There is a sequence very close to the climax of Misty in which Clint Eastwood’s character and his friends attend a rockin’ pop band festival. For almost five minutes, they and the audience listen to various groups perform. The camera moves quickly from instrument to instrument, and singer to singer, trying desperately to make the scene entertaining, when in reality, all the audience can think about is the dire situation Eastwood’s character is in. The tension and paranoia, which the film has done such a great job building, is almost destroyed in these five long minutes. But luckily the story saves it, and other than that sequence at the Monterey Jazz Festival, there is not much else in Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me not to like.
The director Eastwood plays Dave Garver, a disc jockey whose all-night show features instrumental records and winsome poems. He hopes to one day make it in the big city.
The same girl calls every night and asks him to play “Misty” for her, some nights he does, but most of the time, he accepts the call as a daily pattern and moves forward with the show. Then after work, he drinks for free at the bars he mentions on the air. He had a serious sweetheart once, but she left, and now he conquers (or at least tries to) all the women he comes across. One night he picks up a girl at the bar (she set up their interaction beforehand), and it turns out that she is the “Misty” girl. She is an avid fan of the show, and oh yeah, she’s crazy. She’s literally psychotic. After their first night of romance, Dave tells her he’ll call her, but that’s not good enough. She proceeds to force herself into every part of Dave’s life, fueled by jealousy, and the poor man doesn’t know how to handle it. Then to further complicate the problem, his past lover, Tobie (Donna Mills), comes back. There is nothing he would rather do than marry her, and he tries his best to stop fooling around, but the new girl, and her knives, have something else in mind.
Misty is no Psycho when it comes to scares, or plot, or overall quality, but in respect to its ability of grabbing the audience’s attention and holding onto it, it is just as successful. To maintain the suspense and horror of the situation, the film doesn’t depend much on surprises. Though there are certainly some surprises, they don’t add much to the terror, which is supplied mainly by the creepy girl who we learn is capable of anything.
This marked Eastwood’s directorial debut – a fact you wouldn’t pick up on unless you knew it – and it is obvious that he had learned a lot from working with directors such as Sergio Leone and Don Siegel (who directed Eastwood’s four previous films, and had a small part as the bartender in this one). Play Misty for Me lacks subtlety in its approach. From start to finish, it is a terror-filled roller coaster that never once slows down. Even the jazz festival scene is booming with energy. Though it is supplied by the musicians and not the story, it is energy nonetheless.
Misty revolves around a character played hauntingly by Jessica Walters. Her name is Evelyn. She is unbearably dominating, irrepressible, and spine-chilling on the screen, and not even the great Clint Eastwood can suppress her, and his character is totally clueless. He has no idea how to control her. First, recognizing her obvious psychological disbalance, he tries to help her as best he can. Obviously it doesn’t work, she incorrectly interprets his kindness as a sign of affection, and that pattern multiplies in magnitude throughout the rest of the film – the crying turns to yelling, and the yelling turns into some kind of an attack. What’s worse is that for Evelyn, any confrontation must turn into an immediate apology. Dave can’t get away! For a majority of the movie, it seems as if there is no hope in sight for the disc jockey. That is unless he kills her, but his character is certainly incapable of that.
This film is unique in that Eastwood doesn’t let his character release any emotion until the end of the film, which kills us! And yet, it is amazing to see how calm and how passive Dave seems to be. Misty is built as one of those movies that the audience can really put themselves into, and perhaps the most entertaining part about its structure is that for every decision Dave makes, we can each think of a hundred things we would have done in his shoes differently. But when it comes to Evelyn, there is simply no solution.
