High Plains Drifter - With many spoilers

Westerns where have you been all my life?

Aside from watching Rawhide as a kid, I have never really given Westerns a chance. In recent years, watching The Hateful 8 is the closest I’ve come to exploring this genre, which appears to be floundering in modern times. After watching High Plains Drifter, I have Dirty Harry set firmly in my sights.

Here’s why I liked it so much: High Plains Drifter is one of those films with a twist that makes rewatching the film the second time as enjoyable as the first viewing. The fact that there was going to be a twist related to the relationship of Jim Duncan and The Stranger was inevitable. However, The Stranger actually BEING Jim Duncan reincarnated as a similar-looking man, back to exact his revenge as a flesh-bound ghost caught me a bit by surprise. I had assumed he was a long-forgotten Son or Nephew of Jim’s, and I’m torn as to whether this would have been more satisfying of a conclusion or not.

I’m sure a second viewing of the film would yield countless clues pointing towards Clint being undead. I like that the first thing The Stranger does after reincarnation is to march straight into the saloon and grab a drink, leading to our first bit of dialogue.

The Stranger: “I’ll take a beer and a bottle”

Barman: “Want anything else?”

The Stranger: “Just a peaceful hour to drink it in”

Immediately cool. Obviously, no one ever had a peaceful drink inside a saloon in the wild west if movies are anything to go by, and this is no exception.

There is a clue to Clint’s identity as he marches toward the saloon in the first shot. A man cracks a whip as he readies his carriage, which makes Clint grimace and look fearful. This is the only time he expresses any emotion besides a flirty smile in the entire film. A flirty smile that inevitably precedes a rape.

Older films have much more of a blurry line surrounding sex, especially where consent is concerned. I imagine in the actual wild west women were being dragged into barns left, right, and center. It is also half explained that the victim of The Stranger’s crime was attached romantically to the man who whipped him to death, so there was an element of revenge in the act. Personally, I don’t think it progressed the story enough to have been included, which loses the movie its fifth thumbs up.

The remaining four stars are well earned. The dwarf who is used to being bossed around becoming Sherriff and Mayor, the cool dialogue, and the initial scene in the barbers alone see to that. There is humour and drama throughout and then a climax that scratches the itch of wanting to see men fall from roofs and revenge get exacted.

Painting everything red and naming the town hell was entertaining and became more thought-provoking once the identity of The Stranger was revealed. Could this be where the phrase to ‘paint the town red’ comes from..? It did, however, seem a bit wasteful to have barbequed a whole steer, and set up a nice picnic just to have three twats race through it immediately on horseback.

Does a younger, bearded Clint Eastwood remind anyone else of Richard Branson?

So, to conclude:

One hell of a tale

4 Thumbs up

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