It's often difficult to know exactly what it takes to qualify someone for the title of 'major American filmmaker', other than the obvious qualifications of being an American. Some people, like Terrence Malick or Stanley Kubrick, get the nod for quality despite a major lack of quantity; others will never reach that status despite prodigious output because they're pure hacks. But there are a few whose status is forever in dispute due to wild inconsistency; although there aren't many filmmakers whose reputation is mixed because they have such vast catalogues that it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff, it does happen on occasion. And if anyone qualifies for such a debate, it's Richard Fleischer.

Fleischer — son of the legendary animator Max Fleischer — made dozens of movies prior to his death two years ago. Some of them were terrific (Compulsion, The Narrow Margin, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea); some were awful (Conan the Destroyer, Blind Terror, The Jazz Singer); and some are downright (Mandingo). In a New York Times profile, Dave Kehr looks at his curious career, his obsession with mass murderers (which resulted in films that, by and large, are nothing like what we've come to expect from serial-killer movies), and his excellent, well-crafted sense of decay and social slippage. It's a long-overdue critical assessment of a director whose great work has been lost in an equal amount of dross.