A dark thriller played out in the glare of theCalifornia sun, Play Misty for Me presages Fatal Attraction by sixteen years; in its unassuming way itanswers more questions than the eighties film asked. Eastwood portrays a newly reformed womanizer,Dave Garber, a Carmel disc jockey whose late-night smooth-talk fatally attracts a female fan, one EvelynDraper (Jessica Walter). Evelyn may be Garber's last (one-night) stand, but her romantic obsession withhim quickly shows itself as uncontrollable jealousy; raw anxiety inside a sugary-sexy coating is portrayedby Walter on an unnerving gut level. More frightening than Evelyn's lugubrious spying from behind theMonterey shrubbery is her psychopathic clear-headedness (as in her sudden reference to her newlypurchased lounging pajamas as a "little whore suit"). If Eastwood's laconic hero is maddeningly slow tocomprehend, still Eastwood the director has laid it out for him early on. Meanwhile, Eastwood the jazz buffsets the mood with Errol Garner's "Misty," takes us to the Monterey Jazz Festival for a respite from theshivers, and practically stops the show for a complete rendition of Roberta Flack's The First Time Ever ISaw Your Face. The film may be a piece of new-age gothic-from an era of blue-lit love scenes, "hang-ups"and fringe jackets-but Eastwood takes the tension and the pathos inherent in the central relationshipcompletely seriously, and his handling of suspense is rigorous. (In this and more, the film is an homage toPoe.) Critically lauded (Andrew Sarris called it "one of the most effectively scary movies of this or anyyear"), Play Misty for Me still works. At the film's San Francisco Film Festivalpremiere, Eastwood's strangely vulnerable lothario, brought to his senses by a knife-wielding hystericalfemale, did not go over with feminist critics. But Play Misty can be seen as one in a series of films in whichEastwood (literally) grapples with his on-screen antagonism toward women-from the Grand Guignolparanoia of The Beguiled, to the head-scratching sensitivity of Play Misty, to the bitter soul searching ofTightrope.