Nobody ever accused Sam Fuller of not knowing how to stage an opening. In The Steel Helmet (1951), an American G.I., his hands tied behind his back, crawls his way among the bodies of his slaughtered fellow soldiers. In Shock Corridor (1963), we think we're overhearing the confession of a madman, until it turns out he's a reporter preparing to go undercover inside a lunatic asylum. And perhaps most famously, the opening of The Naked Kiss (1964) involves an all-out brawl between a prostitute and her john that climaxes when he grabs hold of her hair and comes away with a wig, exposing her totally bald scalp. It's clear that Fuller lived by his own moviemaking credo, as expressed in his newly published autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking (Knopf): "If a story doesn't give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage."

From anyone else, such a statement might be laughable, but if you've seen even one of the 29 films Fuller directed before he died in 1997, you know he was true to his word. Though he made pictures within the studio system for several years, mostly under the wing of kindred spirit Daryl Zanuck, Fuller had little interest in the niceties of Hollywood politics or the compromise of big-budget filmmaking; when he was filming, Fuller would start takes by firing a pistol into the air, and finish them by yelling "Forget it!" But Fuller made his mark, turning out complex, gut-churning studio pictures on a B-movie schedule, or wearing down studio chiefs until he got his way. He paid a price as well, with a lopsided career trajectory: nearly 20 theatrical features in the years from 1949 to 1964 compared to a mere half-dozen in the last 30 years of his life. Amazingly, though, Fuller never stopped working, writing novels, dozens of unproduced screenplays, and, increasingly, playing small parts for directors who'd grown up inspired by his work, a group that ranged from cult auteur Larry Cohen (It's Alive!) to Steven Spielberg, Wim Wenders and Jean-Luc Godard.

What's most striking about A Third Face is that you're halfway through the book before Fuller's directed a single film, and the book is no less gripping for it. Fuller would've lived a thrilling life if he'd never looked through an eyepiece, what with a childhood spent as a copyboy for the editor of the mighty Hearst Journal, a career as a crime reporter at the height of the Depression, and a lengthy term in the U.S. Infantry during World War II. Though Fuller is often pegged as a sensationalist or tabloid filmmaker -- due in no small part to the fact that the off-the-rails Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss have become his most widely seen films -- A Third Face reveals how much of his films, even the most shocking details, is drawn directly from his life.

That's the reason why, so many years later, Fuller's war movies still cut so close to the bone. Though in A Third Face Fuller says that The Big Red One, his long-in the-works tribute to his WWII Infantry Division, was the only war movie he ever wanted to make, he returned to the subject again and again, even while turning down offers to direct such films as The Longest Day and Patton. For Jerome Rudes, who assisted on A Third Face with Fuller's wife, Christa Lang Fuller, The Steel Helmet -- which Rudes will introduce Friday at International House (see Screenpicks, p. 22) -- might be the nearest thing to a one-film encapsulation of Fuller's oeuvre. "If there were one, I would say Steel Helmet is that one," Rudes says from the office of the New York/Avignon Film Festival, which he runs. "It's pretty close to many of the things Sam was. He was a reporter, and a soldier and a filmmaker, and you sort of get it all there."

While many, including Fuller himself, stress the importance of visceral emotion in his films, Rudes points to a different kind of legacy. What's most important about Fuller's movies, he says, is "his concentration, his enthusiasm for story -- story above everything. And his no-nonsense approach to filmmaking; it was a job that could be done professionally, but he didn't make much of it. He did consider himself an artist, but I think that was more because of his writing. He was most proud of the fact that he could make a film from a blank piece of paper. When he met [a young director,] he'd ask ŒWhat film did you make?' The next question would be, ŒDid you write it?' and the kid would say yeah. He'd say ŒI like that! That's an original!' He was very much into the idea that whatever was up there on the screen was from the director's gut."

A ferocious autodidact who never graduated high school, Fuller peppers his story with references to Diderot, Beethoven, Hugo, Milton, Flaubert, Puccini, Cervantes, Ben Jonson, Thomas Paine (praised for shooting "straight from the hip") and Baudelaire, and spent years working on adapting the life of Balzac to the screen. But there's a twist: His version starts with a "ball-grabbing opening" that involves Balzac, his mother and a runaway stagecoach. It might not be the most literary approach, but you imagine Balzac would've been tickled to hear of someone who found his life so exciting. And in Fuller's desire to start even the most high-toned story in the thick of the action, you can hear the echoes of his wartime experience. "If you regained any sanity" after seeing combat, he writes, "you never thought about time the same way again. You were grateful for every moment of existence you were granted, and you didn't want to waste another split second on bullshit."

The Steel Helmet will screen Fri., Jan. 17, 8 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542. Jerome Rudes will conduct a Q & A and sign copies of A Third Face after the screening.