Harry Guardino

Ex-crime reporter Raymond St. Ives has elegant taste, a yen for gambling and an unfinished novel in his typewriter. When he crosses paths with sinister Oliver Procane, he gets something else: a price on his head. St. Ives is a hard-boiled update of classic mystery thrillers, particularly The Maltese Falcon. Charles Bronson is smoothly right as the clever title character, at odds with petty crooks and high-rollers, among them Maximilian Schell as a whining lackey and Jacqueline Bisset as a modern femme fatale.

Trapped by his image in 1976, Clint Eastwood resurrected his Dirty Harry character for a third go-round (out of a total of five) in this potboiler story in which the San Francisco detective takes on a group of revolutionary kids. Tyne Daly costars as a female cop who partners with the reluctant Harry Callahan, and she does very well by a role created merely to underscore and articulate the hero's various virtues. Inside the wrapping are good performances by the two leads.

Whether or not you can sympathize with its fascistic/vigilante approach to law enforcement, Dirty Harry (directed by star Clint Eastwood's longtime friend and directorial mentor, Don Siegel) is one hell of a cop thriller. The movie makes evocative use of its San Francisco locations as cop Harry Callahan (Eastwood) tracks the elusive "Scorpio killer" who has been terrorizing the city by the Bay.

Thery're back, Philo Beddoe, the easygoing truck driver and bare-knuckle brawler, and his 165-pound orangutan friend Clyde get into more mischief in this faster and funnier sequel to Every Which Way But Loose. Clint Eastwood starts again as Philo, now thinking he'll retire "from" fighting. But a new contender lures him back - and mobsters kidnap Philo's girl (Sondra Locke) to ensure he'll turn up for the showdown. Ruth Gordon as Ma, Geoffrey Lewis as Orville and those hapless motorcycle morons called the Black Widows all return in fine form.