STUDIO: Criterion
RELEASE DATE: December 2, 2008
STARRING: Paul Winfield, Kristy McNichol, and Burl Ives
WRITTEN BY: Curtis Hanson & Samuel Fuller
DIRECTED BY: Samuel Fuller

FEATURES:

New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the uncut version, supervised and approved by producer Jon Davison
New video interviews with producer Davison, co-writer Curtis Hanson, and Sam Fuller's widow, Christa Lang-Fuller
An interview with dog trainer Karl Lewis-Miller
Rare photos from the film's production
PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by critics J. Hoberman and Armond White, plus a rare 1982 interview in which Fuller interviews the canine star of the film.

Can you believe that it was not that long ago that such an important filmmaker as Samuel Fuller made as important a film as excellent as White Dog and it didn't even get released? Imagine if Joel Coen or Martin Scorsese spent years trying to get a controversial movie made and it just got shoved on to a shelf and was never given a chance to find an audience. In some ways, I feel like we're in a more politically correct time than we used to be, but the emergence of the independent film market has made it nearly impossible for a situation like White Dog to happen again. Nowadays, the film would be put in turnaround and at least released by a studio like IFC or Magnolia. The subject of White Dog - racism - might have scared some people away but it's not like the film is condoning it and the controversy surrounding it is almost hard to believe a quarter-century later. The theme of Fuller's excellent drama is that racism is taught, not innate, and his device if something real, a "white dog", an animal who has been trained to hurt black people. It's a riveting film that has been given a perfect treatment by Criterion. It's one of this excellent company's best releases of 2008.

Kristy McNichol stars as a woman who takes in a stray white German Shepherd for protection. She soon learns that the dog has been trained to attack black people. The great Paul Winfield stars as the trainer who tries to beat the racism out of the dog. White Dog has never been available on the home market before, only playing, believe it or not, on regular '80s TV airings, and in a brief theatrical run (it's only one) in the early '90s. It's what Criterion does best - finding unheralded and underappreciated films and making them available to a public who may not even know they exist. This version is a new, restored high-definition digital transfer of the uncut version that has been approved by producer Jon Davison. There are also new video interviews with Davison, co-writer Curtis Hanson (who would go on to direct L.A. Confidential) and Sam Fuller's widow, Christa Lang-Fuller. There's an interview with dog trainer Karl Lewis-Miller, rare photos from the film's production and a booklet with new essays by J. Hoberman and Armond White and an interview from 1982 with, well, the canine star of the movie.

The shelving of White Dog, after the studio got too nervous about the controversial subject matter, crushed the great Samuel Fuller. He never made an American film again. And, now, over 25 years later, you have outlets like Time Out calling it the best film about racism ever made. Considering the film's history and new reputation/esteem, the Criterion edition does seem awfully light on special features and the picture is far from perfect, but watching White Dog is like finding a lost treasure. It has been unearthed after all of these years and can now join its place in cinema history as the essential piece of social commentary that it always was - we just never got the chance to see it.

• • Brian Tallerico

By: Glenn Erickson_

Samuel Fuller launched his Hollywood writing career even before he went to war, and took it up again immediately upon being demobilized. In 1949 he linked up with B-picture producer Robert Lippert, directing three fast films for him before moving on to work for Darryl Zanuck at Fox. The energetic, enormously inventive Fuller loved a good film story the way he loved newspaper writing, and he filled his screenplays with emotion, irony and his own notions about patriotism and combat.

The story of The Baron of Arizona plays like a tall tale, as Sam Fuller embellishes the true story to make James Reavis seem like a genius. Reavis manufactures an entire false history for the fictitious Peralta family, inventing ancestors and planting forged documents all the way back to original Land Grant records in Spain. To gain access to one copy of the land deeds, he spends several years in a Spanish monastery. To alter another land deed registry, he joins a group of gypsies and seduces a Marquesa (Margia Dean again, the producer's girlfriend). Fuller stresses that the United States honored Spanish land grants under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and that Reavis' chicanery was uncovered only through the work of a tireless federal investigator.

If the information on Wikipedia is accurate, the real James Reavis was less talented but even more conspiratorial. He sought partnerships with a group that included George Hearst (William Randolph's father) to push his claims through. With the backing of fat cats eager to lay claim to a whole territory, Reavis tried the same gambit several times. He eventually married a fake Peralta heir and called himself the Baron of Arizoniac, but a Surveyor General named Royal Johnson disproved his cheap forgeries, along with many claims by copycat fakers. Reavis eventually spent three years in prison