Trivia for
Sudden Impact (1983)

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• Although Clint Eastwood made the phrase "Go ahead, make my day" famous, it was originally used a year earlier by actor Gary Swanson in the movie Vice Squad (1982). Swanson, who played a Hollywood vice cop, said the line, "Go ahead scumbag, make my day," to actor Wings Hauser, who played a pimp, during a bust.
  
  
• Body count: 18 (including Threlkis)
  
  
• The movie's line "Go ahead, make my day" was voted as the #6 movie quote by the American Film Institute
  
  

• The famous "Make My Day" sequence was filmed at a Burger Island restaurant in San Francisco. It is now a McDonald's.
  
  
• The only Dirty Harry film not primarily set in San Francisco.
  
  
• The highest-grossing of the Dirty Harry film series.
  
  
• The scene where Callahan chases the robber in the senior citizen bus was filmed at and around the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, California. This area was heavily damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake on 17 October 1989. Many of the buildings in this scene had to be razed, due to extensive earthquake damage.
  
  
• The handgun used by Harry Callahan, the .44 automag, was extremely difficult to acquire. The studio eventually went to the gun's designer who, although retired, had enough parts in his basement to build two guns for the production. They were serial numbered "Clint 1" and "Clint 2". One was modified to function with blanks for use in the film, the other was left in its original configuration so that Eastwood could fire it at a pistol range to familiarize himself with its function.
  
  
• The reason the film was made at all had to do with a survey. Warner Bros. was preparing to release the Sean Connery James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) and they took a survey. They asked movie goers to name an actor and a famous part that actor played. Clint Eastwood as "Dirty Harry" scored so high in the survey results, the studio told Eastwood it would be "open" to distributing another "Dirty Harry" film. Eastwood made this film as a result of that meeting.
  
  
• Clint Eastwood is seen wearing Gargoyles sunglasses, which would later surface in The Terminator (1984).
  
  

• SPOILER: The production company had to keep a diver on the set during the filming of the climactic scene filmed on a pier in which Callahan shoots the bad guy. When the gun would jam, which it did frequently, Eastwood would in a fit of rage throw the gun a considerable distance into the water. The diver would retrieve the gun, which would be dried out, repaired, and reloaded for the next take.
  
  

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