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With Colt coming out with their lightweight 1911 Commander in 1970, Star and InterArms decide they want in on the lucrative lightweight .45 market, thus in 1975, enter the Star PD, a .45 Auto pistol with an aluminum frame, the slide riding on steel rails, just like the Colt, Star's P series even tracing its heritage to an old 1911 knockoff. What makes it competitive isn't just being slightly lighter, featuring a loaded magazine indicator (you could feel a little tab from the follower protrude out the bottom if it was full), or featuring an adjustable rear sight (for those who want that), but more importantly was much cheaper. It's not AS nice as a 1970s Colt, but it's a good gun for its price.
Next to it we have a Charter Arms Bulldog, introduced in 1973, which was a somewhat simple and low cost DA/SA hand-ejector revolver, but with an aluminum alloy frame, with the cylinder holding five rounds of .44 Special, thus another compact and light big-bore handgun competing for the same lower priced market. Both these guns bear synthetic Pachmayr grips.
The Bulldog caught some notoriety as being the gun of choice for serial killer David Berkowitz. He made the claim that his neighbor Sam Carr's black Labrador Retriever, Harvey, which he once shot and wounded, was actually possessed by the devil and issuing him irresistible commands to kill (somehow arriving at the moniker "Son Of Sam" from this). Most likely, all this stuff about demonic possession and satanic cults was something he just made up for the media and didn't actually believe in, and he's simply a sociopath who acted out against the society which rejected him.
Berkowitz's other nickname was "The .44 Killer", for the less common caliber standing out as ballistic evidence. This lore overshadows the Bulldog revolver a bit these days, particularly given that later iterations of Charter Arms after their bankruptcy seem to have a reputation for spotty quality, and .44 Special being even less popular these days.
