He and his mother go into the Kiowa village to try to talk their way out of it. Pacer is convinced he’ll be forced to say no in front of everybody, but in fact the chief respects his bravery and allows him to leave peacefully to consider it more. They shouldn’t have been so distrustful. Ironically it’s a white man, an old friend, who ambushes them when they’re leaving.

Oh, and by the way Pacer is played by Elvis Presley. You know, the singer. I should’ve mentioned that probly. That might be relevant to how you’ll react to this one.

That’s why I rented FLAMING STAR – when I realized there was a Don Siegel/Elvis team up I wanted to know how that works. The opening credits have Elvis singing the title song, and really early on he picks up a guitar and leads everyone in a singalong. So you’re figuring it’s a regular Elvis musical in a western setting. But then there’s a violent massacre with flaming arrows, and it’s a straightup western from then on. It just happens to star the King of Rock n Roll.

Elvis rides a horse and wears a cowboy hat and everything that being in a western entails, but he doesn’t try to hide his iconic persona. He’s still got the slick pompadour, still talks like The King. I guess Elvis is one of these guys like The Three Stooges, or like Mickey Mouse or the Muppets. He can travel through time, exist in different histories. There could’ve been an Elvis movie about the Crusades, about Shinobis, about the American Revolution or the construction of the Pyramids, and he’d be exactly the same dude, he’d just have different clothes on, that’s it. I like that. I think he deserves to have that power. I wish I could see those movies.

And you know what, there must be some kind of T.C.B. magic that makes it work, because somehow I accepted him as the half breed. You know, he has real dark hair. Seemed to make sense. Looks more Native American than Tom Laughlin, anyway. (In fact, his great great great grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee. I looked it up.)

It’s weird, but this movie fits into a couple of the themes I was writing about a month or so ago. Like THE BLIND SIDE it’s a very favorable portrayal of mixed race families. Also like THE BLIND SIDE it’s a good message held back slightly by problematic Hollywood traditions (in this case putting white people in makeup instead of hiring Native Americans). Also the message gives some serious ammunition to the argument that Chuck D. shouldn’t have called Elvis a racist (as discussed in the ELVIS PRESLEY GLADIATORS thread).

Pacer goes through the whole range of reactions to his predicament. He tries to transcend race. He tries to stick with the whites. When his (SPOILER) mother is killed he lashes out at everybody, even his brother, about all the racism he’s suffered throughout his life. Ultimately he gives up, but tells his brother that “Maybe some day they’ll understand people like you and me.”

“People like you and me” could mean people from mixed races families, or it could mean people who accept different races and cultures as brothers, and don’t see what the big fucking deal is. People like Elvis.

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The movie’s about Coogan having to helicopter from Arizona to New York City to pick up a prisoner. He wears the hat, boots and a bolo tie, so cab drivers try to rip him off and everybody asks if he’s from Texas.

Unfortunately when he’s transferring the prisoner he gets hit over the head and loses him, so he has to stay in New York to catch the bastard. As you can see on the poster to the right here it’s basically the Clint of the westerns clashing with NYC. But I don’t want to call it a fish-out-of-water story because this fish is so strong he pretty much creates water around himself. He turns New York into a western. This was his first major role outside of westerns, so I guess he had to ease himself slowly into the modern day. Sticking one toe in the hot tub.

The bad guys are obnoxious flower children, precursors to DIRTY HARRY’s Scorpio. The scene that really shows you Siegel hates hippies is “The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel.” I think that’s the name of the club (there’s a neon sign that says that) but it’s also the song that the stupid hippie band is performing, singing “Pigeon-toed orange peel / Pigeon-toed orange peel! / Love is real, love is real!” in that same righteous tone they would sing a platitude that actually made sense. A woman, naked except for body paint, is lowered from the ceiling and tries to make it with Coogan. He runs into Albert Popwell (the “punk” of “Do you feel lucky, punk?”). Next thing you know he’s in a pop art apartment fucking his fugitive’s girlfriend (Tisha Sterling).

It’s more jokey than DIRTY HARRY, lots of snappy dialogue. But it’s also got good action, especially the outstanding bar fight that predicts OUT FOR JUSTICE like Clint’s own Mayan calendar. They gang up on him but he uses some clever dodges, pool sticks and cue balls to even the odds. He throws a guy through a window – at the end of the scene you see a pair of legs still hanging through. Definitely an all time classic fight.

The one aspect of the movie that’s kind of fucked up is his relationship with a social worker played by the mom from “Webster.” It’s the usual professional-woman-turns-her-nose-up-but-eventually-is-charmed-by-him-despite-or-perhaps-because-of-his-crude–manners-and-outdated-womanizing, except he really betrays her. On a date he notices her files so he steals the one on the fugitive’s girlfriend and takes off. Poor gal’s in the kitchen stirring the spaghetti sauce when he ditches her, gets a girl she was trying to keep out of jail into trouble, and has sex with said girl. And she knows this. She calls her patient a “little girl” and knows Coogan left her date and had sex with this girl instead of having the dinner she made.

Okay, fine. Protagonists can do terrible things, sometimes that’s more interesting than being a boy scout. The part I have a problem with is that she forgives him!  At the end of the movie she’s chasing after his helicopter blowing kisses at him. No way, man. Not cool. I swear, Coogan’s behavior and her response to it came this close to taking away women’s right to vote. That’s how far they set things back.

Other than that though this is a very fun movie. But I’m not sure what he’s bluffing about.

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After I wrote about the ‘46 version I listened to the extra on the DVD where Stacy Keach reads the Hemingway story, and it explained alot. That movie was a good mystery, but nothing in the main story approaches the perfection of that opening, the tense scene with the two strangers coming into the diner, talking shit, then taking everybody hostage and saying, “I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna kill the Swede.” I know now that’s because the Hemingway story is only the opening, the rest is all extrapolated from there. In the story you don’t find out what the Swede did to get killed. Adding a whole story to explain the short story really goes against the spirit of the thing, because to quote Jack Skeleton about Christmas presents, “That’s the point of the thing, not to know.”

So the rest of that movie is all new material except for taking the detail that Swede was once a boxer. That explains why a movie called THE KILLERS isn’t about the killers – they were making some other movie and just kept the name they started out with.

When Siegel – who had been the producer’s first choice for the ‘46 version – came on, he ditched pretty much everything, but made it actually about the killers this time. It doesn’t use that great diner scene but instead has the two killers, Lee Marvin and Clu (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) Gulager coming after Johnny North (John Cassavetes) at a school for the blind where he works. Like the Swede Johnny is not surprised and doesn’t run. But instead of an insurance agent trying to figure out why he didn’t run it’s the killers themselves. To Marvin it doesn’t add up so they head to Miami to investigate this guy and find out who hired them to kill him and why. They figure out there’s a million dollars in it, but Marvin’s more worried about getting answers than getting money.

Instead of a boxer Johnny is a race car driver. Angie Dickinson (POINT BLANK) is the girl he should know better than to chase after. Instead of a payroll heist at a hat factory they rob a mail truck on the road, and the planning is shown in more detail. The gangster in charge, also possessive boyfriend of the girl, is played by Ronald Reagan (SECRET GOVERNMENT: THE CONSTITUTION IN CRISIS). Man, it’s weird to see a president slapping a woman or pointing a gun. I suppose it’s an inspirational thing for filmatists to think about, that some day somebody in their movie could become president and then the movie would take on a much more novel quality that improves it. Good job on that one Don Siegel, you pulled it off. And when Clint became mayor of Carmel in ‘86 Siegel was probly like “Who gives a shit? I already directed the president. Fuck you,” and then Clint said, “I was more trying to impress Sergio Leone anyway, why would I care what you think?” and then Siegel says “I HATE YOU!” and storms out and that’s why Clint dedicated UNFORGIVEN to Don and Sergio, to apologize for playing them against each other in that  argument. In my opinion.

The race car scenes mean there’s alot of fake-looking process shots, and like the original I feel like the scenes with the killers are better than the flashbacks that make up most of the movie. But the greatness of the movie is in the cast. Along with the names I already mentioned it has Claude Akins in an outstanding performance as Johnny’s loyal right hand man during his racing career. To see him cry about Johnny’s death after telling the killers his story is heartbreaking. He knew what Johnny was getting himself into but couldn’t talk him out of it.

Even better though are Marvin and Gulager as the killers. This is an all time great team up. Marvin is the guy in charge and Gulager is the weird, crazy one. Marvin gives one of his best tough guy performances (which is saying alot) but also was generous enough to let Gulager do all kinds of business, he’s always doing some weird thing with his sunglasses or something while they’re talking to people. Marvin is serious and Gulager has a strange sense of humor and the combination is very intimidating. And they got no morals, they don’t mind scaring the shit out of some poor secretary lady or somebody. These guys are total bastards but you find yourself rooting for them.

I have to admit I was excited for a second about one of my favorite actors, Lee Marvin, coming after Reagan, both because he’s an asshole in the movie and because of what he represents politically. But then I caught myself and felt like a jerk because somebody actually did come after Reagan with a gun and that’s not cool when it’s literal and not a metaphor. So I apologize for that. But I stand by my enjoyment of the part where John Cassavetes punches him in the face:

This was Reagan’s last major role before going into politics, which tops Schwarzenegger’s TERMINATOR 3. It apparently took some talking to get him to play a villain, but he was good at it. I didn’t like him as a president, but he obviously had alot of leading man charisma and it’s always exciting to see that turned on its head like this. He’s a pretty creepy villain and not in any of the ways you might see the real Reagan as.

You know what, I’ll say something else positive about Reagan. On one of the DVD extras (I think maybe the excerpts from Siegel’s autobiography) there’s a story about Reagan being livid during rehearsal because the killers kept practicing their parts and the bit player as the secretary wasn’t allowed to do hers. Reagan brought up that he’d been the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild and that he wouldn’t do the scene unless the secretary was allowed to practice too. So maybe he was a nice guy.

This was also the first made for TV movie, and in my opinion it’s better than BABY MONITOR: THE SOUND OF FEAR or all the giant snake, bug and lizard movies they play on the Sci-Fi channel. But to get technical it actually didn’t end up being a TV movie because they decided it was too violent and then released it theatrically. It is pretty brutal for the time and even for now when you see the way poor Angie Dickinson gets shoved around. She must’ve really trusted Lee Marvin to come back and do that again in POINT BLANK three years later.

Siegel wanted to ditch Hemingway. He asked not to use any of the dialogue and had tried to change the title (he definitely didn’t want it to be called ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S THE KILLERS). But despite having even less literally to do with the story than the ‘46 version I think it’s kind of a more natural extension of it. Because when you read that story it’s the killers who are the more interesting characters. If the story must continue you want to keep them around. The story ends with the witnesses to the incident puzzling over the mystery of why the Swede would be resigned to his death. That obsession with knowing the answer stays in this version but it’s transferred to the killers. In the ‘46 version it was a professional curiosity on the part of the insurance company investigator, here it seems more like Marvin’s faith in the universe has been shaken by the incident and he’s gotta understand it if he’s gonna move on. Which he’s not. (SPOILER.)

There are many great things about this movie, but the greatest on is Marvin. He’s meaner than in POINT BLANK but equally set on his goal, and that makes for one of the all time great death scenes when he’s trying to stumble away with the money when mortally wounded. It’s so obvious he’s not gonna make it – he can barely stand up and the sirens are closing in on him – but he’s not about to give up anyway. Get rich or die trying, I guess. It’s so convincing and it turns out the reason why is because he showed up drunk that day. I don’t know if he did it on purpose but it turned out to be a brilliant approach, the poor guy. Sacrificing himself for our entertainment.

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This time I watched it on the occasion of buying the new DIRTY HARRY ULTIMATE COLLECTION box set, which totally made my day and I did feel lucky punk and it is so good it would blow your head clean off and is the most powerful box set in the world. That is not really puns but you know what’s going on there, I think you get it.

Anyway, I know I’m not talking to a bunch of rookies here so I’m not telling you anything you don’t know if I tell you this movie is awesome. Clint Eastwood is at his peak as far as just being a cool looking motherfucker, with his cocky hair do and his still handsome but already full of character early ’30s Clint face. There’s that shot when he’s eating the hot dog and just realizing that he’s gonna have to stop a bank robbery instead of finish lunch and he slowly turns around and it shows him in profile – you can tell that Don Siegel knew what a cool motherfucker he had in front of his camera there. The camera seems to be saying “holy shit, look at this guy!” Such an iconic profile. Put that fucker on the penny. Sorry Abe, you’re great, but look at this. I think you would agree.

That scene is one of my favorites, and obviously everybody in the world remembers that great “do you feel lucky” speech, but what I like best about it is definitely the hot dog. He foils a bank robbery while still chewing his hot dog. I do not know how you could be more casual about taking care of business. Maybe if he was wearing a bathrobe, or had curlers in his hair. Or was reading the newspaper, with bifocals.

This movie could easily be powered on the fuel of Eastwood alone, but Don Siegel is also smokin hot with his filmatism. He’s known as a workmanlike master of down and dirty b-movies, but the opening of this movie especially is the work of an artiste. That bright blue, rectangular swimming pool filling up the widescreen, the super fuckin cool stutter of funky Lalo Schifrin drums… you’re hooked into this movie way before they show Harry Callahan. And it all works especially well on this new DVD, the transfer is so much brighter and clearer. I didn’t know it looked this good.

Some of the extras on the DVD are pretty cool. I would like to see something even more in-depth, though. There’s no mention of the draft of the script Terence Malick supposedly wrote, no mention of the Zodiac killer or the cop they say Harry was partly based on (as seen in Dave Fincher’s ZODIAC). There is an interesting note that they considered setting the movie in Seattle, since it hadn’t been used in many movies. But they happened to scout Eastwood’s birth city of San Francisco first and couldn’t say no to it. Man, that would be so fuckin cool if Dirty Harry was a Seattle cop. Then maybe I would’ve felt better about getting pepper sprayed by SPD. Shit, we would have a statue of Dirty Harry I bet. We don’t have the best Jimi Hendrix statue, and no Bruce Lee, but I bet we could spring for a Dirty Harry in this alternate universe. Anyway, those guys dropped the ball but John Sturges and John Wayne picked it up and shot their DIRTY HARRY ripoff McQ in Seattle.

On some of the extras they talk about the politics. I guess Pauline Kael called the movie fascist, and some people get mad about that. Alot of talking heads mention that the movie was made shortly after the Miranda decision and there was “lots of talk about the rights of the criminals, but what about the rights of the victims?” Clint, being a class act, mentions that he does think the rights of the criminals are “very important” also. But what none of these people mention is that it’s not the rights of criminals that anybody is worried about, it’s the rights of suspects. People who do not always turn out to be criminals. That’s the whole point of it.

That’s why if you look at the message of the movie it’s pretty laughable, the deck is so obviously stacked. Watching this movie obviously we know that Scorpio is a serial killer and a sick bastard, we hate the fucker and love that Harry breaks his leg when he cries about “my rights, I have rights.” But that’s cheating, we have the omniscient power of movies. In reality we don’t have that power, so we don’t want cops to torture a guy they chased into a stadium. That guy might not be Scorpio, he might be you or your uncle who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In one of the more memorable jokes it’s mentioned that Harry got into trouble by shooting a guy he felt had the intent to rape. He felt this because the guy was chasing a girl while he was naked with a butcher knife and a hard-on. See, in a world where that could happen of course I trust Harry to shoot the guy. In the real world I’m afraid the cases are usually more complicated. So treating this as a serious argument against police accountability is pretty fuckin stupid. But that didn’t stop people.

I’m interested in the politics because the fact that I could love this movie so much says something. I don’t like people who would take these ideas seriously. I can’t relate to right wingers. I think those rights that Scorpio whined about are a big part of the ideals our country was founded on, and are more important now than ever before. I hate cops who think they don’t have to follow the regulations. And yet I love this movie. Maybe it’s just that this is a fun movie and is not really a serious political argument. Or maybe it shows that if a movie is good enough you can brush off the politics. Awesomeness transcends politics.

I mean, remember that shot when Scorpio has the school bus full of children and he’s coming towards the bridge and he just sees Harry standing there on top of the bridge, and he just about shits himself? How can we argue about left vs. right when THAT is going on? We might disagree on some of this stuff but we can agree that that is some cold-blooded shit right there.

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