I wondered how scorpio hired the thug in this scene to beat him up. Probably put an add in the paper or knew someone that does that sort of thing for cash. $200 was a lot more back then, then today's value.
Here is the link to that video of the beat up from Dirty Harry.
https://youtu.be/iliuskF5opc
That was one creepy scene to watch in the movie theater in 1971...a marker of just HOW hard-hitting and rough and disturbing Dirty Harry truly was.
First of all the set-up and build up at first suggested that Scorpio was paying this man ....for sex of some sort.
Second, the racial component...a white man hiring a black man to beat him up for "some reason." (Again, the "usual" reason would be S/M ...the white man likes it.)
The nature of the black man himself -- not a young man, but still fit. Suave in certain ways. Handsome -- again, the sexual undercurrent. The pulling of the black leather glove tight around his fist. The white man demanding "every penny" of a beating he paid for.
And then the beating itself -- with the punches carefully orchestrated to draw blood and break ribs while somehow not killing the victim.
And then the kicker -- the white man -- his face a mass of blood and broken facial bones(hey, its 1971 at the movies -- a very ultra-violent year) taunts the black man with a racial slur.
So the black man delivers a final kick to the stomach with the final quip: "This one's on the house."
"Dirty Harry" was a very violent movie in a very violent month(December) in a very violent movie year: 1971. (Other December releases including Peckinpah's Straw Dogs and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.) The movie begins with a beautiful blonde woman in a white bathing suit taking a pool swim and getting shot right through the back and heart as red blood fills the pool...and things went on from there.
And yet --- just this side of the central kidnapping(tooth pulled for "proof"), rape, murder and burial of a 14 year old victim by "Scorpio" -- Scorpio's self-requested bloody beating is perhaps the most disturbing in the film. The racial overtones. The sexual overtones.
CONT
"Plot-wise," Scorpio seeks the beating to frame Harry for delivering it, but Harry's response to his bosses is priceless:
Harry: You can tell that I didn't do that.
Boss: Why?
Harry: Because he looks too damn good -- THAT's why.
You put way too much thought into this scene. Or you’re just gay
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Yep...
Yeah, that's right. Must be gay.
Because I NEVER put too much thought into my posts..
But seriously folks...I think the "flip side" of gay overtones is that that this scene was just plain creepy and disturbing, step by step, and made some creepy movie history.
In the next Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force, we had a black pimp pour a can of Drano down the throat of his black hooker employee.
These R-rated movies weren't just about the shoot em ups...they had a sexual horror angle to them.
There's plenty of creepy and disturbing aspects of these films, no doubt, but I don't think more than a tiny percentage of viewers saw any sexual overtones to them.
Check out some internet 1973 reviews of Magnum Force
The camera angle in particular of the hooker dying as the Drano is poured down her throat was singled out as overtly and perversely sexual.