Trivia for
Magnum Force (1973) More at IMDbPro »

• One of the death squad officers is named Red Astrachan - which is a popular variety of apple grown in central California.
  
  
• Film debut of Robert Urich (Officer Mike Grimes).
  
  
• The motorcycles used by the "death squad" cops through most of the movie are Moto Guzzi Eldorado police bikes. However, Triumph 500cc T100 Tiger motorcycles were used during the scenes on the aircraft carrier at the end. These would have been favoured by the stunt riders as they are lighter and easier to handle than the Moto Guzzis.
  
  
• Clint Eastwood declined the director's seat, and Ted Post stepped in, although interviews with Eastwood and books about him have indicated that he and second unit director Buddy Van Horn actually directed more of the film than Post did.
  
  
• David Soul's performance as Officer John Davis, one of the vigilante cops, led to his being cast as Detective Ken Hutchinson in the classic cop series "Starsky and Hutch" (1975).
  
  
• The SFPD range where Harry meets the four "rookies" is in reality the Oakland (California) Police Department's indoor range. It's now closed, partly due to the many "Dirty Harry" fans who kept trying to sneak into it, but mostly due to indoor inhaled lead problems.
  
  
• Two deleted scenes help explain why Harry grows to suspect John Davis and his pals with the killings of Charlie McCoy and the mobsters. One occurs between the funeral flight for McCoy and the combat championship; after the flight Harry and Davis drive from the airport to a bowling alley for a few drinks; a black youth is suddenly chased outside and assaulted by four toughs; Davis attacks the toughs while Harry dispatches one with his beer mug. After subduing the robbers Davis harangues a group of eyewitnesses for letting such crimes take place; Harry witnesses Davis' harangue and sees in it his own approach to crime fighting, albeit far more severe. Later, after examining the bullet from Davis' gun at the combat championship range, Harry checks on old issues of a police magazine, in which are articles condemning the revolving door justice allowed by liberal politics - articles authored by the four rookie cops. These scenes were deleted presumably because they were judged to be "padding" and not necessary to establishing Harry's suspicion of the four rookie cops.
  
  
• In the film, Carol McCoy hits on Harry after explaining the circumstances behind her divorce from Charlie. She pulls close to kiss Harry when her rambunctious children's play interrupts them both; a phone call from Earlington Smith to Harry (pertaining to their liquor store stakeout) then forces him to cut short their date and extricates him from a clearly awkward situation. However a publicity photo circulated overseas shows Harry and Carol relaxed and kissing - a different version of this scene where Harry succumbs to Carol's advances was reportedly filmed (and which would have changed the dynamic of Harry's relationship with Charlie) but discarded; it was from this discarded scene that the publicity photo came.
  
  
• Directly after the scene in the garage where Callahan is threatened by the motorcycle cops, the cycles drove out and every single one of them crashed. Clint Eastwood said, "I've been threatened by the Keystone Kops."
  
  
• According to writer John Milius, the reason the sex scene with the Asian woman is in the script is because Clint Eastwood received many fan letters from Asian women that contained sexual propositions.
  
  
• Actor 'Mitch Ryan' plays a character who gets killed during the film. The day his death scene was scheduled to shoot, Ryan was ill. He brought a doctor's note that read Ryan was "too sick to die" that day.
  
  
• Highest body count of all 'Dirty Harry' movies at 30.
  
  
• The two escort carriers were ex Rabaul (which was acquired by the navy after WWII but never commissioned and never saw service of any kind) and ex USS Badoeng Strait. (which was completed too late to serve in WWII but saw action in the Pacific - including combat in the Korean War) Both were scrapped in late 1972 in Beverly Hills CA
  
  
• On April 22, 1974, 2 men robbed a HIFI shop in Ogden Utah and made the 5 hostages drink Draino and then shot them in the head. The next day an unnamed informant called in a tip to Ogden City Police with information that would help wrap up the case much sooner than police had anticipated. The informant, an airman stationed at Hill Air Force Base, told police that he had overheard two of his fellow airmen talking about robbing a store and killing witnesses utilizing the Death By Drano method by which the Pimp murders the Prostitute in Magnum Force (1973), which the two had seen prior to the Crime. Two of the hostages miraculously survived. The crime would forever be known as The Hi-Fi Murders.
  
  

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