Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street is, among other things, the film in which Samuel Fuller pays tribute to those French and American filmmakers and critics who “discovered” his work and took off from it (see also October 28, Forty Guns). Stephane Audran, wife of director Claude Chabrol (both of them Fuller fans) plays a character named Bogdanovich; Christa Lang, Fuller's wife and female lead in Dead Pigeon, is shown in a previous incarnation as a prostitute in Godard's Alphaville; this is also one of several ways in which Fuller underlines the illusionary nature of his medium: a glance at Godard?
The story follows an American private eye (Glenn Corbett) tracking an international extortionist ring. Eric Sherman, editor of several major interviews with Fuller (Corbett in one of his disguises adopts the name Sherman) calls Dead Pigeon Fuller's “most anarchic” film: “Plot twists abound; loyalties are non-existent; love affairs are confounded by layers of blackmail; sex is a result not of emotional sensitivity but of impersonal intrigue.... There are no heroes in Dead Pigeon. All relationships spring from a dubious base, and in Fuller's world, doubt leads to destruction.”