Friday 20 January 2012

Play Misty For Me

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Year:1971
Country of origin:USA
Director:Clint Eastwood
Genre:'Women are all mad' themed thriller
Starring:Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills
Rating:4/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067588/
Tagline:The scream you hear may be your own!
Favourite line:"I hope Dave likes what he sees when he gets here. Because that's what he's taking to Hell with him! "

Well now, the message of this movie appears to be that all women are mental, which is clearly true.

Clint Eastwood directs and stars as a minor celebrity DJ, hosting a late night music show. A woman calls most evenings and asks him to play a song called Misty, which he duly does. One evening, after work, he stops for a drink at a local bar and meets a beautiful woman. They go back to his, where she reveals that she is the Misty caller.
What the hell, he thinks. Bit weird, but I'll sleep with her anyway.
After a night of passion, which both agreed beforehand would be a one off, no strings attached fling, she seems intent on embroiling herself in his life: turning up unannounced with groceries, hanging around outside the bar waiting for him to come out, following him around when a former flame shows up. And she's the jealous type too, and it's not long before she's wielding a knife and going psycho on his ass.

Gripping stuff, though massively dated, this can be viewed as something of a precursor to Fatal Attraction.
Clint is great as the confused and annoyed object of the lunatics affections, and Jessica Walters is convincing as a maniacal femme fatale.
The pace drops radically for fifteen minutes or so before the finale, which is why this loses a mark but still, this is a tense thriller indeed.

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