The Basic Plot in Five Words or Less: Go ahead - make my day.
My Basic Ramblings: This is the movie with that oh-so-famous line. If you think about it, it's kind of odd that a whole series of movies is characterized by a line that only appears in the fourth film. (What did people say before this line? It's firmly embedded itself into the American vernacular - just this morning I saw a commercial where a little kid says "Go ahead - pack my lunch.") Though I suppose it's snappier and easier to say than the whole "This is a .44 magnum, the biggest frickin' gun in America" or however that particular speech from Dirty Harry goes.
This movie also features Clint saying "Nobody, I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hot dog," a line Chris loves and I don't understand. What's wrong with ketchup on a hot dog?
Another Brush With Fame: The actor who played the cop who helps Clint once all the murders start, Mark Keyloun, started working at Rochester General Hospital not long before my husband stopped working there. Apparently he was in a few movies, paid his dues in Hollywood, and came to Rochester to enter the exciting world of hospital work. (Chris and he never worked together, though.)
So this movie involves Sondra Locke murdering the guys who raped her and her sister ten years earlier. So you know right off the bat that this is not happy, light, fun fare. (Even if it does take place at a fair.) There're whole subplots that are never finished (Clint goes to a mobster's granddaughter's wedding, basically gives the mobster a heart attack that kills him, he's chased and shot at once, and then - nothing. The whole plot line's dropped).
There's one potentially confusing scene, the one where Clint's in the woods doing his target practice and this guy sneaks up on him. My instantaneous reaction was, naturally, "It's the 'I gots to know' guy from Dirty Harry! What gives?!" Chris informed me that not only is this guy in Dirty Harry and Sudden Impact, he was also in Magnum Force (the pimp) and The Enforcer (Mustafa, the head bad guy). It was most confusing. I wonder if there's a record for the greatest number of different characters played by a single individual in a series of related movies. If there is, this's got to be it.
I've been trying to figure out where they got the title of this movie, and I decided it came from the relationship between the last living rapist and the carousel unicorn at the end. Sudden impact, y'know, that sorta thing. (Hey, if you can come up with a better explanation, let me know.)