When a man calling himself "the Scorpio Killer" menaces San Francisco, tough-as-nails Police Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan is assigned to track down the crazed psychopath.When a man calling himself "the Scorpio Killer" menaces San Francisco, tough-as-nails Police Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan is assigned to track down the crazed psychopath.When a man calling himself "the Scorpio Killer" menaces San Francisco, tough-as-nails Police Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan is assigned to track down the crazed psychopath.
- Awards
- 2 wins & 4 nominations
- Killer
- (as Andy Robinson)
- Sid Kleinman
- (as Maurice S. Argent)
- Miss Willis
- (as Jo De Winter)
- Sgt. Reineke
- (as Craig G. Kelly)
- Yelling Wife
- (uncredited)
- Directors
- Don Siegel
- Clint Eastwood(segment suicide jumper sequence at night) (uncredited)
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaAfter Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel came on-board the project, they hired Dean Riesner to work on the script. In his first re-write, the bank robbery scene ends with Harry not pointing the gun at the robber, but placing it against his own temple. He pulls the trigger, laughs, and then walks away. Eastwood and Siegel both felt this was too extreme, even for Harry Callahan.
- GoofsSome considerable time after the first shooting, the police have arrived and Callaghan has climbed up to the roof from where the shooting took place. Yet when he looks down to the rooftop swimming pool, the blood in the pool is still only in one small area, instead of having been dispersed in the water.
- Quotes
Harry Callahan: Uh uh. I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well to tell you the truth in all this excitement I kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?
- Crazy creditsDuring the opening credits, the word "Dirty" in the title is in red as opposed to the rest of the credits' yellow.
- Alternate versionsAs with all of the "Dirty Harry"-films this one also had some cuts for violent content in the initial Swedish release. Among trimmed scenes were Scorpio pulling Harry's knife out of his leg, and the scene where Scorpio pays a man to beat him up, which was cut by almost 40 seconds.
- ConnectionsEdited into Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity (1999)
- SoundtracksRow, Row, Row Your Boat
(uncredited)
Written by Traditional
Dirty Harry also gave Eastwood a definitive Hollywood identity after leaving spaghetti westerns behind. It may lack the humour of Siegel and Eastwood's first collaboration, Coogan's Bluff, but it packs a much more uneasy political punch.
Inspector Harry Callaghan is the taciturn, laconic spokesman of Nixon's Silent Majority, elevated to iconic status. His dialogue with criminals is delivered behind the barrel of a devastatingly phallic Magnum hand-gun. "Feel lucky, punk?" he taunts one wounded miscreant in a famous line he repeats at the end of the film.
There's just enough moral ambiguity about Harry in this film to escape it being an endorsement of vigilantism but if it poses resonating questions about how a liberal society can be held hostage by those outside the law, it also contrives a worryingly two-dimensional picture of psycho-killer Scorpio (Andy Robinson) - and of Harry, himself with which to frame those questions.
Made by the veteran director in the same year as Hollywood-new wave young gun William Friedkin shot The French Connection, it's just as coolly authoritative and exciting. Siegel uses Bruce Surtees' always serviceable photography of San Francisco locations with flair (years before, he had shot the low-budget but excellent The Line-Up there). The swooping helicopter shot out of the baseball stadium, as if to rush the audience away (either as witnesses or as voyeurs) as Eastwood presses his foot on Scorpio's wounded leg, shows Siegel's smooth mastery of the medium.
Siegel made the insouciant Charley Varrick with Walter Matthau next, after which his career went into slow decline.
- ian-433
- Jan 28, 2005
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Dead Right
- Filming locations
- Holiday Inn Select Downtown Hotel - 750 Kearny Street, San Francisco, California, USA(pool murder opening scene, now Hilton San Francisco Financial District)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $4,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $35,988,495
- Gross worldwide
- $35,988,495
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