is a handsomely dressed diversion, and The Steel Helmet is the raw, headline-grabbing film that set the pattern for Pickup on South Street, Run of the Arrow and Shock Corridor. Together they show a major American filmmaker finding his voice on almost no money. In 2007 I called the DVD set a must-own despite image quality that was "not Criterion-pristine." The Blu-ray goes a long way toward fixing that. It is still not a full restoration, as the lingering speckles show, but the new transfers, with their correct contrast, rich grayscale, fine detail and natural grain, are a huge leap over the pictureboxed and noisy DVDs, and the uncompressed 24-bit audio is a welcome improvement as well. Together the three films show Samuel Fuller arriving as a filmmaker: the guilt-ridden anti-Western of I Shot Jesse James, Vincent Price's grand con in the beautifully shot The Baron of Arizona, and the raw, provocative The Steel Helmet, still one of the great American war films. Anyone who owns the DVD set should upgrade without hesitation, and newcomers to Fuller could hardly ask for a better place to start. Very highly recommended!

Gary Tooze