San Franciso Film Trilogy
There are still a few days for folks who have access to the Criterion Channel to see an obscure crime film from Blake Edwards, “Experiment in Terror”, released in 1962 between his movies, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Days of Wine and Roses”. It leaves the platform at the end of the month. The film is so unknown it’s actually not listed in some of Edwards’ filmographies, yet it’s extraordinary on many levels, and apparently an influence on a number of directors, including the recently passed David Lynch (the neighborhood where one of the main characters, Kelly Sherwood [played impressively by Lee Remick], lives is even called “Twin Peaks”). I don’t think I’ve seen a film that has presented and investigated the male gaze toward women in the same way and is an excellent example for why I am so fascinated by pulp movie genres- their subtexts often explore and reveal issues in society in ways that are not possible for standard dramatic forms. An example would be how the horror film has examined the status quo, such as George Romero’s series of films that began with “Night of the Living Dead” or with the more recent “The Substance”, by Coralie Fargeat).
After watching “Experiment in Terror” it was difficult not to consider Edwards’ movie as the first part of a trilogy exploring the impact of violence on American society, which includes Peter Yates’ “Bullit” (1968), followed by Don Siegel’s “Dirty Harry” (1971). All three take place in San Francisco with storylines that follow the work of law enforcement as they investigate violent crime, and have many other parallels and connections. As these movies progress chronologically the violence presented in them becomes more severe and the life of the city more sordid. The following essay has a number of “spoilers” regarding these three films. If you haven’t seen them yet and want to without knowing plot details in advance, read no further. If you’re curious keep going or go to the link in bio which will bring you to the complete article on my Facebook page.
Not surprisingly, this escalation of violence is revealed by how the directors present the image of the gun during the course of each film. In “Experiment in Terror” the head FBI investigator, John Ripley (played by Glenn Ford), tells a child who asks that he has never had to fire his weapon and is hesitant to show the gun to the boy. It is under his jacket and remains hidden from view for most of the movie. The title character from “Bullit” (an undercover cop played by Steve McQueen) is shown wearing his holstered gun throughout the film. Harry Callahan (performed by Clint Eastwood) brandishes his .44 Magnum revolver repeatedly in “Dirty Harry”. It is not until the very end of their narratives that either Ripley or Bullit fire their weapon, killing one criminal in both cases (the death scene in “Bullit”, where the villain is shot and smashes through a glass door, surely inspired director Ridley Scott’s similar scene from “Blade Runner”). Whereas Callahan shoots six different criminals in “Dirty Harry”, one of them on two different occasions, killing him the second time. In addition, Callahan famously brags two times during the film, “But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and would blow your head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
All three law enforcement officers appear calm and able to cope with their violence-filled jobs. Yet in both the first two films there is something represented in the performances of Ford and McQueen that belies this notion. Ford’s steady, unaffected line delivery, which anticipates and is analogous to McQueen’s, signifies a man who may feel he’s above the circumstances, but actually knows he’s holding on tight to control a situation that he may not be able to. If “Dirty Harry” didn’t invent the one-liner tough guy, it certainly took it to a new level. And Callahan is too cool to even stop eating a hotdog as he interrupts a bank heist by shooting three robbers and a getaway driver. He’s more than above the circumstances, he’s above the law, throwing his police badge into the water after killing the serial killer, Scorpio. Bullit places his coat over the mobster he has slain at an airport out of empathy for at least the passengers, but the erosion the violence of the job has on both him and Ripley is indicated directly during these films. In the case of Bullit it’s through the questions his girlfriend, Cathy (played by Jacqueline Bisset), repeatedly asks him that are underscored by the final shot of the film, his gun. After the first death takes place in “Experiment in Terror”, when Ripley and his partner get a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant during their investigation, it states in a closeup shot, “An offer of a better job.”
There are big changes between the underworlds of San Francisco between Edwards’ and Siegel’s films. In both, the plot is centered around a serial killer on the loose in the city. That character in “Experiment in Terror”, Red Lynch (played Ross Martin), murders white women who won’t assist him with his bank robberies, but who also seems to love Chinese women and actually gives money he has stolen to a single mother to pay the hospital bills for her son, who he genuinely adores. The murderer in “Dirty Harry” is a pure sociopath, willing to kill anybody he chooses to get what he wants: man, woman or child.
A key confrontation between the hero and killer in both films takes place in a sports stadium. In “Experiment in Terror”, the action occurs during a major league baseball game where, as the game ends and the crowd leaves, Lynch abducts Sherwood, while law enforcement agents try to find them before he can escape through an exit of the packed arena (“Bullit” has a corresponding scene in which the cops try to find the villain in a crowded airport and, as with “Experiment in Terror”, this scene ends with death). The cops are able rescue Sherwood and Ripley fires his gun for the first time, killing Lynch on the pitcher’s mound in a now empty stadium. The metaphor is blatant- Ripley may have “won” but it has been Lynch who has really controlled the game of cat and mouse all along. Baseball may still have been America’s pastime in 1962, but by 1972 it was going to be football. Siegel places the moment when Callahan first catches up with Scorpio in that arena, also empty of fans but, during that exchange in “Dirty Harry”, Scorpio is not killed. Instead, Callahan’s moral decay and rage is further underscored by the fact that he tortures Scorpio after he shoots him. Both scenes end with an omniscient, pullback helicopter shot; in the latter film with the villain screaming as Callahan presses his foot against the bullet wound in the killer’s leg.
The analogies continue. For example, Lalo Schifrin did the music for “Bullitt” and “Dirty Harry”. A nightclub with the same name is used in both movies. Called “Roaring Twenties” in the first, it’s a throwback to that time, with waitresses and bartenders dressed from the period and Dixieland music being played by a live band. In the second, the bartenders are still dressed from the period but the women working at the club are now strippers dancing to a live rock band. In each film the killer, to elude law enforcement, forces the protagonists to follow a series of instructions from calls they make to phone booths which guide them to a specific location. In both films a young woman is kidnapped by the killer, and the law races against time to rescue them. During “Experiment in Terror” the male undressing of women with their eyes becomes literal- when Lynch kidnaps Sherwood’s sister, before he imprisons her, he makes her strip to her underwear, then leaves her. Scorpio also kidnaps a young girl and entraps her. For the first film the FBI rescue the girl in time but in “Dirty Harry”, despite Callahan’s best efforts and use of torture to get the information he needs, the police are too late and girl, buried alive, dies of suffocation and is naked as she’s pulled from her grave.
In Don Siegel’s debased tale, much more had changed in America than the nation’s pastime. In just nine years, the morality and the country itself had gone the way of the gun. How much further down that road have we traveled in the last half century?
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