Word: scorpios
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...SCORPIO...
...earned his nickname by succeeding at the hardest, ugliest jobs in the police department. Single-handedly he stops a bank robbery, and when everyone else fails, he talks down a suicide attempt. Harry goes on while his partners lie dead or maimed. So naturally, he leads the search for Scorpio. San Francisco's mysterious sniper-extortionist. And after frustrating set-backs and a trail of mutilated victims--one expects nothing less--Harry gets his chance with what has become his private devil...
...order. Harry succeeds in tracking down the killer, only to see him slip away under the cloak of snivelling libertarianism. The district attorney, backed by an intellectual judge from Berkeley, informs Harry that the criminal's rights were violated. This inverted bit of deus ex machina gives Scorpio time to terrorize a busload of children and sends Harry off again on the righteous pursuit of his maniac...
...archetypes, it occasionally threatens to parody the genre it is honoring. Harry is so cool, so invincible, he almost flattens into one-dimensionality. Irrelevant references to his deceased wife and some cute banter about his nickname fail to fill out his personality. And because of Dirty Harry's oversimplification, Scorpio's vicious insanity (brilliantly conveyed by Andy Robinson) becomes a mere caricature of evil-an archenemy of Batman playing for keeps...
...carnage is lovingly detailed: a swimming pool filling with blood, machine-gun fire splattering the city, knifings, beatings, kidnappings, and more. Much more. Siegel excels at wrapping his audience in horror. The bank robbery is a virtual ballet of gunfire and blood. The methodical irrationality of Scorpio's sniping blasts away one's logical defenses; the killer evokes instinctive terror...