Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)

 

You know there is a stereotype of the macho, badass male who has come here to clean the dirt from the streets of the city. That character, a miserable creation of the American culture beside the fact that he is pathetic and unrealistic, he is also a total moron. Dirty Harry recreates that exact stereotype with the great success I must admit, creating a movie that is unapologetic to say the least and if we want to be completely frank bluntly idiotic. Inspector Callahan played by Clint Eastwood in one of his most celebrated roles of his career is a horrid caricature of the male sex that insults males throughout the world. And if we take it one step further the movie is beyond tolerance crappy. It's horribly performed, terribly written and completely dated when it comes to the way it is shot. Generally speaking, the film is a fucking disaster. One of the most unappealing, insulting, brainless and robbed of any kind of aesthetic movies.

The fact that this piece of crap is considered one of the best films of the 70s fills me with despair and disappointment. And it doesn't only fill me with those feelings due to the critics' opinion, but mostly due to the audience's opinion. I remember that the first time that I gazed upon that piece of shit was when I was really young and my uncle had rented the film on VHS. I saw the movie, didn't get anything from its ugliness and was disturbed by the killer of the film. When I saw the movie again at the age of 45 I couldn't believe what I was watching. I couldn't believe that this is the fictional character that won the hearts of so many people. And this is where you understand that the majority of people are below zero. Below zero at their taste and at their ideology. Because Dirty Harry has a very clear ideology that of the fascist, pig cop who becomes glorified as the only solution to this society of ours.    

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Robert Fuest, 1971)

 I have always been a major fan of Vincent Price. His irony, his style and the larger-than-the-screen persona that he had blows my mind away. There are numerous films of his that distinguish from the bulk of B horror movies. And his movies, at least most of them, have him as the central, prominent figure. He stays always in his movies as the protagonist that gets all the attention. And in that way, according to this condition, The Abominable Dr. Phibes might be if not the most, then one of his most iconic movies. The character that he plays is the absolute figure of the movie. Every other character in the film comes definitely second. And if you add together the absolutely astonishing Art Deco style of the production design of the movie, then you have a combination that really makes the movie a flammable explosive.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes might be a B movie if you take a straight look at it, but it's a B movie that many A movies are envying. The dark and morbid humor, the persona of Vincent Price, the style and the flavor of the movie, the premise of the film, all of them work together as fingers in one hand to give to the audience a blast of enjoyment. There are moments in the movie that I was really wondering what fucking great job they had done with the visuals in this movie. The set of the film, a miraculous aesthetic achievement, plays like a real, flesh-and-bones character in the movie. You can't think of Dr. Phibes at his house without his toys and all this extraordinary universe of objects that the people who made the movie, had manufactured. Finally I can easily say that The Abominable Dr. Phibes is the example of a movie that was shot ahead of its time. Nobody at that time could have appreciated the aesthetical sensitivity of the movie and the darkly humorous tone of it. The movie stays this day much more proudly than it stood back in 1971.