Dirty Harry

#1 in my ranking of the Dirty Harry franchise. Here we see the influence of Fritz Lang's M decades after its release. There's the emphasis on process and the absolutely insane antagonist serial killer. Where there are differences are the obvious setting changes, but also the focus on an individual investigator and how the official…

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The Beguiled (1971)

A psycho-sexual thriller set in the Old South towards the middle of the Civil War, just before Grant begins his siege at Vicksburg, Don Siegel's The Beguiled, based on a book by Thomas Cullinan, is a lurid tale of mistrust, manipulation, and sex that gets shockingly close to greatness but never quite gets there. A…