Street of No Return (1989)

4 Stars (out of 4)

As Goodis as It Gets

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Street of No Return on DVD

The ragged, growling Samuel Fuller came to movies after a career as a hard-boiled, fast-talking newspaperman and a combat-savvy war veteran. He lashed into the easy, syrupy Hollywood way of moviemaking, punched out 23 films and barely registered a blip in the mainstream consciousness. Six years after his death, Street of No Return marks only the fourth Fuller movie to make it to DVD; most of his movies can't even be found on video at all.

Street of No Return was Fuller's last feature film, and only the fifth made during the last 30 years of his life. Financed and shot in Europe, where Fuller had more adoring fans, Street of No Return has a distinctly European feel, not only in its Lisbon locale, but also in the way it moves.

The story came from a novel by David Goodis, who also provided the basis for Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player and Delmer Daves' Dark Passage. Keith Carradine stars as a pop singer who gets involved with the wrong girl and has his throat cut by a gangster. After a hazy period of time passed on the street, sneaking through race riots to find a few droplets of booze left behind in shattered bottles, he finally finds a way to have his revenge.

It's a distinctly odd movie, but it shows Fuller still at the peak of his skills and the film easily matches wits with some of Fuller's earlier works.

Fantoma's great, beautifully-mastered DVD comes with an indispensable documentary short, filmed on location and featuring lengthy interviews with Fuller and Carradine, as well as footage of the great man at work. Carradine provides a feature commentary track, and the disc comes with a print essay by Lee Server and a print interview with Fuller.