Do Ya Feel Lucky?

Well, do ya punk?

That's right -- these guys are Dirty Harry villains.

The scary fellow on the left is Andrew Robinson, shown here in his role as Garak, the Cardassian tailor, on Deep Space 9. He played the part of "Scorpio", the psycho-freak bad guy in the original "Dirty Harry." Talk about versatility -- Robinson was also great in his roles as Charley Varrick's dimwitted assistant, and as President John F. Kennedy in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

(By the way, "Charley Varrick" is one of those unheralded cinematic gems. I think the film's poster tagline was one of the best ever: "When he runs out of dumb luck, he always has genius to fall back on." And the movie also contains my favorite line about the art of persuasion.)

The other guys are all villains from the second Dirty Harry movie, "Magnum Force." Tim Matheson (shown here as Otter in "Animal House"), Hal Holbrook, and David Soul (shown here with Starsky) were some of the rogue cops who were assassinating scumbags without getting Clint's permission first. If you think Andrew Robinson is scary, though, I dare you to watch this.

(I thought about including Sondra Locke in this collection, but then remembered that people might read this blog while eating...and I didn't want to be responsible for anyone losing their lunch.)

So I guess that gives it away on the other puzzle, right?



Yep. These folks are Dirty Harry's partners.

First is Reni Santoni, who helped Harry in the Scorpio case. He's shown here in his role as "Poppy" on Seinfeld. (We'll talk more about him later.)

The guy lurking in the background of the second frame is Felton Perry, who was Harry's partner (Early Smith) in "Magnum Force". Unfortunately, he got blown up opening a mailbox. We'll talk more about him later, too.

Next is Tyne Daly, shown here as Cagney. (Or Lacey. I don't know, and frankly, don't care. I never watched the show...because T. J. Hooker was on at the same time.) She was Harry's partner in "The Enforcer". (He didn't really want to work with a chick, but he did the politically correct thing and went along with the idea. It didn't work out all that well for her, though.)

The last guy is Evan Kim, who is probably best known for "A Fistful of Yen", which we discussed briefly in our February 29th post. He was Al Quan, Dirty Harry's partner in "The Dead Pool."

So there you have all of our Dirty Harry connections for the day. All that remains is to explore a couple of other surprising relationships among these folks.

The first things I wanted to mention are the rest of the Star Trek connections. Besides Garak on DS9, several of these other folks have ties to the Roddenberry universe. The guy pictured here (with his lovely android companion) is none other than James Daly, who happens to be Tyne's father. (In the interest of time, we shall postpone the discussion of why someone would name their child after the pointy part of a fork. If I had to choose between being named Tyne or, say, Dweezil--I think I'd opt for being a Zappa.) Anyway, in Daly's Trek episode, the girl turned out to be part computer, so of course Kirk had to destroy her. We would expect nothing less.

You may have noticed that the puzzle picture of Felton Perry is from the movie "Robocop", which starred Ronny Cox, who has also appeared in a Federation uniform. And there we have our connection to the Banjo Boy I mentioned yesterday, since it was none other than Mr. Cox who strummed along with our genetically-challenged backwoods musician.

Anyway, the dude standing in front of Perry in the Robocop photo above is a guy named Miguel Ferrer -- which is what makes the whole Kevin Bacon thing really cook here. You see, he is not only a fine actor himself (and has appeared in a Star Trek movie), but he also happens to be the son of Mr. José Ferrer.

You may know José from the classic "Cyrano de Bergerac". (I'm talking about the 1950 version, not the abomination with Gerard Depardieu. Next to Tattoo, Depardieu is probably the Frenchman with the most talent for ruining any project with which he is associated. He's the European version of Matthew McConaughey.)

Even if you haven't seen "Cyrano", you're probably familiar with the plot, since it was remade as "Roxanne" with Steve Martin and Fred Willard (the guy who narrates the current crop of Old Navy commercials.) "Roxanne" isn't bad.

Anyway, the Ferrers provide the connection we were looking for. Felton Perry (DH's second partner) was in Robocop with Miguel Ferrer, whose dad (José) played the theatrical director in the hilarious movie "Enter Laughing", which also starred -- you guessed it -- Reni Santoni (DH's first partner)! Wake up and smell the bacon, my friends! (And if you look closely at the picture above, you'll also notice Fred Rutherford/Mel Cooley, who doesn't have any Star Trek connection that I know of, but is always good for a laugh.)

Here's a clip from "Enter Laughing". If you have time, you might want to rewind it to the start, where you'll see a very young Rob Reiner as one of other the auditioners. But I hope you'll at least take the time to enjoy the part it's queued up to.

Anyway, thanks again for playing. And have a great day!