Dog day afternoon - Attaca ????

[Lappers]

Watched the excellent Dog Day Afternoon again today, and again I've tried to find on the web what the 'Attaca' reference is.

This is where Sonny (Pacino) is on the sidewalk shouting to the croud 'Attaca, Attaca...' and about some sort of police slaughter that occured.

Does anyone know what 'Attaca' was???

[BigH]

I seem to remember that it was a prison in America where there was a riot by inmates

the police were rather heavy-handed in dealing with the situation and inmates ended up being killed...I think

[JohnyC]

It's like BigH says. But the name of the prison is "Attica".

I'm not sure, but I think it was because of his way of handling the Attica prison riots that Ronald Reagan gained his "Ronald Ray-Gun" sobriquet.

[Matt Hero]

...it became the standard crowd response to the NYPD at the time - ie meaning 'police brutality' etc...

[zombieman]

The Attica prison riots took place in 1971. A load of prison guards were taken hostage by the prisoners. The reason the name "Attica" became used for police violence was the excessive use of force by the police, which left several dead, including some prison guards.

Check out the excellent made for tv movie:Against The Wall (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0109053)
Starring Samuel L Jackson and Kyle MacLachlan.

[Lappers]

so now I know then.....cheers.

[TimJBart]

yeh cheers for that, I've always wondered too!