DIRTY LARRY

DIRTY HARRY (1971)
dir: Don Siegel

MAD # 153, September 1972
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

The city of San Francisco is under attack by a murderer who's attacking citizens at random and threatens to strtike again until he's paid ransom. The mayor (John Vernon, caricatured by Drucker more accurately in the Animal House parody as you can see clicking on the sidebar link.) has assigned Detective Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) to the case.

There is a bank robbery while Harry is eating lunch and the shootout is established. It also introduces the magnum speech he's best known for and is used in other films in the Dirty Harry series.

Harry is partnered with Gonzales (Reni Santoni), who sees Callahan's unconventional ways.

Callahan is given directions by the killer, Scorpio (Andy Robinson), about where to place the ransom as he runs throughout the city.

Scorpio has kidnapped a teenage girl and won't tell anyone where she is. They find through hospital records that he squats at a football stadium, and Callahan tracks him down there and beats him.

Later, Callahan is called into the district attorney's office and told Scorpio can't be prosecuted and none of the evidence is admissible in court if he wasn't read his Miranda rights and was searched without a warrant. Callahan then decides to pursue the case on his own. Scorpio pays someone to beat him so he can say the police did it.

Scorpio has hijacked a schoolbus to get to where the airport where he's demanded a private plane from the city and is holding the children on it hostage to make sure the city doesn't have agents waiting at the airport or anything like that. Callahan jumps on the bus and chases him out to a lake and kills him. Having finished the job and knowing he's violated a bunch of rules, he throws his badge in the river.

From Combining Movies for Fun and Profit by Mark Steven and Bob Smith, from Crazy #17, May 1976. Shampoo was a movie where Warren Beatty played a promiscuous hairdresser.