Year of Eastwood #29

The Dead Pool (1988)

Starring: Eastwood

Directed by Buddy Van Horn

The fifth Dirty Harry film finds our loveable McGruff the Crime Dog having to deal with the media getting in his face every time he breaks open a big case. Harry is now a celebrity and he can’t tell the difference between a mob hit and autograph hounds. That liberal media is always causing trouble.

The Dead Pool tries its best to be topical. The title is taken from a morbid game where players try to pick which celebrity is going to die next. McGruff ends up on some of the lists and he ain’t none too happy about being included with the Buddy Epsens and Shelley Winters. But that’s the price you pay for celebrity. Some people would do anything to get their face of the tube, even setting yourself on fire. All these sound like cutting edge stuff but the film just kinda clunks along.

There is some fun with one scene where McGruff is chased thru the streets of San Fran by a remote control car equipped with explosives. It’s got all the standard moves of any car chase, but it’s kinda amusing to watch McGruff speeding away from a miniature Vette. Until it blows up and nearly kills McGruff’s new partner … guess that’s no surprise by now.

Watching 20 years later, the fun in watching this movie is McGruff’s co-stars who went on to fame of their own. Patricia Clarkson takes over the Sondra Locke part as a driven tv reporter who hounds McGruff for a story but ends up falling for the old coot. Patricia went on to be an indie film favorite in The Station Agent and Pieces of April. Liam Neesen shows up as an egotistical horror film director who butts heads with McGruff. Liam, of course, went on to play a Master Jedi in some Star Wars movie.



The biggest surprise is Jim Carrey, mugging it up as junkie rock star Patches or Squares or something, who lip sync’s his way thru Welcome to the Jungle during the filming of a music video. The song was lifted from Guns N Roses before they hit it big time and it’s beyond over the top to watch Carrey pretending to be screetching like Axl. Slash even shows up in a cameo. Carrey follows it up by overdosing on some designer drug and drops dead five minutes into his big break. Clint must of taken a liking to Carrey as he also played an Elvis impersonator in Pink Cadillac before he went on to dumb and dumber things.

There’s been some pressure on Clint to make a “final” Dirty Harry film. Which of course would be a lousy idea, but hey the media has to bug the old guy about something. So far, Clint has resisted unlike some of the more desperate among us (Sharon Stone with Basic Instinct 2, Schwartzenegger with Terminator 3, and Stallone with Rocky VI and Rambo IV (I think). Clint has said he can’t imagine what Harry could do to make an interesting movie at this point … collect retirement checks? I think maybe we can put this one to rest…