Dirty Harry Collection Is the Pick of the Week

A pair of Sentries are teaming up to handle this week’s PotW column. Gordon S. Miller is covering the main pick while Davey selects multiple picks that also look interesting.

It’s rare for an actor to succeed in and create iconic characters in multiple genres. Clint Eastwood is one such actor has who accomplished that feat. Starting in 1959, he starred on TV in Rawhide for eight season as Rowdy Yates. Before the series ended, Eastwood starred in Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars (1964), the first of a trilogy where he played the Man with No Name.

In 1971, Eastwood made his first appearance as the titular character in Dirty Harry, a no-nonsense San Francisco police detective who was as frustrated by criminals as he was the higher-ups who made apprehending criminals difficult. In Dirty Harry, Harry Callahan dealt with Scorpio, a serial killer reminiscent of the real-life Zodiac killer. In his review of the UHD, Kent Conrad wrote it “is just a pretty cool cop story.” Eastwood returned to the character in Magnum Force (1973); The Enforcer (1976), which as Shawn Bourdo noted, “serves to turn the Dirty Harry series in a different direction…[in the previous films,] he was portrayed as almost mentally unhinged to catch a killer. Here, he’s more of a bend-the-rules detective who is doing his job to defend other cops and the city of San Francisco;” Sudden Impact (1983); and The Dead Pool (1988). Warner Brothers collects the previously released discs in this new set.

Also out this week that looks interesting (to Davey):

The Hot Spot (Radiance): Don Johnson stars in Dennis Hopper’s 1990 neo-noir as a loner who moves to a small town in Texas, who gets a job, plots to rob the local bank, and finds himself in a steamy love triangle with two beautiful women, a car salesman’s trophy wife (Virginia Madsen) and a seemingly virginal front office girl (Jennifer Connelly).

Ten Women in Black (Radiance): Kon Ichikawa’s dark satire centering on a man with a wife and nine girlfriends, where all of them are pissed off at his cheating, so they plot to kill him. Easier said than done.

The Magnificent Cuckold (Radiance): Antonio Pietrangeli’s seriocomedy starring Ugo Tognazzi as a man who becomes very skeptical of his beautiful wife’s (Claudia Cardinale) loyalty to him. Because of this, his paranoia grows to a fever pitch as he is convinced of her cheating, despite the fact she is not.

A Bay of Blood (Severin): Mario Bava’s influential and gory 1971 slasher about an elderly heiress who is killed by her husband, which sets off a chain of brutal murders in the surrounding bay area.

Not Quite Hollywood (Vinegar Syndrome): Limited edition 2-disc set of Mark Hartley’s acclaimed documentary of Ozploitation, Australia’s wild exploitation genre cinema of the 1970s and 80s.

Dry Leaf (Cinema Guild): Alexandre Koberidze’s epic tale of a desperate father searches for his missing daughter, a sports photographer who vanished while filming abandoned soccer fields across Georgia, with her enigmatic best friend in tow. Also includes Let The Summer Never Come Again (2017), the first film by Koberidze.