The scene with the bum

The scene where Rip Torn gets accosted by a grubby, aggressive gay bum down a dark alley has had me in stitches for days now. I never read the novel by Mary Higgins Clark that this movie is based on, and have no idea if that scene is in the book, but, goddamn, that has to be one of the funniest, unintentionally funny scenes I've ever seen.

It also cracks me up that Rip Torn's character, an openly hostile man who is a murderer, rapist and kidnapper (among other things) is himself a crime victim on three separate occasions in this movie: First, by those punks he caught stealing gas from his van. Second, by the aforementioned homeless man (whom he brained), and third, by a gang of thugs that tried to mug him in a public bathroom. Just goes to show you how dangerous New York was back in the day....where even criminals weren't safe from other criminals. It's not as if Rip Torn's character was a weak-kneed, nebbishy type, either. He was kind of burly & surly and not the sort of dude you'd readily mess with for laughs.