I fall somewhere in the middle. I have admired much of Fuller’s work, including his early studio-produced films like the Korean War drama The Steel Helmet (1951) and his Cold War-meets-film noir thriller Pickup on South Street (1953), his independent forays like Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964), and his later films, including the unjustly maligned and long-shelved White Dog (1982). Recognizing his outsider status and refusal to adhere to anything resembling a rule goes a long way toward heightening one’s appreciation of a gonzo work like Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street, although I also recognize that some of its inconsistencies, however intentional, just don’t work. There are also too many instances of leaden acting, awkward editing, rough sound, and narrative confusion that, while possibly explained by Fuller’s resolute anti-realism (this is a film, after all, whose opening credits show the actors dressed up in outrageous carnival attire and acting silly), still offer stumbling blocks to full immersion in the film’s potboiler scenario.

Although not evident to those who don’t know, Dead Pigeon is actually an episode of the long-running German television show Tatort. Broadcast once a month in 90-minute episodes, it is a police procedural (the title literally means “crime scene”) that has reached legendary status in Germany, where the show’s adherents will literally put their lives on hold to watch the newest episode (there have been almost 1,000 since 1970). Fuller was invited by executive producer Joachim von Mengershausen to helm an episode, an invitation upon which the director immediately pounced since he was then working as a director-for-hire who hadn’t gotten a project off the ground since Shark (1969) three years earlier. Fuller somehow managed to convince the show’s producers to allow him to write the episode in English and essentially sideline its star, a customs investigator named Kressin (Sieghardt Rupp), in favor of a one-time protagonist, an American private dick named Sandy (Glenn Corbett), who is investigating the murder of his partner (the “dead pigeon” of the title) who, in turn, was investigating a political blackmail ring. Fuller, working with Polish cinematographer Jerzy Lipman (Kanal, Knife in the Water) and German editor Liesgret Schmitt-Klink (Fear of Fear), was also given free reign in terms of the episode’s style, which is why it comes across like a madcap mixture of American independent cinema and the French New Wave, complete with rapid zooms, jump cuts, long tracking shots, bizarre camera angles, and a percussive score by the avant-garde jazz group Can, most of which has not dated well. It is no wonder that Tatort’s fans were incensed.

Fuller, himself a veteran of numerous film noir and westerns, draws on a number of genre staples, including the mysterious femme fatale, in this case a sultry blonde named Christa (Christa Lang, Fuller’s wife) who is employed by the blackmailing ring to seduce politicians and put them in compromising positions to be photographed (Fuller was inspired by the 1964 Profumo Affair). Sandy ends partnering with her to take down her boss, Mensur (Anton Diffring), while also protecting the reputation of a never-seen U.S. Senator (played by Fuller hidden behind an enormous chair). The investigation hits on all the expected traits of the hard-boiled detective story—trailing various characters through crowded city streets, doctoring photographs, spiking drinks, chasing down leads, coercing information, double-crossing and being double-crossed, and so on. Yet, Fuller consistently twists our expectations, delivering moments of absurdity both tremendous and subtle. For example, in all the conversations between Sandy and Kressin, Sandy speaks English and Kressin speaks German and they understand each other perfectly even though it appears that neither can actually speak the other’s language (when put in a position where he has to speak German, Sandy just fumbles). Fuller also throws in little bits of inspired nastiness, such as when an assassin (Eric P. Caspar) escapes from a hospital and, while rushing down a long flight of stairs, knocks over a man in a wheelchair, sending him crashing down the steps. It is little surprise that this assassin shows up at the end of the film dressed as a deranged clown in Cologne’s annual Carnival.

Fuller also has fun with the character types—both building them up and subverting them. With his square jaw, baritone voice, and full moustache, Corbett’s Sandy is a cartoonish slice of American red-meat machismo, yet he is constantly fumbling the investigation, as in a scene at the Beethoven Museum when he thinks he’s meeting a contact but instead inadvertently starts picking up on a woman who thinks she’s meeting a blind date. Similarly, Diffring’s elegant villain is all smooth talk and sophisticated menace, but his choice to duel Sandy at the end of the film via his favorite sport, fencing, results in his hilarious downfall as Sandy, utterly inexperienced with a saber, starts grabbing all the medieval weapons that Mensur proudly displays on his walls and hurling them at him. It has to be one of the weirdest, and yet most satisfying, climactic showdowns ever.

Such scenes work wonderfully in and of themselves, even if the film as a whole doesn’t quite hold together. Fuller was clearly having fun and wanted to audience to, as well, and you can almost hear his cigar-chomping laugh in the background. It didn’t do much for his career, though, as it would be another seven years before he got to make his dream project, the World War II epic The Big Red One (1980), which was unceremoniously cut down against his will, an experience that, along with the shelving of White Dog two years later, sent him into permanent self-imposed exile in Europe, where his work was always better appreciated.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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