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Dirty Harry

12/15/2015

Of course, it was only a matter of time! Dirty Harry is arguably one of the most emblematic films to be associated with San Francisco, second only perhaps to Hitchcock's Vertigo. While it shows its age today with both its scandalized portrayal of gay men and extreme reliance on pay phones, it is nevertheless a movie that invites meditation on how unlikeable an audience will allow a protagonist to be. Starring Andy Robinson, Reni Santoni, and of course, native San Franciscan Clint Eastwood. Directed by Donald Siegel, 1971.

Synopsis

The film opens with a listing of SFPD officers killed in the line of duty, which then fades to- yikes! You're staring down the barrel of a rifle! A sniper is on the roof of a skyscraper, his scope set on a nearby hotel's rooftop pool. He pulls the trigger, and a young woman in a yellow bathing suit lets out a strangled cry before sinking into the blue water, a trail of blood rising to the surface. As credits unfurl, SFPD Inspector Harry Callahan (Eastwood) investigates the scene, then locates and scouts the rooftop he (correctly) suspects was used by the sniper. He finds a spent shell and, attached to a television aerial, a note taking credit for the murder.

The note identifies the sniper as the 'Scorpio' Killer and threatens a new victim every day unless and until the city pays him $100,000. Callahan is specially assigned to the case. He celebrates by heading downtown to eat lunch at a diner, but is interrupted when a bank robbery occurs nearby. Callahan begrudgingly, and still working a generous mouthful of hot dog around his jaws, stalks into the street and deftly shoots into the getaway car, killing two of the bandits. A third robber lies injured on the ground; as Callahan approaches, he reaches for a nearby shotgun, spurring Dirty Harry's famous quote into motion:

I know what you’re thinking: 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. 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: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?

The robber, pondering his luck, declines to reach further for the shotgun, but presses Callahn to let him know if there was one final bullet in the gun. Callahan aims for the robber and pulls the trigger, laughing when the firing pin clicks on an empty chamber. THAT HARRY!

Back at the station, Callahan is assigned a partner in rookie Chico Gonzalez (Santoni), over his objections that partners assigned to him keep ending up injured or killed. Suspecting that Scorpio will target a Catholic priest, as promised in his note, officers take up positions near Catholic churches all across the city, while helicopters provide additional eyes in the sky.

Callahan and Gonzalez manage to spot the Scorpio killer (Robinson) perched a few hundred yards from the entrance to a grandiose church. A chase and shootout ensues across numerous rooftops. Callahan and Gonzalez search the neighborhood frantically, at one point spotting a man carrying a large beige briefcase which they believe may house Scorpio's sniper rifle. Alas, the briefcase-toter ends up merely being a law-abiding denizen of North Beach with a topless girlfriend named Hot Mary and a surprisingly protective cabal of neighborhood hobos, who mistake Callahan's investigative snooping for voyeurism.

"Gosh, my neighbors sure are nice to me! Just lucky, I guess."

A report of a man on the roof of a building in Polk Gulch comes over the radio, and Callahan and Gonzalez hurry over, thinking it could be Scorpio. It turns out instead to be a man threatening suicide. Callahan goes up, makes a few glib comments about what a mess jumpers always make, then cold-cocks the guy before bringing his limp form down in a cherry-picker. On the ground, he tells Gonzalez, "now you know why I'm called Dirty Harry." THAT HARRY!

The next day, Callahan and Gonzalez report to a vacant lot where a young boy has been shot. The murdered child, true to the racist threat in Scorpio's note, is black. Fearing Scorpio might try once again to snipe a priest, officers redouble their efforts around the church where he'd been spotted the previous evening. The killer takes the bait, and a wild rooftop shootout ensues. Unfortunately, Scorpio escapes once again into the night- but not before killing an officer posing undercover as a priest.

Scorpio steps up his rampage by alerting police to his abduction of a 14 year-old girl. He demands a single person, carrying a ransom of $200,000 in a yellow bag, be at the Marina Green dock at 9 o'clock and await further instructions. Callahan volunteers, taping a switchblade to his ankle and a wire to his chest before heading out with the yellow duffel filled with cash. Scorpio calls a payphone at the rendezvous and gives Callahan his instructions: he will be given a meeting spot and a set time to get there in order to receive the next set of instructions. Callahan cannot speak to anyone, nor can he accept assistance from anyone. Any deviance from the instructions will end in the girl's immediate death. After running across half the town on a wild goose chase, Callahan heads into the darkness of a hilltop park to a final stand-off. When a man Callahan mistakes for Scorpio reveals himself to be just a random guy looking for some friendly cottaging, Callahan flashes his badge. "If you're vice, I'll kill myself," says the horrified man, conveying how disappointingly recently in our city's lifetime it was considered a depraved crime simply to be gay. Callahan responds by telling the man to "just do it at home." THAT HARRY!

At the top of the hill in the park, Scorpio beats Callahan, threatening to withhold the girl's location if Callahan fights back. Gonzalez, who's been trailing Callahan with the assistance of Callahan's wire, attempts to intervene, but gets shot and injured by the killer. Callahan stabs Scorpio with his switchblade, and the killer, howling in pain, disappears without the ransom.

As Gonzalez gets patched up, Callahan gets a tip-off that a man matching Scorpio's description was treated for a leg wound at an area hospital. The doctor who treated Scorpio points Callahan in the direction of a nearby stadium. Callahan finally catches up to Scorpio, pins him down, and digs into the leg wound until, screaming, Scorpio gives up the victim's location. Sadly, when the police arrive, the girl is already dead: Scorpio had never intended to let her live in the first place.

To Callahan's further disgust, Scorpio is released. Because he was wearing a mask when he assaulted Callahan and Gonzalez, he could not be confirmed as the assailant. What's more, his confession in the stadium is thrown out, owing to the extreme duress Scorpio was experiencing at the time it was given. Callahan is undeterred, and follows Scorpio throughout the city, from a playground to a striptease. In response, Scorpio pays a neighborhood rough $200 to beat him mercilessly, framing Callahan for his injuries. The gambit works, and Callahan is told in no uncertain terms by his superiors to back the hell off.

Scorpio immediately moves into action again, attacking a liquor store owner and stealing his gun. Using the gun, Scorpio hijacks a school bus, demanding once again a $200,000 ransom for the hostages' safe return. He additionally demands a fueled jet and informs police he will be driving to the North Bay to claim his ransom and transportation at a rural airport. Callahan takes it upon himself to meet Scorpio at the freeway exit, jumping from an overhead railroad trestle onto the bus, which pulls to a stop at a nearby quarry.

Callahan chases Scorpio further into the quarry, through a number of structures and ending at a small pond where a boy is fishing. Scorpio takes the boy hostage, and Callahan repeats his "do you feel lucky" speech one more time. This time it turns out there is one more bullet in the chamber after all, and he shoots Scorpio dead. Then, in a move I'm 100% sure inspired Katherine Bigelow for the ending of Point Break, Callahan removes his badge, observes it, then tosses it into the water before walking away.

The End.

Authenticity

Although it's easy to now see Dirty Harry as a classic, if dated, police procedural, it's important to remember that at the time of its 1971 release, it tapped directly into a very real terror that still had San Franciscans looking over their shoulders: The Zodiac Killer. Unlike Harry's Scorpio Killer, the Zodiac was never identified or captured, and his last known murder, of San Francisco taxi driver Paul Lee Stine, occurred only two years prior in 1969 (further, a Central Valley woman narrowly escaped with her life after being abducted by a man fitting the Zodiac's description in 1970).

The Zodiac in disguise, drawn by Robert Graysmith after the Lake Berryessa attacks

A composite sketch of the Zodiac Killer created in the aftermath of the Stine murder

The use of the bright yellow school bus in the film's climax is especially evocative. The Zodiac, known for sending taunting letters to police and press alike (much like Scorpio), confirmed his culpability in Stine's murder by mailing a bloodied scrap of the victim's shirt to the San Francisco Chronicle. Although the Zodiac would never kill again (that we know of), the accompanying note included a credible and ominous threat that whipped San Francisco into extreme panic:

School children make nice targets I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning just shoot out the frunt tire + pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.

The 2007 film Zodiac, which covered this terrifying period of time in the city's history, includes a scene of the San Francisco premiere of Dirty Harry, attended by SFPD detectives and their families. Personally speaking, Robinson's villain is chewing far too much scenery for my taste, and his antics verge on the comical at several points in the film. Perhaps it was the portrayal San Francisco needed at the time- of a manic, simpering, ultimately cowardly little man -but for me it verges on discrediting the horror of the entire plot.

Aside from its very real origins in San Francisco legend, Dirty Harry is thoroughly San Franciscan in a way that few other films accomplish. Interior scenes are actually shot inside the buildings where exterior establishing shots take place. At many points, characters say they're heading somewhere specific, and then actually show up at that spot. Even if many of the filming locations hadn't already been scouted by dedicated fans ages ago, it would have been remarkably easy to track them all down for no other reason than they're practically listed in the script.

In fact, the only major location not in the Bay Area is the bank robbery towards the start of the film. You know the one, where Harry Callahan utters his infamous phrase:

"You talkin' to me?"
...no, that's not it, hang on...

In addition to the streets being too wide (and parking looking suspiciously easy), a cable car is spotted in the background on "Market Street", which hasn't seen a cable car in over a century (the Muni Metro [surface rail] runs the F line on Market using historic trolleys from other cities' public transit systems, but it should be noted that the Metro lines are not authentic San Francisco cable cars). I'm not sure why, after filming literally every other scene here in the city, the filmmakers opted to film this on a studio lot. Perhaps the combination of firing guns and toppling cars was thought to be too much to inflict on a populace still shivering in the chill cast by the Zodiac's long shadow. More realistically, it was probably just a logistical nightmare to try and film such a scene in the heart of the city's downtown area.

The only other element of this film that pushes on the edges of the credible is the so-called 'ransom run,' where Callahan receives instructions from Scorpio over a relay of payphones in a number of locations. Scorpio explicitly tells Callahan that he cannot speak to anyone, so even though Callahan is wearing a wire that keeps Gonzalez and the rest of the force appraised of the situation, he still can't accept a car ride to the next destination. Which makes me wonder how long this run was meant to take, and what kind of shape Callahan was in. Although he clearly has Muni as an option, and takes the K from Forest Hill to Dolores Park, he's shown running to or from every other location in this segment. This is an excessively sprawling route with at least one double-back, and that's before you factor in San Francisco's unforgiving hilly terrain. Assuming that the ride from Forest Hill to Dolores Park is the only time Callahan used Muni on the ransom run, we can assume that between Marina Green and the confrontation at Mt. Davidson, he hoofed nearly 16 miles in about 5 hours.

The first and second stops on the Ransom Run, from Marina Green to Forest Hill station. By foot.

The second portion of the ransom run, from the K Muni stop at 20th & Church, to the Aquatic Park hamburger stand, and back south to Mt. Davidson.

However, Callahan states at the start of the run that it's 9:30 pm. Dawn is just beginning to break over the bay when the victim's body is found; that leaves enough time for a very well-toned officer to perform the run as depicted in the movie and leave enough time over for a patch-up at the hospital, a showdown at the stadium, and a frenzied drive across the bridge before daybreak at, say, 5:00 am. So I'll give it a pass- still, it would be more realistic if Callahan were shown increasingly sweaty and disheveled, especially at the entrance to Mt. Davidson park, which is up an extremely steep hill.

Sightseeing

Before I start this section, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Dirty Harry Filming Locations, a 2009 blog that did much of the scouting and 21st century photography that I have repeated here. Although I have taken present-day photos that are six years more current, and scouted a few locations of my own that aren't referenced on the DHFL blog, I highly recommend visiting the site for a fully-rounded Dirty Harry experience, and gratefully acknowledge that it was an extremely helpful resource in writing this entry. The author goes into far more detail over the course of several posts about the history of locations that I can't do on a single post here at Norton's Movie Maps.

The rooftop pool at the Holiday Inn (now the Hilton) no longer exists, but Scorpio's perch atop 555 California (the former Bank of America building) is still a distinctive fixture of the San Francisco skyline. During the credits, Callahan can be seen approaching 555 California from the building's south face, turning west onto Pine Street from Montgomery Street. It wouldn't be the last time this location would be used in a movie: Goldie Hawn drives her little yellow VW Beetle past the intersection in 1978's Foul Play, and the uniquely textured building was the setting for a significant portion of the action in this year's San Andreas.

Callahan and Gonzalez stake out the Scorpio Killer near Saints Peter and Paul Church, which presides over Washington Square Park in North Beach. Scorpio is perched atop the Dante building,1601 Stockton at Union. One thing I consistently notice as I put more and more entries under my belt is that San Francisco has a lot more trees now than it did 20-40 years ago. Which makes for a much nicer city in the long run, but can be a bit frustrating when you're trying to take pictures for a movie blog and the location in question is now obscured by foliage.

After Scorpio slips through their fingers, Callahan and Gonzalez cruise through the streets of North Beach, looking for a man with a beige briefcase that could contain the sniper rifle. Although known and loved for both its Italian diaspora and beatnik literary scene, North Beach is perhaps most notorious (or at least most noticeable) for its long tradition of glitzy "gentlemen's clubs" like Roaring 20s, Hungry I, and Big Al's. Some of these clubs are still open for business, though ownership seems to be conglomerating in large companies like Hustler, while worker-owned unionized peepshows fall victim to soaring rents. On November 9 of this year, North Beach saw its brightest star blink out when Carol Doda, who basically invented topless dancing at The Condor, passed away at the age of 78.

Although the name and an oversized, 3-story tall sign remain, Big Al's has transitioned from peep show to smoke shop.

The Roaring 20s and Hungry I Club are both still active.

The Condor, made famous by the late Carol Doda, still open today on the northeast corner of Columbus and Broadway.

The Hungry I is on the corner of Broadway and Romolo Place, a corner also featured in 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

El Cid, on the northwest corner of Columbus and Broadway, is now New Sun Hong Kong Restaurant, with a mural and light sculpture celebrating the neighborhood's diverse history.

This stretch of Broadway is revisited later in the film, when Callahan is trailing Scorpio after the kidnapping and murder charges have been dropped. From Broadway, Callahan and Gonzalez turn north onto Columbus, passing by El Cid before shearing off onto Grant Avenue, a smaller but hardly quieter street that today is still lined with cafes, bars, and shops.

Callahan nearly collides with a pedestrian (who, for the record, was in a crosswalk at a four-way stop) at the intersection of Grant at Filbert. The garage on the southwest corner has downgraded to a less conspicuous version, but a Chevron sign still marks the business nonetheless.

Looking north on Grant Avenue at the intersection with Filbert.

Looking west on Filbert Street just past the intersection with Grant.

Headed west on Filbert, Callahan and Gonzalez spot a man carrying a beige briefcase, and get out of the car to pursue him on foot as he turns up Krausgrill Place. Krausgrill is a small alley that, along with connecting Medau Place, forms a jughandle that meets Filbert in two places. It's here that we meet Hot Mary and her small band of chivalrous protectors, and experiencing this location in person only underlines how patently ludicrous the whole scenario is. This tiny alley, hardly more than a narrow driveway, is the last natural setting for a small posse of five men to randomly come across a Peeping Tom. It's painfully clear to me that these gallant Samaritans are good neighbors only insofar as Hot Mary has a tendency to forget the existence of both brassieres and window blinds, often concurrently.

A call about a man on a roof takes the partners from North Beach over to Polk Gulch. The suicidal man is on the roof of the California building at 625 Polk on the corner of Turk.

Callahan and Gonzalez are cruising through Potrero Hill (Harry's neighborhood of origin, as dialogue in the film expounds) when the call comes in over the radio that a victim has been located in a vacant lot at Texas and Sierra Streets. There is an ever-so-slight gaffe here: the establishing exterior shot shows the car traveling southbound on Mississippi across 19th Street; when the call comes in, Gonzalez executes a U-turn in the middle of the same intersection to head to the scene. Not only do the two cops seem to magically transport themselves a block north to traverse the same intersection twice, but when Gonzalez turns the car to head north, he's headed away from the crime scene.

San Francisco's skyline over the years: like watching a time lapse of a balding man in reverse

In fact, the crime scene at Sierra and Texas is just two short blocks from this intersection. This area, where Potrero Hill meets Dogpatch, is experiencing a rapid transition as San Francisco's exploding housing market reaches into any available cranny previously left unexplored, and more and more housing is being shoehorned into what were previously more industrial areas. True to form, half of the block across from the lot is currently under major construction. The vacant lot still exists today, although its size has been greatly reduced by a nearby housing/retail development and what remains is fenced off and earmarked for future development. As a result, I wasn't able to get 100% accurate photos, but as you can see, the housing projects on the south slope still exist today.

The grey building in the foreground is the former William McIntosh & Sons building; in the background you can see a house with two bay windows and red Spanish tile that still stands today.

The red-brown building on the far right is 670 Texas, which takes up the lion's share of the former vacant lot.

Callahan and Gonzalez report to the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant Street to debrief and strategize a return to surveil Washington Square Park. Today, as then, the building is still home to the SFPD headquarters, the district attorney's office, and the San Francisco Superior Court.

When the police and Scorpio both return to North Beach, the cop in disguise as a priest is killed on Jasper Street, at the intersection with Union Street.

Looking north on Jasper at Union.

Looking south on Japser at Union.

Callahan's mad dash to pay Scorpio a ransom and save the girl he's kidnapped begins at the Marina Green dock. Although clearly this payphone is ancient history by now, the lights of the Safeway supermarket on Marina Boulevard are clearly visible in the background, giving us a present-day anchor.

Scorpio tells Callahan to get his hinder over to Forest Hill station. In the intervening years, the southeastern entrance that Harry uses has been transformed into a small extension of the station, and the main entrance on the northeastern side of the building is now the only way in. There is also no longer a newspaper booth in the station, because the SFMTA believes that public transportation should be joyless and punishing.

Above left, Harry's entrance as it looks today. Inset, the station's main entrance.

Scorpio instructs Callahan to go down to the platform and hop on the K. Callahan disembarks once again and receives his next instructions at a payphone situated at 20th & Church Streets in the Mission, overlooking Dolores Park. Although not seen in the movie, this corner hosts San Francisco's most honored fire hydrant. After the legendary earthquake and ensuing fires of 1906, the city's water mains had run dry, but this humble hydrant still provided sufficient water to spare the Mission District and make Dolores Park a safe haven for hundreds of refugees. The hydrant is gifted with a new coat of golden paint every year to this day.

From Dolores Park, Callahan makes a mad dash for Aquatic Park, just a brief distance from Marina Green, where the whole thing started. Today it remains a popular location for sightseers and flaneurs, but the burger stand is closed, the payphone has disappeared, and the tunnel from which Harry emerges has been boarded up. San Francisco, you are NO FUN.

Scorpio is really making Callahan work it! He's already had him running across half the town, and now he has him go far south again, to the residential center of the city and up to Mt. Davidson Park. Gonzalez, following in the car, is shown driving southeast up Dalewood Way towards the Lansdale Avenue entrance to the park, the location Callahan names over the wire. At the top of this hillside, San Francisco's highest natural point at an elevation of 928 feet, is a dignified tribute to subtlety. Just kidding, it's a 100-foot tall concrete crucifix. If you walk just far enough away from the cross not to be killed should it topple over, you'll be rewarded with a breathtaking panorama of the city and the bay.

After the scuffle that sees Gonzalez taken out of action, Callahan and his new partner head over to the Park Emergency Hospital, where a doctor has recently treated Scorpio for the wound inflicted by Harry. The doctor then points them to nearby Kezar Stadium, where Scorpio allegedly squats with the groundskeeper's blessing. Although the former hospital building at 911 Stanyan Street still exists, it is no longer a hospital or medical facility of any sort. Kezar Stadium, where both the 49ers and the Raiders played their first games ever ever ever, still exists, although it bears little, if any, resemblance to the stadium seen in the film. Just months before Dirty Harry was filmed in 1971, the 49ers played their final season at Kezar before moving to the "modern" amenities at the now-former Candlestick Park (demolished in 2015). The stadium served as a concert venue until 1989, when it was partially demolished and rebuilt as a more humble sports arena with 20% of the previous seating capacity.

Following Scorpio's tortured confession, Callahan is shown with authorities at an overlook on the Marin Headlands, where they are sadly too late to save Scorpio's latest victim. Her lifeless body is pulled from a hole at Battery Spencer just off Conzelman Road. Today you can enjoy this beautiful scene, minus the horrifying murder, with hundreds of eager tourists by simply stopping at the first scenic overlook on Conzelman Road and walking to the end of the trail. Even surrounded by sightseers and within spitting distance of 101 traffic, it's a transcendentally beautiful location, all the more to contrast with the gruesome scene that unfolds here. As if to underline this point, just as I arrived to take the photos below, three deer nimbly and gracefully crossed the small outcropping where Scorpio's victim is discovered.

Looking southeast towards downtown San Francisco

Looking east with Angel Island in the center

Friendly reminder: this naked murder victim is meant to be FOURTEEN YEARS OLD.

After Scorpio is freed from custody, he is shown enthusiastically frolicking, not unlike a woodland elf, at Portsmouth Square Park while Callahan tails him. Ironically enough, this park is directly across Kearny Street from the hotel where Scorpio's first victim is gunned down in the pool at the film's beginning; in fact, a pedestrian skyway links the park to the Hilton building. Much like in 1971, the park today is The Place To Be if you're a small child who enjoys jungle gyms and screaming or an elderly Chinese man who enjoys chess.

Scorpio attacks a liquor store owner on The Embarcadero in order to get a gun. Today the store is a swanky restaurant called Perry's. Although its doors open onto The Embarcadero, Perry's official address is on Steuart Street, as it's part of the Hotel Griffon. To find this location in real life, just set your map to 132 The Embarcadero, the address of the restaurant next door, and walk a few dozen feet south.

Scorpio hijacks the schoolbus on the edge of Grand View Park in the Inner Sunset neighborhood. The steps lead up from 15th Avenue up to what Google Maps tells me is simultaneously 15th Avenue and Noriega Street. In 2005, the nearby Moraga Street steps (between 15th and 16th Avenues) were covered with a beautiful tiled mosaic that defies description. The neighborhood residents maintain the landscaping around the steps, making it a must-see destination for visitors and locals alike. Just be warned it's a workout.

It was a foggy day in 1971, but in 2015 you can see all the way to Marin (behind the no parking sign)

After the hijacking, Callahan heads straight to City Hall and the mayor's office. City Hall today looks like it always has in Dirty Harry and numerous other films, although I found it interesting to note that in 1971 there was a small pool in Civic Center plaza where, only seven years later, Donald Sutherland would stand at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

"HARRY. HEY, HARRY. COME IN THROUGH THE SECRET ENTRANCE, OKAY?"

After passing the Bison Paddock in Golden Gate Park, Scorpio forces the bus driver to cross the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. They would have driven directly past the outcropping where Scorpio's young female victim was pulled out of the hole. The bus is shown driving north on Highway 101 into the Robin Williams Tunnel (formerly the Waldo Tunnel), a pair of short tunnels through a hillside that features arching rainbows painted on their south face.

Now featuring: glamorous tungsten lights!

Well north of San Francisco, Scorpio forces the bus driver to exit on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in the town of Larkspur. This scene always makes me laugh because of the way Scorpio is yelling at the bus driver, "here! Exit here! Stay to the right! EXIT HERE! Stay right!!!" even though the bus is going approximately 10 mph and I know from personal experience that this off-ramp is very long and very straight. This is another location that's experienced a profound transformation: in 1971, Sir Francis Drake was a dusty road through the semi-rural outskirts of San Quentin State Prison. Today, it's a four-lane divided roadway with a ferry terminal, luxury condominiums, and a fondue restaurant, and I'm sure it just burns the real estate spectators up inside that the best piece of land in town is occupied by convicts.

The railroad trestle from which Callahan jumps onto the schoolbus was torn down in 2009 (again, I would refer you to Dirty Harry Filming Locations, which has some of the last few shots of the trestle) and replaced with the white pedestrian and bicycle bridge seen now. An older pedestrian bridge made of concrete, seen below right, connects the Golden Gate Ferry Terminal to the Larkspur Landing shopping center. It was from this bridge that I took the photograph above.

The shopping center, along with a hotel and housing of various iterations and ostentatiousness, now sit on the land that was a quarry in 1971. Using Mount Tamalpais as an anchor point, we can see now that the bus comes to a stop in the 'beyond' section of Bed Bath & Beyond. Aside from passing 'Old Quarry Road,' the only indication of how this area once looked is a vacant field on the back edge of the shopping center.

Summary

Plot: 9/10- Although it found inspiration in real life, this film's story takes on a fascinating life of its own
Authenticity: 9.5/10- Frank Chu motorboating Carol Doda at a Doggie Diner.
IA Investigations: 7/10- If not the origin, then certainly the emblem, of the 'SFPD are terribly unprofessional' movie trope.
Overall: 8.5/10- A fine piece of filmmaking that makes you appreciate both the medium and the fact that you don't live in the 1970s.

Further References & Reading

Dirty Harry on Wikipedia
Dirty Harry on IMDB
Dirty Harry Filming Locations
Den of Geek muses over the Scorpio Killer character
Dirty Harry review (with more detailed plot synopsis) on AMC's filmsite

Thanks for reading! See you in 2016.

-EL

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