Film

Dead Pigeon on Beethovenstrasse (1972)

Director: Samuel Fuller

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Those misguided individuals who didn't like White Dog had better stay clear of this, Fuller's most bizarre film. Made for German TV, it's a complex crime thriller about an American agent visiting Bonn to find the killer of his partner, and getting involved in a treacherous world of blackmail, drugs, nude photography and murder. In conventional terms it's ruined by wooden acting (notably Fuller's wife Lang as femme fatale) and a wayward plot. But its great attraction lies not only in the typically vigorous direction (pacy action scenes accompanied by the music of Can), but in the madcap humour which turns the entire film into a parody of thuggish thrillers. Add to that the wicked movie references (Alphaville is presented as a skinflick, Rio Bravo is shown with a German Dean Martin ordering schnapps), and the startling, even surreal use of locations, not to mention a weird credits sequence, and you have what is virtually a professional home movie that delights by its sheer sense of fun and absurdity.

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