Sudden Impact

Sunday, April 19, 2009 9:36 | Filled in 1. MOVIES - OVERVIEW

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Pat Hingle and Bradford Dillman

Director: Clint Eastwood

Writer: Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink

Seven years have passed since Dirty Harry foiled the psychotic Scorpio Killer, rogue officer Lt. Neil Briggs and his band of murderous patrol cops, and the terrorist People’s Revolutionary Strike Force. But now the aging Harry Callahan now is back on the trail of a new cold-blooded killer, who may be more dangerous than himself or any of the killers he ever faced.

Jennifer Spencer and her sister was gang raped years ago, after a female friend of the gang had persuaded them to come to a fair. The brutal rape left the sister permanently catatonic and almost vegetative. Jennifer is now out for revenge, killing her attackers one by one. In the beginning of the film, Jennifer is seen with one of the rapists named George Wilburn. It is early morning and they are together in a car when she kills him. After the murder, she leaves without a trace.

Harry Callahan in the meantime is seen in a court room where he has brought a young suspect named Hawkins to trial. The case is dismissed as a travesty because Harry did not have the right to seize the evidence used to prove Hawkins guilty. After insulting Hawkins in the elevator, Harry goes to his usual coffee diner and orders the usual black coffee.

The waitress tries getting his attention by pouring massive amounts of sugar into his coffee and Harry, who is reading a newspaper, does not notice. As he walks out, he takes a sip of coffee and spits it out in disgust. As he returns to complain, he sees that the open signs were switched to close. A robbery ensues but Harry goes in the back way and confronts the would-be robbers. He calmly tells them that “we” aren’t going to let them get away with this.

Who are we? “Smith, Wesson, and me,” says Harry, drawing his Smith, and Wesson and dispatching three robbers with four shots. One, only grazed, is left alive. He grabs the waitress as a hostage, but Harry points his .44 Magnum handgun at him from five feet away and utters the immortal line “Go ahead, make my day.” The police arrive moments later and the robber meekly surrenders.

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Trivia provided by The Internet Movie Database:

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Although Clint Eastwood made the phrase “Go ahead, make my day” famous, it was originally used a year earlier by actor Gary Swanson in the movie Vice Squad (1982). Swanson, who played a Hollywood vice cop, said the line, “Go ahead scumbag, make my day,” to actor Wings Hauser, who played a pimp, during a bust.
Body count: 18 (including Threlkis).
The movie’s line “Go ahead, make my day” was voted as the #6 movie quote by the American Film Institute.
The famous “Make My Day” sequence was filmed at a Burger Island restaurant in San Francisco. It is now a McDonald’s.
The only Dirty Harry film not primarily set in San Francisco.
The highest grossing of the Dirty Harry film series.
The scene where Callahan chases the robber in the senior citizen bus was filmed at and around the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, California. This area was heavily damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake on 17 October 1989. Many of the buildings in this scene had to be razed, due to extensive earthquake damage.
The handgun used by Harry Callahan, the .44 automat, was extremely difficult to acquire. The studio eventually went to the gun’s designer who, although retired, had enough parts in his basement to build two guns for the production. They were serial numbered “Clint 1″ and “Clint 2″. One was modified to function with blanks for use in the film; the other was left in its original configuration so that Eastwood could fire it at a pistol range to familiarize himself with its function.
The reason the film was made at all had to do with a survey. Warner Bros. was preparing to release the Sean Connery James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) and they took a survey. They asked movie goers to name an actor and a famous part that actor played. Clint Eastwood as “Dirty Harry” scored so high in the survey results; the studio told Eastwood it would be “open” to distributing another “Dirty Harry” film. Eastwood made this film as a result of that meeting.
Clint Eastwood is seen wearing Gargoyles sunglasses, which would later surface in The Terminator (1984).
The carousel Jennifer is researching is the “1911 Looff Carousel” located at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz,California. In 1987 the U.S. Park Service declared the ornate merry-go-round a National Historic Landmark along with the Boardwalk’s 1924 Giant Dipper roller coaster.

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