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To Dirty Harry as High Plains Drifter to A Fistful of Dollars, a lacerating analysis of the vigilante mythos that made Clint Eastwood a star. In the moribund legal system Inspector Callahan has evolved into the Reaper himself, a capo declares him "the one constant in an ever-changing universe" moments before keeling over from a heart attack. Revenge ("the oldest motivation known to mankind") belongs to the blonde victim (Sondra Locke) of rape under the boardwalk—she copes by painting Munchian portraits and tracking down the assailants one by one, "a .38-caliber vasectomy" is her specialty. "How can such a howl of anguish come from such a sweet girl?" Advancing on Magnum Force and The Enforcer, Eastwood ruminates on his protagonist's macho drive while gradually ceding the spotlight to the castrating muse. At the carnival the glowing, spiraling harbingers of doom are contrasted with the filmmaker's signature chiaroscuro, at the clinic the heroine confesses her plan to her traumatized sister in a stark two-shot, her wrath at once chilled and heightened. ("Dark Visions Exhibit," reads the plaque at the gallery where her works are displayed.) Meathead the gassy bulldog and the retirement-bus chase for comedy à la Beckett (More Pricks Than Kicks), alongside it is the profoundly ugly side of justice, "a matter of methods." The murderess shoots down the razzing bulldyke-witch (Audrie J. Neenan) and then her own mirror reflection (Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), her sister's catatonic doppelgänger figures in the police's official story. The elegant construction of Hitchcockian doubles builds toward a baroque update of Strangers on a Train involving the chief scum (Paul Drake) and a carousel's phallic unicorn. After this, only the acid burlesque of The Rookie. With Pat Hingle, Bradford Dillman, Jack Thibeau, Michael Currie, Albert Popwell, Mark Keyloun, Kevyn Major Howard, Wendell Wellman, and Michael V. Gazzo.
--- Fernando F. Croce |