The Dead Pool (1988) - The highly entertaining last Dirty Harry movie

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An original, virile poster for Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

QUICK REVIEW:

Fame catches up with Detective Harry Callahan of the SFPD, who gets a new, Asian martial arts expert partner and a new assignment: A celebrity-killing serial killer maniac.

Dead Pool is a highly entertaining, appealingly compact sequel, (at just 91 minutes it is both the crime action movie series' last and shortest entry). 
It is definitely better than the first of the four sequels, the series' most commercially successful film, Magnum Force (1973). - Because the 80s truly shine through, and also because the film presents an imaginative story with some fun characters: Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)) as a heroin junkie rock star; Liam Neeson (Schindler's List (1993)) as an a-hole movie director, and Patricia Clarkson (Six Feet Under (2002-05)) as a sweet blond. - And Guns N' Roses cameos in the film.
Clint Eastwood (Dirty Harry (1971)), the center of it all, is in physical top shape here, where he SPOILER ultimately gets to harpoon the villain!
The Dead Pool is written by Steve Sharon, based on a story by him, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw (Firefox (1982), scientific advisors, both), and directed by stunt man and stunt coordinator on more than 100 films Buddy Van Horn, who also directed three: Besides Dead Pool, the other two are also Eastwood vehicles; Any Which Way You Can (1980) and Pink Cadillac (1989).

Relate review:

Dirty Harry (1971) - Eastwood's great, signature renegade cop character comes to life 
Buddy Van Horn: Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business!

A young Patricia Clarkson in Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

An equally young Jim Carrey also in Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

A flying car --- a trick that never grows old --- in Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: 31 mil. $
Box office: 37.9 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[Without international figures, it is not possible to tell if Dead Pool made a profit. It seems likely it just broke even theatrically or perhaps even incurred a minor loss.]

What do you think of The Dead Pool?
And the other four Dirty Harry movies?

Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business!

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Clint Eastwood looks most ornery on this very 1970's colored (brown) poster for Buddy Van Horn's Any Which Way You Can

Trucker Philo Beddoe agrees to a lucrative fist fight with Jack Wilson from the East Coast, but when the two realize that it's going to be a life-threatening ordeal, they try to get out of the arrangement. - With gangsters and rockers in pursuit!

For a film about a defecating monkey and a motorcycle gang with wigs, (among other things), Any Which Way You Can is a formidable film. It is the very lowbrow action comedy follow-up to the big hit, James Fargo's Every Which Way But Loose (1978), also about Clint Eastwood (Pale Rider (1985)) as Beddoe and his buddy Clyde the orangutan, and it is of exactly the same quality as the first film.
Any Which Way is a film with lots of funny gags and silliness, irreverence and a down-to-earth entertainment style that I don't know where's gone today. Back in 1980, bikers, truckers, an orangutan, Eastwood and plenty of jawbreakers were all you needed for a huge commercial hit.
A bit of trivia: Clyde the orangutan from the original had gotten too big and possibly dangerous to star in the sequel, and the new Clyde died two weeks after shooting the film due to a cerebral hemorrhage, which a rumor says stemmed from cruelty by its trainer.
The film is written by Stanford Sherman (The Ice Pirates (1984)) and directed by debuting Buddy Van Horn (Cadillac (1989)), previously a stunt man and second-unit director.  

Related post:

Buddy Van Horn: The Dead Pool (1988) - The highly entertaining last Dirty Harry movie

Watch a short TV trailer for the film here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 70.6 mil. $ (North America alone)
=Big hit (returned more than 4.70 times its cost)
[Any Which Way You Can was released 17 December (USA) and runs 116 minutes. Shooting took place in and around May 1980 in California, including Los Angeles, asl well as in Wyoming and New York. It opened #1 to an 8 mil. $ first weekend in North America. The first weekend gross was down from the first film's 10.2 mil. $; its final North America gross down from 85.1 mil. $ but still huge. The film's foreign results are regrettably not reported online. Glen Campbell's title tune was a Top 10 on the country music charts. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to a notch harder than this one. Van Horn returned with The Dead Pool (1988), Eastwood's final Dirty Harry movie, working as a stuntman and stunt coordinator in the 8 years between the two directing gigs. Eastwood returned in Firefox (1982). Any Which Way You Can is rotten at 20 % with no critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Any Which Way You Can?