“And it’s Andy Robinson’s extraordinary, mad charisma that makes Scorpio more than just a bad guy with a gun - in his every jerky movement and flicker of his eyes, we get the impression of a maniacal intelligence at work. Scorpio may be lacking in brawn compared to Callahan, but he’s nothing if not a strategist, engineering every encounter so that he has the upper hand. We may be disgusted by his crimes, and anxious to see how Callahan will finally bring him down, but there’s an animal quality to Robinson’s performance that means you simply can’t take your eyes off him. Whether he’s cooing over the size of Callahan’s gun (“Ooh, that’s a big one,” he says - a line improvised by Robinson), or forcing a group of tearful school kids to sing on a hijacked bus, the young actor dominates every single scene he’s given. Even his last moment is absolutely right for his character: finally cornered by his nemesis, Scorpio goes for his gun anyway, cackling until the bitter end. It’s important to note how much of Scorpio’s character came directly from Robinson. According to the actor, who was in his late 20s at the time and had never appeared in a movie before, he didn’t much care for the original script. “I didn’t get the character,” Robinson said. “And the character was, of course, described differently. He was like this balding guy in a T-shirt with a paunch that hangs around bus stations." Siegel, however, had his own idea of how Scorpio should look, and hired Robinson because he had "the face of a choir boy”. Siegel also encouraged Robinson to make his own contributions to the character, and even allowed him to choreograph his own escape attempt in the final scenes set in a remote quarry.”
— Dirty Harry’s Scorpio: the most overlooked screen villain? | Den of Geek
