Tuesday 29 April 2014

"Dirty Harry, Crazy Larry"

From Wiki and Wiki:

A NASCAR hopeful, driver “Crazy Larry” Rayder (Peter Fonda) and a serial killer calling himself "Scorpio" (Andy Robinson) successfully execute a supermarket heist using a high-powered rifle from a nearby rooftop to finance their jump into big-time auto racing.

SFPD Inspector “Dirty Harry” Callahan (Clint Eastwood) finds a ransom message demanding a supermarket manager (Roddy McDowall in an uncredited role) pays them either $100,000 or $150,000 in cash by holding his wife and daughter hostage.

In making their escape, Scorpio also promises that for each day that the city refuses his demand, he will commit a murder. They are confronted by Larry's one-night stand, Mary Coombs (Susan George). She coerces them to take her along for the ride in their souped-up 1966 Chevrolet Impala.

The chief of police and the Mayor (John Vernon) assign the unorthodox sheriff, Captain Franklin (Vic Morrow) to the case, who obsessively pursues the trio in a dragnet, only to get involved in the shooting by Callahan of a naked man with a butcher knife chasing a woman in the city's Fillmore District.

While in a local diner, Callahan observes that Franklin’s outmoded patrol cars are unable to catch Larry, Scorpio and Mary. After they ditch the Impala for a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T 440 at a bank robbery, he kills two of the robbers; he wounds a third, challenging the man lying near a loaded shotgun:

“I know what you’re thinking: ‘Larry's vehicle has entered an expansive walnut grove, wherein the trees provide significant cover from aerial tracking, and the many intersecting roads ("with sixty distinct and separate exits") make road blocks ineffective.’

“Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. Did he evade several Dodge Polara patrol cars, a specially-prepared high-performance police interceptor or even Captain Franklin himself in a Bell JetRanger helicopter?

“But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question ‘Will I randomly collide with a freight train pulled by an Alco S1 locomotive? Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?”

2 comments:

Tim Almond said...

As a movie geek, the use of the Dirty Harry speech is splendid. Well done.

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS, ta, the key is slavishly cutting and pasting the two plot summaries together, changing as few words as possible.