This movie annoyed the crap out of me..

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I agree completely. That was exactly my reaction. It didn't make any sense.

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Maybe I am just too paranoid but the moment someone disrespected my boundaries the way she did early on they would be DONE.

But Dave Garver doesn't live with many "boundaries": he's promiscuous, libertine, and a walking embodiment of the sexual revolution (or at least its darker side), thus diminishing his sensitivity to Evelyn Draper's violations. Plus, he's a detached, emotionally aloof character who seems unaffected on that level and thus doesn't appear to dwell on the matter until he's full entrapped in this web. He seems to think that if he placates Evelyn and engages her sexually one more time, she'll eventually feel appeased and disappear, much as Dave himself would seek sexual satisfaction and then move on. But Evelyn desires emotional and romantic gratification, too, and those desires are rather foreign to Dave Garver. As author Bruce Jay Friedman wrote about Eastwood in 1976, "Not that he can't make just about anything mythic. (Witness the otherworldly dimension he single-handedly got into Play Misty for Me. He was a disc jockey and he still got mythic in there.)"

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/263509.html

But when a man is that detached, that preoccupied by sex and music and aesthetics and his profession, that disinterested in personal ties, that "mythic," then his emotional awareness will probably suffer.

Also consider that Play Misty for Me constitutes an implicit critique of celebrity, masculine indulgence, and sexual indulgence. If you're a single man of some celebrity or stature who is accustomed to being flattered by women and who is thinking from a sexual-material perspective, then why not sleep with that attractive woman who arrived at your door with nothing on underneath her fur coat? If she desires you that badly, then why not reciprocate and enjoy yourself sexually at the same time? I don't think that those impulses are difficult to understand. Again, Dave Garver probably imagined that by placating her (and indulging himself simultaneously), the problem would naturally dissipate. Instead, he just feeds her hopes for a full-fledged, deeply connected relationship and she becomes obsessed. Romantic transactions are largely about whether two people's interpretations fall on the same page, whether they see eye-to-eye about their interest and what it may mean. When those interpretations are in sync, it can lead to romance, wondrous passion, even marriage, the types of situations that people dream about and that Hollywood has long glorified. But in real life, those interpretations often are not in sync and the result can be one person falling madly in love with another who doesn't really care or who isn't that interested after all. As longtime Time film critic Richard Schickel writes on page 251 of Clint Eastwood: A Biography, "Initially alluring—we are all inclined to believe that our true love is the key that will finally unlock a withdrawn lover’s secret heart—it ultimately maddens even people whose sanity is less delicately poised than hers."

Play Misty for Me perhaps amounted to one of the first films to ponder the emotional coldness and misinterpretation that can readily and realistically (if paradoxically) accompany romantic interest. Society—including classical Hollywood cinema and its conventions—lead people to believe that romantic interest naturally leads to romantic fulfillment, but there's often a disconnection between the two phenomena, largely because interpretations differ and people operate on different levels emotionally. As Dave Garver scolds Evelyn Draper at one point, "You read it that way," in a way that he wasn't reading matters at all.

And I would have called the police or even gone down and visited them and explained the situation.

But for a 6'4" male movie star, or even a regular 6'4" male citizen of any stripe, or any man, visiting the police—especially in the early seventies—because an attractive young woman really wants to keep sleeping with you probably seemed ridiculous, like an affront to one's masculine pride. Indeed, one can easily envision the snickers and "wimp" comments that one would at least imagine and perhaps actually encounter by going to the police, either from the policemen themselves or from certain associates and friends. Consider that when Dave tentatively broaches the problem with his fellow disc jockey, Sweet Al Monte, the man seems to laugh off the issues and offers the glib one-liner, "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." And when Eastwood broached this script with Universal in 1970, the studio's brass proved skeptical. As Eastwood told Michael Henry in the January 1985 edition of Positif, "Their second argument was that the situation wouldn't be believable: 'How could a big strong guy like you be threatened physically by a weak young woman?'" On the surface, Clint Eastwood (the movie star or persona) or any 6'4", athletic man (or any man, period) is not supposed to become befuddled by a pretty lean woman who lusts after him. Instinctively or unconsciously, Dave Garver's behavior and lack of responsiveness reflect the masculine expectation, societal expectation, and self-expectation that a man should be able to take care of his personal business and the women in his life on his own.

One of the more ironic and intriguing subtexts of Eastwood's career, a subtext that really emerged in 1971 with the release of The Beguiled (directed by Don Siegel) and Play Misty for Me, has been his exploration of masculine pride and its fallacies. He would further explore that theme in Breezy (1973), which Eastwood directed yet did not star in (William Holden starred instead), and then continued in this vein later in the decade, more subtly in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and more directly and sardonically in The Gauntlet (1977). Then in the early 1980s, these types of probings became more regular in his career. Masculine pride and male egotism can represent a major trap, as revealed by Play Misty for Me.

Maybe people just weren't as paranoid or aware of stalking in the 1970s. That's all I can think to explain how blase he seemed.

And circa 1970 (when the filmmakers shot Play Misty for Me), the idea that a woman would stalk a man to potentially murderous effect would have seemed even more bizarre.

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Concerning Dave's "expensive sports car", driving a 14 year old Jaguar in 1971 wasn't a sign of wealth. Sure, that car's worth a bundle today, but at the time of the film it was a used car. A special interest used car to be sure, but still a used car.

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