Play Misty for Me
1971 Directed by Clint Eastwood
Synopsis
A brief fling between a male disc jockey and an obsessed female fan takes a frightening, and perhaps even deadly turn when another woman enters the picture.
Cast
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Al you ever find yourself getting completely smothered by someone?
-Dave GarverAll these years I falsely assumed that Clint Eastwood's directorial debut was a western, High Plains Drifter to be precise. I was off by two years and got the genre completely wrong. Even though I think High Plains Drifter is the better film, I'm actually more impressed that this was his first time in the director's chair instead.
Not only did Eastwood not go with a western for his first feature, a genre he knew in and out at this point, he didn't even go with his old standby the war film. He decided to direct and star in something he had never even done before, a psychological…
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If you haven't seen this film before, you've seen this film before. It's the same unhinged stalker film you've seen dozens of times and all the characterstic elements of that kind of film are here in abundance.... then why did I enjoy it so much?
Clint Eastwood as Dave is great as usual, playing his smooth jazz in the studio or skulking around in oversized y-fronts, that mildly annoyed look on his face the whole time but the real star of this film is Jessica Walter. With a thin veneer of sweetness plastered over her face, you almost let your guard down in the same way Dave does, but from the moment she turns up unannounced to cook him breakfast,…
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Part of Clintfest '13
When a smug radio DJ - who would be faithful to his girlfriend if only he didn't have so many demons (wanker) - opts to boff Lucille Bluth, little does he know that she's going to go all Stabby Titmus on him. But that's what happens, as Lucille graduates from behaving a bit like me as a teenager - needy, desperate, not very good at dealing with rejection - to behaving like me now: scary, fond of lounge pyjamas and weirdly obsessed with Clint Eastwood.
The star's debut behind the camera isn't my sort of film, and isn't very well-directed - goodness knows how he went from this erratic, of-its-time slice of slasher silliness, full of…
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I’ve tagged this as a re-watch, but truth be told I don’t think I’ve seen it in about fifteen years and really couldn’t remember a great deal about it, so it was pretty close to being brand new for me. This, his directorial debut bears many of the hallmarks that would become common place in a Clint Eastwood film: it’s fairly slow paced and everything unfolds without many gimmicks or overly stylised elements, it’s just pretty straight ahead unshowy filmmaking.
This film really belongs to Jessica Walter; her performance was fantastic, full of menace and so off kilter. She has a genuinely unsettling presence about her, and it’s a shame she seems to have done little of note since other…
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I had a roommate like Evelyn... sure she terrorized men and was batshit crazy, but she always had her half of the rent on time.
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It wasn't until the Oscar glory of Unforgiven that Eastwood the director truly came to be appreciated for the subversive depth of his work, but it's a recurring tendency that began way back with his debut some twenty years prior. It's not an unfamiliar plot: a handsome DJ beds a devout fan, and when he shrugs her off with nary a kiss goodbye, she turns sinister. Toying with both his own public persona as a womanising superstar and general attitudes of sexism in Hollywood, with Play Misty for Me Eastwood begins his directorial career as he will go on to continue it: tearing down the archetypes his acting career has erected, subtly subverting the dominant tropes of Hollywood genres. It also offers some of his most marvellous visuals, the perfect montage set to Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" one of the most accomplished scenes of his entire behind-camera career.
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An impressive directorial debut for Clint Eastwood. He adventured into the thriller genre, which was foreign to him at the time. Before then, Eastwood only really starred in westerns, which made directing a thriller quite a brave decision.
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This movie literally creeps for two hours until a spectacular ending in which Eastwood beats the hell out of a crazy stalker chick. what more can you ask for?
Its actually quite decent, I enjoyed the hell out of it.
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I had a roommate like Evelyn... sure she terrorized men and was batshit crazy, but she always had her half of the rent on time.
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It wasn't until the Oscar glory of Unforgiven that Eastwood the director truly came to be appreciated for the subversive depth of his work, but it's a recurring tendency that began way back with his debut some twenty years prior. It's not an unfamiliar plot: a handsome DJ beds a devout fan, and when he shrugs her off with nary a kiss goodbye, she turns sinister. Toying with both his own public persona as a womanising superstar and general attitudes of sexism in Hollywood, with Play Misty for Me Eastwood begins his directorial career as he will go on to continue it: tearing down the archetypes his acting career has erected, subtly subverting the dominant tropes of Hollywood genres. It also offers some of his most marvellous visuals, the perfect montage set to Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" one of the most accomplished scenes of his entire behind-camera career.
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You are one great psycho, Jessica Walter. Why did I keep waiting for her to start bitching about Buster.
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Part of Clintfest '13
When a smug radio DJ - who would be faithful to his girlfriend if only he didn't have so many demons (wanker) - opts to boff Lucille Bluth, little does he know that she's going to go all Stabby Titmus on him. But that's what happens, as Lucille graduates from behaving a bit like me as a teenager - needy, desperate, not very good at dealing with rejection - to behaving like me now: scary, fond of lounge pyjamas and weirdly obsessed with Clint Eastwood.
The star's debut behind the camera isn't my sort of film, and isn't very well-directed - goodness knows how he went from this erratic, of-its-time slice of slasher silliness, full of…
-
Taut, thrilling and far more accomplished than many a first feature. This is a clear window into what a master of the medium Eastwood would become. He's visually inventive, particularly in more chaotic fight sequences, but he also makes Jessica Walter a distinctly dangerous presence. She's unpredictable and frightening, with Walter milking the role for all it's worth. She's every bit as wild, crazy and delightful as Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. That film clearly owes much to this.
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That's one crazy bitch.
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Al you ever find yourself getting completely smothered by someone?
-Dave GarverAll these years I falsely assumed that Clint Eastwood's directorial debut was a western, High Plains Drifter to be precise. I was off by two years and got the genre completely wrong. Even though I think High Plains Drifter is the better film, I'm actually more impressed that this was his first time in the director's chair instead.
Not only did Eastwood not go with a western for his first feature, a genre he knew in and out at this point, he didn't even go with his old standby the war film. He decided to direct and star in something he had never even done before, a psychological…