Play Misty for Me (1971)

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills, John Larch, James McEachin, Irene Hervey, Jack Ging, Clarice Taylor. [R]

What Fatal Attraction would later get wrong, this one gets right. Coastal California radio disc jockey Eastwood plays the jazz standard “Misty” upon request by a female fan who often comes-a-callin’, then shacks up with her after a “chance” meeting at a bar. It’s a casual thing, he assures himself, but she’s hardly on the same page, and when he rejects her and returns to an old flame (Mills), the fan’s obsession turns to stalking, psychotic mood swings, and violence. Effective thriller can linger too long on travelogue-style establishment shots and transition scenes—there’s even a romantic interlude that looks like an early-80s soft rock music video—but elsewhere, tension is ratcheted up just by focusing on the faces of the leads, to the point that stares are as chilling as knives, even in scenes when both are wielded (including its proto-slasher finale). Eastwood’s directorial debut, and although the film is a little shaggy in the shot selection and dramatic style that would become more consistent later in his career, it has the feel of experimentation and aspiration, not uncertainty, and he gets a substantial performance out of Walter. Don Siegel, who’d directed a few Eastwood pictures before and after this (including two more from 1971, The Beguiled and Dirty Harry), cameos as a bartender.

74/100