Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry
Theatrical release poster by Bill Gold
Directed by	Don Siegel
Produced by	Don Siegel Robert Daley
Screenplay by	Harry Julian Fink R.M. Fink Dean Riesner John Milius (uncredited)
Story by	Harry Julian Fink R.M. Fink Jo Heims Uncredited : Terrence Malick
Starring	Clint Eastwood Andy Robinson Harry Guardino Reni Santoni John Vernon
Music by	Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography	Bruce Surtees
Edited by	Carl Pingitore
Production company	Malpaso Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	December 23, 1971 (1971-12-23)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$4 million
Box office	$36 million

Dirty Harry is a 1971 American action thriller film produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan. The film drew upon the actual case of the Zodiac Killer as the Callahan character seeks out a similar vicious psychopath.

Dirty Harry was a critical and commercial success and set the style for a whole genre of police films. It was followed by four sequels: Magnum Force in 1973, The Enforcer in 1976, Sudden Impact in 1983 (directed by Eastwood himself) and The Dead Pool in 1988.

In 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant."

A psychopathic serial killer calling himself "Scorpio" (Andy Robinson) shoots a young woman in a San Francisco swimming pool from a nearby rooftop. SFPD Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) finds a blackmail message demanding the city pay him $100,000 whilst also promising that for each day his demand is refused he will commit a murder; his next victim will be "a Catholic priest or a nigger." The chief of police and the mayor (John Vernon) assign the inspector to the case, despite his reputation for violent solutions.