Where to watch Dirty Harry (1971)
Dirty Harry is available to stream in CA on Crave. It can also be rented or bought from AppleTV and Amazon.
A ruthless sniper terrorizes San Francisco, forcing a hard-nosed detective to pursue him through a tense investigation. The detective’s uncompromising methods bring him into conflict with official procedures as the case becomes a dangerous battle of wills.
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon, Andrew Robinson, John Larch, John Mitchum, Mae Mercer, Lyn Edgington, Ruth Kobart, Woodrow Parfrey, Josef Sommer
Stream | CA
Rent or Buy
Trivia & production notes
- The script was originally titled Dead Right and set in New York City before being relocated to San Francisco, with an ending where a police sniper rather than the protagonist shoots the killer.
- John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, and Burt Lancaster all turned down or were offered the Harry Callahan role before Clint Eastwood was cast.
- Producer Jennings Lang sold the film rights to ABC Television when he couldn't find an actor willing to play Harry Callahan, but ABC deemed the script too violent for television and the rights were sold to Warner Bros.
- Burt Lancaster rejected the lead role because he believed the film's violent, end-justifies-the-means morality contradicted his personal beliefs about collective responsibility and individual rights.
- Paul Newman turned down the role but suggested that Clint Eastwood would be perfect for it because he felt the character was too right-wing for himself.
- Andy Robinson, a relatively unknown actor, was cast as Scorpio after Eastwood saw him perform in a play called Subject to Fits and recommended him to director Don Siegel.
- Robinson's portrayal of Scorpio was so disturbing that he received death threats after the film's release and was forced to get an unlisted telephone number.
- Robinson, a pacifist who opposes firearms, would flinch uncomfortably whenever required to use a gun during filming, forcing Siegel to briefly halt production and send him for weapons training.
- Screenwriter John Milius owns one of the actual Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolvers used during principal photography, which was loaned to the National Firearms Museum in Virginia as of March 2012.
- Clint Eastwood insisted on reverting to the original script after multiple rewrites had added elements like Marine snipers, which he felt undermined the central story of the detective pursuing the killer.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article Dirty Harry, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.
Also available in
This title is listed in these countries too — pick one to see its services and prices.