Page 92 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

that most undesirable affliction - the mundane nine-to-five existence, which leads to an embittered
outlook at this thing called life. At the other end of the spectrum, audience members may relate to the
victims of crime and so desire a Superman to swoop down and eradicate the problem.
The crimes committed in these films are so extreme that a knee-jerk response by the audience is
required for them to justify and, thereby, accept the brutal lengths these cops will go to bring down
dangerous drug kingpins or psycho killers. The crimes in these films feed on the paranoia audiences
already feel - paranoia that is spoon fed to them by the media regurgitating crime statistics, murder
in the streets and endless threats of terrorism.

AMERICAN ENFORCERS

But if audience members stopped and closely analysed the personalities of American cinematic
law enforcers like Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle, Frank Bullitt or Harry Callahan, they may actually (and
rightfully) be shocked at these cops' borderline psychotic behaviour. In fact, these cops are remarkably
close in spirit to Paul Schrader/Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese,
1976). Each of them - the cops, Bickle - 'God's lonely man' unhappily embroiled within the 'system',
personifying a 'real rain' ready, and more than willing, to 'wash the scum off the streets'. However,
cops can pop a bullet in a brain in the name of the law, while Bickle remains on the periphery of
edict.
But maybe rogue cops in American cinema during the early 1970s were not really psychotic as
much as they were right-wing vigilantes - particularly Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (Don Siegel,
1971). As Peter Lev has noted:

[Harry's] agenda is, in an American context, right-wing, conservative, law and order. In the
second half of [Dirty Harry], Harry disobeys a series of orders and solves the Scorpio threat
using his own values and methods. He becomes a police vigilante. Does the nightmare of
Scorpio justify a cop unrestrained by law or government?'

Because messages in films like Dirty Harry require visceral reactions to crimes so unbelievably heinous,
the answer is a populist yes.
Ironically, during the early 1970s, these conservative cops were as easy to relate to by the liberal
left - that is the hippie movement in America, which advocated individualism, 'doing your own thing'
and bucking the 'system'.
Conservatively, from a male audience perspective, the nightmare of a psycho killer or a drug
dealer infecting the streets is enough to justify vigilantism - especially under the umbrella of the law.
A film like The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) almost seems to favour giving individual
cops such as Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle (and his partner Sonny Russo) autonomous power to exercise
the casual violence needed to get the job done efficiently. Society accepts this type of behaviour in
exchange for social order.
In terms of modern American images of the rogue cop, Peter Yates' film Bullitt (1969) can be
seen as one of the first cop films made specifically for male fantasy. Here, Steve McQueen portrayed

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