Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street [Tote Taube in der Beethovenstraße] (1973)
Released in the US 1974
Starring Glenn Corbett, Christa Lang, Sieghardt Rupp, Anton Diffring, Stéphane Audran, Eric P. Caspar, William Ray, Alexander D’Arcy, Anthony Chinn
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Expectations: Moderate.
Overall:
Just in terms of entertainment:
Following Shark!, Sam Fuller’s luck getting films funded didn’t change much; Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street is Fuller’s only film of the ’70s. Technically, it’s not even a proper film, but if you didn’t know it was made as an episode of the German cop series Tatort (which is amazingly still running), you’d never have guessed it. Where American television stifled Fuller’s creative spirit and made him conform to the norms of whatever show he was working on, the producers of Tatort allowed Fuller the freedom to make whatever he wanted. He took this freedom and ran with it, crafting a unique, exciting picture unlike anything else in the Fuller catalog. Part crime thriller, part farcical comedy, Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street is a hidden gem in Fuller’s filmography.
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street opens with a pigeon falling from the sky. As it plummets to the sidewalk below, it is joined on the ground by a dying man. The killer runs down the street with the cops in chase. The film hits the ground running, leading us into a tale of blackmail, deceit and betrayal. Our hero, Sandy (Glenn Corbett, who made his film debut in Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono), is an American private investigator on the hunt for the negatives to some compromising photos of an American senator. The man murdered on Beethoven Street was Sandy’s partner, and the clues left by the murderer allow Sandy to infiltrate the group responsible for the senator’s blackmail.