SUDDEN IMPACT (1983). Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry returns. Go ahead. Make my day. Forty-three years on, the question is: does it hold up?

Matt and Malcolm dig into Sudden Impact for Get To The Chedda!: the fourth Dirty Harry film, the one Eastwood directed himself, and the chapter that gave the character his most famous line. Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan, pulled from San Francisco heat into a coastal town where a revenge trail is already running hot. Sondra Locke as Jennifer Spencer. Pat Hingle as Captain Jannings. Bradford Dillman in the local power seat. Harry does what Harry does. The town does not know what it invited in.

We track Callahan's place in the Dirty Harry run, the shift from San Francisco procedure to small-town rot, Locke's parallel path through the story, the line that left the film and entered the language, Eastwood as star and director at full authority, Lalo Schifrin's pulse under the menace, and the verdict every Get To The Chedda! has to deliver: what Chedda Rating does Sudden Impact earn in 2026?

Chapters:

0:00 Dirty Harry Returns to the Big Screen
1:05 Clint Eastwood Takes the Director's Chair
3:03 A Script Not Originally Meant for Harry
4:37 Revisiting Memories of the Opening Scene
7:54 The Quintessential Dirty Harry Line
10:59 When a Conversation Counts as a Kill
14:47 Why the Action Sequences Feel Clunky
18:32 A Missed Opportunity for Moral Depth

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Best of the Best (1989) is the tournament film Eric Roberts, James Earl Jones and Phillip Rhee built when Hollywood thought the karate boom was already over. Chuck Liddell later called it his favourite martial arts movie. The video store already knew.

Directed by Bob Radler. Produced by Phillip Rhee and Peter E. Strauss. Written by Paul Levine from a story by Phillip Rhee and Paul Levine.

Alex Grady (Eric Roberts) is a Portland welder and widowed father pulled back onto the US team with a body that should have said no. The shoulder is part of the story, not a footnote. Coach Frank Couzo (James Earl Jones) has to turn five mismatched fighters into one unit before they face South Korea in Seoul. Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee) is carrying more than a title fight. Travis Brickley (Chris Penn) brings the fuse. Catherine Wade (Sally Kirkland) brings a second coaching voice Couzo does not want. Simon Rhee plays Dae Han Park. Louise Fletcher, John Dye, David Agresta, John P. Ryan and Tom Everett round out the company.

Shot in Los Angeles and Seoul in early 1989. Released 10 November 1989 by Taurus Entertainment. About $5 million in, $14.1 million out, then three sequels. Critics were cold. Fighters were not.

Matt and Malcolm get to the Chedda on the training camp, the Seoul tournament, the Rhee brothers, Roberts working through that shoulder, and why this one still plays as a team drama that just happens to kick.

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Snake Plissken has 24 hours to save the President, and Malcolm and I have one question: does Escape From New York (1981) still hold up 45 years on? This is Get To The Chedda!, the retro action podcast where we drop a classic in the pit and give it the Chedda Rating.

John Carpenter's low-budget dystopian thriller turned Kurt Russell from a Disney child star into a hard-edged action icon, gave us one of cinema's great antiheroes, and built a grimy vision of a walled-off Manhattan penal colony on a fraction of a studio budget. Alongside Russell, the cast is stacked: Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes and Harry Dean Stanton. But does the pacing, the practical effects and the Snake Plissken myth survive a modern rewatch, or has time caught up with it?

We break down the making of the film, Carpenter's fight to get it made, the score, the effects, and whether the whole thing earns its cult reputation today. Then we give it the rating that matters.

Chapters:

0:00 Escape From New York (1981): Opening1:45 Carpenter's Roll and the $6 Million Avco Embassy Gamble2:30 The Actors Who Nearly Played Snake Plissken3:50 Matt's Plot Walkthrough: Manhattan as a Prison8:00 World Building and Carpenter's Lean Exposition10:20 The Score and the Explosives-in-the-Neck Clock12:10 The Glider Landing and the Cannibals Diner Scene14:05 The Punks Scene: Establishing the Anti-Hero15:25 Ernest Borgnine's Cab, Brain and Maggie17:15 The Broadway Car Sequence and Grand Central Throwing-Star Beat20:10 The Arena Fight with Slag and Ox Baker21:45 Donald Pleasence's President: The Wig and the POW Backstory25:00 The Bridge Finale: The Mines, the Cadillac and the Deaths30:15 The Cassette Tape Switch and "Call Me Plissken"36:35 Lee Van Cleef's Walk-and-Talk and On-Set Trivia38:45 Kurt Russell's Transformation from Disney to Action Icon41:55 Scores on the Doors: The Chedda Rating43:30 Next Time on Get To The Chedda!: Best of the Best

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