IDSG Bonus 40: Dirty Harry (1971), with Elliot Chapman
For this bonus episode, we are honoured and delighted to be joined by our friend, our homie, our bro, our cru-member, classy actorly thespian Elliot Chapman (familiar to my listeners from Not the Same Log, Hannibal Digested, and various other collaborations with me) to discuss Don Siegel's grimy, fashy (but conflicted about it?) 1971 copaganda serial-killer thriller Dirty Harry, starring noted right-wing loony and empty chair interviewer Clint Eastwood.
Comments (5)
I wonder how much of the depiction of SF is influenced by the fact that it’s Eastwood’s hometown. And that some of the broader framing is a conservative San Franciscan’s resentment over the post-war changes to their city.
As an addendum, this movie came out five years after the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, where trans and other queer residents of the Tenderloin beat back the SFPD, who regularly targeted queer people for extortion and physical abuse. Three years after Dirty Harry came out a group of SFPD officers planted drugs in SFPD Sergeant Elliott Blackstone’s desk to frame him on narcotics charges in retaliation for him being “too nice” to queer people. So the film’s implications that the issue is that the problem being too much restraint on the police is laughable. At the time the movie was released SFPD regularly was using violence and illegal methods to target groups they didn’t approve of.
You discussed Scorpio’s affectation of hippy dress while behaving in distinctly un-hippy ways, like his blatant racism– I wonder if Andrew Robinson or the filmmakers were riffing on Charles Manson, who likewise presented himself as a countercultural figure while holding disgusting beliefs about Black people
This was a really fun episode. I'm struck that I've seen parts of at least the first two DH movies but never all the way thru. I'm curious as to whether the 1980s parody series "Sledge Hammer!" aired in the UK? it was a favorite when I was a kid, and I laughed at all the physical comedy and puns without ever understanding that the misogynistic, murderous cop Hammer (who says he's opposed to the death penalty because it ignores the possibility of life after death and is thus too lenient) was a direct critique of movies I wasn't allowed to watch (and of my parents' politics.) And as for whether shows like Knight Rider were presented as kids' or adulrs' fare, I think the core audience was families who wanted something "safe" but exciting--they usually ran in the 7p/8p hour for first run episodes, while repeats were on after school at the same time as things like He-Man.
Sledge Hammer certainly did air in the UK. It was on late night ITV when I was a kid and I used to stay up to watch it alongside other US imports like Married with Children.