Review of High Plains Drifter (1973) by Van R — 06 Mar 2010

"High Plains Drifter" represented Clint Eastwood's second turn behind the camera as a director after "Play Misty for Me," and this rugged, scenic western shoot'em up qualifies as the greatest supernatural western saga ever made. Eastwood learned a thing or two about directing from Sergio Leone. Compare the Man with No Name's entrance into San Miguel in "Fistful of Dollars" with the Stranger's entrance into Lago, and you can see that Leone heavily influenced Eastwood. Shot for shot, Eastwood duplicates Leone, but adds his own neat touches. The sound of the horses' hooves shuffling through the sand and the variety of camera angles as the Stranger riding down the street is nothing short of brilliant. Later, during a night-time shoot-out after several men try to beat the anti-heroic protagonist to death as he lies asleep in bed, Eastwood pays homage to Don Siegel. He grips his Colt's .45 revolver the way he did in Siegel's "Dirty Harry." Just as a robber was blasted backwards by Harry Callahan through a storefront display window, the Stranger nails an assailant with a slug that propels him through a storefront window. This lean, mean western is a study in economy. Eastwood directs with a sure hand and if you don't pay close attention to the action, you'd never guess that this is a ghost western. Imagine "The Fiend that Walked the West" crossed with "High Noon" and you'll have a good idea what to expect from "High Plains Drifter." From the first image of Eastwood's duster-clad Stranger riding through a heat mirage to the last image of his Stranger vanishing into the same heat mirage, this is unmistakably a ghost western. Dee Barton's eerie music contributes to the moody atmosphere of this saga. Later, the hotel keeper's wife observes that perhaps the dead don't rest in an unmarked grave. One of the last shots in "High Plains Drifter" is the dwarf painting a name on a tombstone.

The frontier town of Lago lives in fear. Something terrible happened one night on their dark streets that the townspeople have never forgotten. Three unrepentant men, Stacy Bridges (Geoffrey Lewis of "Every Which Way but Loose"), Cole Carlin (Anthony James of "Unforgiven"), and Dan Carlin (Dan Vadis of "Triumph of the Ten Gladiators"), killed Lago City Marshal Jim Duncan (stunt man Buddy Van Horn) with bullwhips. The entire town watched as these three hellions whipped the lawman to death and nobody raised a finger to stop them. The men who formed the conspiracy, Dave Drake (Mitchell Ryan of "Magnum Force") and Morgan Allen (Jack Ging), operate a mining company. They learned that upright, honest Marshal Duncan had discovered that they were excavating gold from government land and threatened to inform the authorities. Drake and Allen hired Bridges and the Carlin brothers to kill Duncan and then they planted a gold ingot where these killers lived, framed them for a robbery, and had them sent to jail for a jail. As "High Plains Drifter" opens, this murderous trio has just been released from prison and they are heading straight to Lago to square accounts.

Meanwhile, the paranoid citizens of Lago have hired three gunslingers to run strangers out of town. The Stranger (Clint Eastwood of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") arrives to get a bottle of whisky, and tough guy Billy Borders and his two cohorts try to run him off. He leaves the bar and takes a chair in the barbershop across the street. Borders and company follow him and try to kill him while he is getting shaved. They believe that he is unarmed, but he has faked them off by putting a carved piece of wood in his holster. When they try to make their move, he blows all three of them away without a qualm. Drake sends Sheriff Sam Shaw (Spaghetti western actor Walter Barnes) over to offer him a proposition. The Stranger can have anything in town that he wants for free if he will protect them from Bridges and the Carlin boys. The Stranger takes them up on their offer and promptly ridicules them by taking Shaw's badge and pinning it on the town midget, Mordecai. Mordecai revels in his new found importance and angers several of the leading citizens. This subplot is reminiscent of the Lee Van Cleef spaghetti western "Day of Anger" where the hero made a gunslinger out of the town tramp and the citizens had to bow and scrape to him. Furthermore, the Stranger makes the town mayor Jason Hobart (Stefan Gierasch of "What's up Doc") give an Indian a pile of blankets and jars of candy for his kids. The Stranger forms the Lago Volunteers and drills the cowardly townspeople in the art of ambush. Meanwhile, he makes Mexican laborers tear down a barn to build picnic tables and he has the citizens paint their town red. The Stranger rides out to the town sign and paints HELL over Lago, and then abandons Lago when Stacy and the Carlin brothers hit the town like marauders. The final shoot out in Lago at night with orange flames licking the buildings and backlighting the action makes for a fantastic mise-en-scene! The cast is uniformly excellent. Geoffrey Lewis is superb as the revenge ravenous Stacy. Eastwood's old co-star from his TV series "Rawhide" Paul Brinegar plays the barkeeper, and in a pre-"Magnum, P.I." role, John Hillerman plays the boot maker. Bruce Surtees' widescreen cinematography is striking. Eastwood couldn't have chosen a better looking location on Lake Mono in the California Sierras. Ernst Tidyman, who won an Oscar for "The French Connection" and "Dirty Harry's" Dean Riesner provide several memorable lines of dialogue. "High Plains Drifter" resembles a Spaghetti western with respect to its arid setting and its swift-shooting gunslinger protagonist. The imaginative use of bullwhips rather than rifles adds immeasurably to the action. Eastwood's wry, understated sense of humor shines through every scene. This is a superior western, far better than the lame "High'em High.".