slightlymad22 Play Misty For Me (1971) Plot In A Paragraph: A brief fling between a DJ (Eastwood) and an obsessed female fan takes a frightening turn when another woman enters the picture.In his directorial debut, Clint sets the action in Carmel (the town he would later become Mayor of) and keeps the tension on a knife edge. This is the perfect movie to sit side by side in his filmography alongside The Beguiled, as it's another slow burner, and once again Clint discovers the female of the species is more deadly than the male. It starts off with a classic Clint directorial trait. Some aerial photography (this time the seaside town of Carmel as opposed to the city) as the credits appear. Clint's character certainly doesn't help himself, as he repeatedly sleeps with a clearly unbalanced woman. Jessica Walters knocks it out of the park for me, she is superb. She should have been nominated for an Oscar in my humble opinion. I think this is a somewhat under rated movie, I think if Hitchcock directed this exact same movie frame for frame, it would be considered a classic. When Clint Eastwood told Universal executive Lew that he wanted to direct the film, Wasserman agreed immediately. Then, as Eastwood and his agent were walking down the hall, Wasserman called the agent back into his office. In exchange for letting Eastwood direct, they wanted to pay him less than his regular salary under his three picture deal. Eastwood understood, given that he was a first-time director. In the end, he made the movie for a percentage of the gross. He has said he was so keen on directing, he would have paid Universal for the opportunity. Given complete freedom by Universal Pictures, Clint finished shooting four days ahead of schedule and 50,000 dollars under budget. The movie grossed $10 million at the domestic Box Office, a massive success given its $950,000 budget.

sol- Along similar lines to 'Fatal Attraction', Clint Eastwood plays a late night disc jockey here who finds himself stalked by an obsessive female fan who thought that their one night stand was something more. This was the first feature film that Eastwood ever directed and his enthusiasm with taking the reigns behind the camera for the first time frequently shows. The opening aerial shots are breathtaking, there is a great subtle moment in which the stalker's arm ever so slowly creeps into the foreground of the frame as Eastwood and his actual girlfriend wander off into the distance, and the rapid cross-cut editing as Eastwood takes a frenzied drive near the end is great. Eastwood struggles a bit with pacing the material though, and for a thriller, the film noticeably lacks tension; there is enough time for Eastwood to leisurely make love to his girlfriend in the woods amid fearing what his stalker might do next! The casting of Jessica Walters as the stalker is also a mixed blessing. Considering that she is best known as a comedy actress nowadays, Walters demonstrates an impressive acting range, from casual and fun-loving to utterly obsessive, however, she stays in obsessive mode for most of the film and she often comes off as histrionic with her constant crying fits and rages. It is hard not to wonder what Lee Remick (who the studio originally wanted) would have done with the role. Never to mind, 'Play Misty for Me' has enough scattered effective moments that it never once bores even if it does not always live up to its reputation as a pivotal 'Fatal Attraction' precursor.

Scott LeBrun Clint Eastwood certainly learned his lessons well when it came to making his directorial debut, with this now legendary shocker. It may not be all that original, but when it comes to this kind of stalker melodrama, it definitely set a template for others to follow. The pacing wasn't always as tight as this viewer would have liked, but the script (written by Jo Heims and Dean Riesner, based on Heims' story) is often pretty snappy and the film is well cast, and well acted, from top to bottom.Clint also stars, playing late night jazz D. J. Dave Garver, who learns that he has a devoted admirer in the sexy Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter). They have a brief fling, but Dave finds that Evelyn will be extremely unwilling to let him go. She will also go over the deep end upon her discovery that Dave is busy making amends with another woman, an ex-girlfriend named Tobie (Donna Mills). The balance of the film shows what happens as Evelyns' actions threaten to completely derail Daves' life.Clint is good in the lead, and Mills is appealing in her part. John Larch is a delight as a sardonic police detective who gets involved when the deranged Evelyn assaults Daves' housekeeper Birdie (Clarice Taylor). All lending their valuable support are Jack Ging, Irene Hervey, and James McEachin. Clint also casts his directing mentor, and five time collaborator, Don Siegel, in the role of Murphy the bartender, and Siegel does a solid and engaging job. But the main reason that "Play Misty for Me" is so memorable is because Walter is so incredible. She is, by turns, amusing, sexy, clingy, pathetic, and ultimately psychotic.Well filmed, and situated in Clints' old stamping ground, the town of Carmel. In addition to the score by Dee Barton, there's plenty of great music along the way, with some sequences set at the Monterey Jazz Festival. There are brief, jarring bursts of violence, and a fairly effective and suspenseful finale.This has to rank as one of the most iconic films in this whole sub genre of thrillers.Seven out of 10.

lasttimeisaw Mr. Eastwood's director debut, a nocturnal thriller, viewed in retrospect, is approximate to an amalgam of FATAL ATTRACTION (1987) and MISERY (1990), a radio jockey Dave Garver (Eastwood) in Carmel, California, hooks up with a girl claims to be his groupie, Evelyn Draper (Walter), it is a no-strings-attached fling, at least, in Dave's perspective, but she turns out to be his worst nightmare with her maniac obsession towards him, especially when Dave starts to patch up his romance with his ex-girlfriend Tobie (Mills), she will never let that happen as long as she is in the land of the living.As a slasher with a twisted female psycho as the antagonist, the drawing power is predominantly contingent to Jessica Walter's performance, Evelyn is an out-and-out lunatic on the loose, it takes time and someone's shed blood for Dave to realise that, and obviously, Tobie is on the top of the list as her next victim, Dave has to confront his incubus face-to-face, and ends his peril once for all. Thankfully Walter is a fiery enforcer of chills and derangement, heightens the clinical symptoms of Evelyn's mental disorder - self-absorbing in her own delusional frame, denying the real world with her passive-aggressive fixation, occasionally exploding with polarised mood swings, self- destructive and extremely bloodthirsty - to flesh out an utterly unsympathetic character, still, she is less scarier than Bates in MISERY and less vitriolic than Close in FATAL ATTRACTION.Apart from that, there is really nothing special to cull from this low-budget work aiming for cheap thrill, it is a moderately engaging thriller, the diegesis is awfully predictable and the film itself is not pulpy enough to be worshiped as a cult classic. There are notable adjuncts, like the usage of live footages at the Monterey Jazz Festival and a music video treatment with Dave and Tobie's romantic getaway in the picturesque landscape accompanied by Roberta Flack's soulful THE FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE, which are wholly inconsistent with the film's tenor and plot-wise, they are so irrelevant.We know how Clint Eastwood loves jazz music, and the Erroll Garner's jazz standard "Misty" plays a key role in the story, if only deducing from this movie, one might never guess what a major cinema virtuoso Mr. Eastwood would mature into along with time, alas, it is always helpful to have some trial run to get familiar with a new line of work.