Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street

One of the most obscure films by Samuel Fuller—an idiosyncratic American auteur famous for melding pulp stories and flamboyant filmmaking with provocative themes—1972's Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street is a spoof of the detective yarns that Hollywood pumped out in the 1940s and ‘50s. Made for German television, the film started as an episode of the long-running German crime series Tatort, but Fuller expanded it to feature length and sidelined the show's main character to focus on Sandy (Glenn Corbett), an American private eye hired by a congressman being blackmailed by an international extortion ring. Posing as a blackmailer himself, Sandy tracks down the ring's top operative (Christa Lang, Fuller's wife) in order to get to the high-tech head honcho villain (Anton Diffring), all the while searching for the mysterious Charlie Umlaut, the man who killed Sandy's partner. It's a B-movie lampoon—big, broad, and at times seemingly improvised. Fuller sets the tone in the opening credits (presenting cast and crew in silly costumes), shooting the film in a loose, shaggy style that is alternately bouncy and plodding. Even Fuller fans are split on this one, which by any measure is a minor work by a major filmmaker. Debuting on home video in a new restoration (the German language sequences are not subtitled or translated, as per the filmmaker's intentions), extras include a feature-length retrospective documentary, and a booklet with essays. A strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)