By Buzz Drainpipe
Some men write about doom. David Goodis was doom—chained to a typewriter like Prometheus to the rock, pecked at by vultures of pulp deadlines and bad luck. He didn't write crime fiction as entertainment. He wrote it like a prayer scrawled on a crumpled napkin at 2 a.m., hunched over a beer in a Philadelphia dive bar, waiting for nothing. And Prime Video, bless their digital guts, just slipped you a jagged little valentine: a double feature of Street of No Return and Nightfall, two cinematic mutations grown from the same Goodis-shaped shadow.
Street of No Return (1989)
Directed by Samuel Fuller
This is the final film of Fuller—the cigar-chomping, tabloid-souled director who always made movies like he was being chased. Street of No Return is a fractured fever dream where plot logic dissolves and you just float in the gutter with it.
Keith Carradine is Michael—former crooner, current wreck. Once smooth, now silent, throat slashed in a back alley betrayal. The film opens mid-riot, buildings on fire, cops swinging batons. Fuller hurls you into chaos and never lets up. Portugal plays a stand-in for every busted American city, filtered through baroque lighting and punch-drunk montage. The editing is chopped and ragged, reportedly hacked up after Fuller delivered his cut—but the damage fits. This is a pulp hallucination in post-industrial freefall.
There’s no redemption arc. Only survival. Maybe. Barely.
This is not “neo-noir.” It’s derelict noir. Like somebody found a reel of film in a junkyard, lit a match, and let the story tell itself through the smoke.
Nightfall (1956)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Now rewind the tape 33 years. Black and white. Real noir. Real snow.
Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past) brings a quiet dread to Nightfall that creeps up on you like a memory you tried to forget. Aldo Ray is James Vanning, a Korean War vet trapped in a classic Goodis spiral: framed, hunted, alone. There’s stolen cash, a dead friend, and a woman (Anne Bancroft, luminous and skeptical) whose trust might be salvation or ruin.
It’s a clean 78-minute machine. Burnett Guffey’s cinematography captures Los Angeles with an almost documentary grime, then shifts to Wyoming’s winter wilderness for a climax soaked in snow and silence. There’s a gas station. A hidden duffel. And a slow-burn tension that echoes into the Coen Brothers’ Fargo like a ghost whispering under the ice.
Tourneur’s touch is soft where Fuller’s is savage. But both films circle the same drain: the man on the run, the city closing in, the clock running out.
The Goodis Paradox
Goodis wasn’t interested in clever capers or righteous revenge. His heroes are losers and drifters, romantic enough to hope but broken enough to know better. Watching Street of No Return and Nightfall back to back isn’t just a dip into noir—it’s a deep drag off a cigarette you swore you quit.
One film screams. The other whispers. Both are haunted.
So queue it up. Dim the lights. Pour one out for Goodis. Then let the street swallow you whole.
Streaming Now on Prime Video.
Put on your trench coat. Or don’t. The night doesn’t care.
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