The Dead Pool (1988)

Director:

Buddy Van Horn

Writers (WGA):

Harry Julian Fink (characters) and
Rita M. Fink (characters) ...

Release Date:

13 July 1988 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Crime | Thriller

Tagline:

Dirty Harry Just Learned A New Game

Plot:

Dirty Harry Callahan must stop a sick secret contest to murder local celebrities, which includes himself as a target.

Plot Keywords:

Reporter | Murder | Prison | Mafia | Drug Overdose

Cast

Clint Eastwood	...	Insp. 'Dirty' Harry Callahan
Patricia Clarkson	...	Samantha Walker
Liam Neeson	...	Peter Swan
Evan C. Kim	...	Insp. Al Quan
David Hunt	...	Harlan Rook / Ed Butler
Michael Currie	...	Capt. Donnelly
Michael Goodwin	...	Lt. Ackerman
Darwin Gillett	...	Patrick Snow
Anthony Charnota	...	Lou Janero
Christopher P. Beale	...	Dist. Atty. Thomas McSherry
John Allen Vick	...	Lt. Ruskowski
Jeff Richmond	...	Freeway Reporter #1
Patrick N. Van Horn	...	Freeway Reporter #2 (as Patrick Van Horn)
Sigrid Wurschmidt	...	Freeway Reporter #3
Jim Carrey	...	Johnny Squares (as James Carrey)

Also Known As:

Dirty Harry in The Dead Pool (USA) (poster title)
Dödsspelet (Sweden) [sv]
Das Todesspiel (West Germany) [de]
Dirty Harry V - Das Todesspiel (West Germany) [de]
Dirty Harry i dødsspillet (Denmark) [da]
Dirty Harry na Lista Negra (Brazil) [pt]
Dirty Harry och dödspelet (Finland: Swedish title) [sv]
Holtbiztos tipp (Hungary) [hu]
L'inspecteur Harry est la dernière cible (France) [fr]
La dernière cible (France) [fr]
La lista negra (Spain) [es]
Les enjeux de la mort (Canada: French title) [fr]
Likainen Harry ja murhapooli (Finland) [fi]
Na Lista do Assassino (Portugal) [pt]
Pula smierci (Poland) [pl]
Scommessa con la morte (Italy) [it]
Stoihima thanatou (Greece) [el]

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Spain:18 | Canada:14+ (Ontario) | USA:R (certificate #29247) | Singapore:PG (cut) | Finland:K-16 (cut) (1989) | Finland:K-18 (uncut) (1988) | Singapore:NC-16 | Netherlands:12 | France:Unrated | Germany:16 (re-rating) (2008) | Brazil:14 | Australia:M | Norway:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | West Germany:18

Filming Locations:

1954 Mason Street, North Beach, San Francisco, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

The fifth of five movies starring Clint Eastwood as Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan.

Goofs:

Plot holes: Callahan and Quan as members of the San Francisco Police Dept. are being chased through the streets by a madman with a radio controlled car bomb, and they don't radio for help? They don't call for backup, relay their position, they don't have portable police radios or even use the supposed police radio in their car. The SFPD would have been all over that chase long before it ended.

Quotes:

[arguing with Johnny Squares]
Peter Swan: This is not a rip-off. It's a homage, you stupid...

Movie Connections:

Features Phantasm (1979)

Soundtrack:

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

Pool Of Dead Critics

This was altogether too simple for the critics back in '88 -- the whole idea was to point the barrel of the joke right back at the criticism.

Whereas the previous Dirty Harry features sat on a platform of utter contempt for bureaucrats and political correctness, here it's expanded to contempt for journalists, and especially the subspecies of 'media critics'. As if they couldn't make it clearer, a 'movie critic' is murdered, and treated as an occurrence of 'death of celebrities by threes'.

Yes, this is explicitly about movie making; the previous four movies suffered from poor supporting casts that only got in the way of the narrative. Here Van Horn deliberately employs good actors to play bad genre roles and thus turns the series on its head.

Along the way, we get a nice comment on "Bullitt", this time deflating the over touted car chase with a gag: an explosives laden model '63 Z06 (instead of a fastback Mustang, to drive home the point).

By this time, the .44 Magnum is treated as a character, with a 'voice' that rolls off the cityscape like thunder...the bad guys run at the mere sight of it. To put the icing on the 'man with the biggest gun' motif, Clint dispatches the villain with an earlier one liner ("you're S.O.L.") and a movie prop harpoon. The elaborate conflation of sexual double entendre, humor and cowboy justice went soaring over many heads. Arnold wishes he was half this funny in "Last Action Hero".

Ah, we miss Harry...but his retirement to Carmel was both serendipitous and necessary. By the end of this, he's killed off every cartoon bad guy left in the movie universe, paving the way for both the dimensional villains of "Die Hard" and its ilk, AND the hosannas bestowed on "Unforgiven".