Dirty Harry - A Masochistic Beating
Then … Scorpio has had enough of being stalked. Bizarrely, he offers to pay a thug $200 to beat him up so that he can frame Callahan to get him off his back. The thug watches him approach their meeting spot, making his way past some large unusual-looking equipment.
… in 1972 … CitySleuth thanks reader CDL who recognized the building on the hill behind Scorpio as City College’s Cloud Hall and was able to identify this location. It was filmed at the old Elkton Shops in the Muni Ocean Division Bus Yard near Balboa Park (map). In the 1972 image below, Ocean Avenue is at bottom right and San Jose Avenue at upper left. The arrow at right points to that same equipment, still there a year after the movie was filmed, in a storage area at the north-west corner of the facility. In a comment below, reader Notcom has identified the equipment as an abandoned 40 foot tall Steel Refuse Burner, aka an incinerator.
… in 1971 … Reader CDL also contributed this closer look at the incinerator in a photo taken the year the movie was filmed.
… in 1979 … by the end of the decade the Elkton Shops had been torn down to make way for this brand new Muni Metro Rail Center. The arrow points to where the storage area and incinerator used to be. A bus yard covers the area where the old Shops used to be.
… and Now, the facility today, now known as the Muni Maintenance Green Division, has hardly changed in the 40 plus years since it was built. I-280 passes by alongside it and that’s Balboa Park on the right across Ocean Avenue.
Here’s Cloud Hall at City College, seen in the distance behind Scorpio at the top of the post, the visual clue to the beating location’s identification.
Then and Now … To see exactly where the old Shops were, toggle between this 1969 aerial view and today’s site by clicking or tapping the image below.
Then … Scorpio is standing on a wooden platform that ran alongside the north wall of the Elkton Shops. He spots the thug waiting for him in the shadows at the bottom of a set of steps. Note the large multi-paned windows and a downspout in the concrete wall next to him…
… aerial view … in this c. 1960s aerial photo we see a good view of the north side of the Shops and in particular the same multi-paned windows and downspout. The elevated wooden platform, partially in shadow, can also be seen, and too the incinerator. (Compare this view of the Shops to the similar 1972 image above).
Down below, urged on between blows by Scorpio, the thug more than earns his $200. He even throws in a brutal kick at the end … “This one’s on the house!”. Ouch.
Next we see the media surrounding Scorpio as he is wheeled down a hospital corridor. They hang onto his every word as he names Harry Callahan as the one responsible for his condition. A later scene was identifiably filmed at San Francisco General Hospital on Potrero Avenue so this most likely was also filmed there.