good back-story, and good acting

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I wasn't much of a Clint Eastwood fan over the years but now am appreciating him more as he has mellowed with age. I found a DVD set of seven of his early movies at my public library and "Play Misty" is one of them.The very beginning has a long aerial shot of the California coastline and towards the end of that shot lingers on one home on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean. That location is key to the story and especially to the end of the story.Clint Eastwood is disk jockey Dave with a local radio program. Seems just about every day he gets a call with a particular request, "play Misty for me." One day after work he is at his favorite bar and encounters an attractive woman. She is Jessica Walter as Evelyn, we soon find out she is the one who calls with the request. Being a suitably horny single man he takes the bait and they end up in bed together. She seems very nice but when she starts to show up unannounced at his place, with groceries, and asking how he likes his steak cooked, it becomes clear that she is an obsessed fan. Dave finds this annoying at first, then downright dangerous. Then things are complicated by his old girlfriend coming back to town. All in all a worthwhile Clint Eastwood movie.SPOILERS: The ending. As Evelyn's intrusions get more and more worrisome Dave finds that she has gone to the girlfriend's house and tied her up. Dave arrives and in struggling with Evelyn throws a single punch, the only one in the whole movie, she falls through the back plate glass window, over the back porch railing, and down the cliff to her death.

The forerunner to both Fatal Attraction and Misery, Clint Eastwood thriller Play Misty For Me marks a brief change in direction for the star, who puts away his six-shooter to play a victim for a change. Eastwood is Dave, a smooth-talking radio DJ who makes the mistake of having a fling with obsessed fan Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter). But when Dave wants to call it quits with the feisty fruit-loop, preferring to rekindle his relationship with much saner old flame Tobie (Donna Mills), crazy Evelyn dials the lunacy up to eleven.Eastwood's directorial debut, Play Misty For Me shows the actor to be so much more than a squint, some stubble and a grimace: his first feature film at the helm is a very accomplished thriller that delivers solid storytelling, a superb villainess (Walter is truly frightening in a performance that rivals those of Glenn Close and Kathy Bates in the aforementioned classics), some terrific suspense, and even a spot of rather nasty violence, with a frenzied knife attack on Dave's house cleaner every bit as cringe-worthy as the hobbling scene in Misery.Admittedly, the film does lose some momentum in the second act, where Clint gets a little self-indulgent, with a romantic montage scene that plays out to Roberta Flack's 'The First Time I Ever I Saw Your Face' in its entirety (great song, mind you), followed by some musical footage from the Monterey Jazz Festival. Things do pick up, however, for a rousing finalé that sees Evelyn in full on whack-job mode, threatening Tobie and getting super stabby with Dave before he finally clobbers the bitch in the chops, sending her plummeting through a window, over a cliff, and into the sea.

Clint Eastwood certainly learned his lessons well when it came to making his directorial debut, with this now legendary shocker. It may not be all that original, but when it comes to this kind of stalker melodrama, it definitely set a template for others to follow. The pacing wasn't always as tight as this viewer would have liked, but the script (written by Jo Heims and Dean Riesner, based on Heims' story) is often pretty snappy and the film is well cast, and well acted, from top to bottom.Clint also stars, playing late night jazz D. J. Dave Garver, who learns that he has a devoted admirer in the sexy Evelyn Draper (Jessica Walter). They have a brief fling, but Dave finds that Evelyn will be extremely unwilling to let him go. She will also go over the deep end upon her discovery that Dave is busy making amends with another woman, an ex-girlfriend named Tobie (Donna Mills). The balance of the film shows what happens as Evelyns' actions threaten to completely derail Daves' life.Clint is good in the lead, and Mills is appealing in her part. John Larch is a delight as a sardonic police detective who gets involved when the deranged Evelyn assaults Daves' housekeeper Birdie (Clarice Taylor). All lending their valuable support are Jack Ging, Irene Hervey, and James McEachin. Clint also casts his directing mentor, and five time collaborator, Don Siegel, in the role of Murphy the bartender, and Siegel does a solid and engaging job. But the main reason that "Play Misty for Me" is so memorable is because Walter is so incredible. She is, by turns, amusing, sexy, clingy, pathetic, and ultimately psychotic.Well filmed, and situated in Clints' old stamping ground, the town of Carmel. In addition to the score by Dee Barton, there's plenty of great music along the way, with some sequences set at the Monterey Jazz Festival. There are brief, jarring bursts of violence, and a fairly effective and suspenseful finale.This has to rank as one of the most iconic films in this whole sub genre of thrillers.Seven out of 10.

A brief fling between a male disc jockey (Clint Eastwood) and an obsessed female fan (Jessica Walter) takes a frightening, and perhaps even deadly turn when another woman enters the picture.I appreciate that Eastwood's directorial debut was a thriller, rather than a western or drama or action film. He took a bold turn from what people might have expected and excelled at it. Over forty years later (2015), the film holds up very well and it really needs to be revisited by people in light of Eastwood's subsequent success (not to mention Walter's rising star from "Arrested Development").I enjoyed this greatly, and may need to add it to my personal collection... especially if a blu-ray exists.