High Plains Drifter (1973)

Director:

Clint Eastwood

Writer:

Ernest Tidyman (written by)
(more)

Release Date:

22 August 1973 (USA)

Genre:

Thriller | Western

Tagline:

Welcome to Hell

Plot:

A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.

Plot Keywords:

Gunfighter | Desert | Vengeance | Revenge | Small Town

Cast

Clint Eastwood	...	The Stranger
Verna Bloom	...	Sarah Belding
Marianna Hill	...	Callie Travers (as Mariana Hill)
Mitch Ryan	...	Dave Drake (as Mitchell Ryan)
Jack Ging	...	Morgan Allen
Stefan Gierasch	...	Mayor Jason Hobart
Ted Hartley	...	Lewis Belding
Billy Curtis	...	Mordecai
Geoffrey Lewis	...	Stacey Bridges
Scott Walker	...	Bill Borders
Walter Barnes	...	Sheriff Sam Shaw
Paul Brinegar	...	Lutie Naylor
Richard Bull	...	Asa Goodwin
Robert Donner	...	Preacher
John Hillerman	...	Bootmaker
Anthony James	...	Cole Carlin
William O'Connell	...	Barber
John Quade	...	Jake Ross
Dan Vadis	...	Dan Carlin
Buddy Van Horn	...	Marshal Jim Duncan
Jane Aull	...	Townswoman
Reid Cruickshanks	...	Gunsmith
Jim Gosa	...	Tommy Morris (as James Gosa)
Jack Kosslyn	...	Saddlemaker
Russ McCubbin	...	Fred Short
Belle Mitchell	...	Mrs. Lake
John Mitchum	...	Warden
Carl Pitti	...	Teamster (as Carl C. Pitti)
Alex Tinne
Chuck Waters	...	Stableman

Directed by
Clint Eastwood

Writing credits
Ernest Tidyman		(written by)
Dean Riesner		uncredited

Produced by
Robert Daley	....	producer
Jennings Lang	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Dee Barton

Cinematography by
Bruce Surtees

Film Editing by
Ferris Webster

Art Direction by
Henry Bumstead

Set Decoration by
George Milo

Production Management
Ernest B. Wehmeyer	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
James Fargo	....	assistant director (as Jim Fargo)

Sound Department
James R. Alexander	....	sound
Jerry Whittington	....	sound effects editor (uncredited)

Stunts
Buddy Van Horn	....	stunt coordinator
Mario Arteaga	....	stunts (uncredited)
Blair Burrows	....	stunts (uncredited)
Richard Farnsworth	....	stunts (uncredited)
Chuck Hayward	....	stunts (uncredited)
John Hudkins	....	stunts (uncredited)
George Orrison	....	stunt double: Clint Eastwood (uncredited)
George Orrison	....	stunts (uncredited)
Carl Pitti	....	stunts (uncredited)
Bob Terhune	....	stunts (uncredited)
Buddy Van Horn	....	stunt double (uncredited)
Chuck Waters	....	stunts (uncredited)
George P. Wilbur	....	stunts (uncredited)

Editorial Department
Jeff Gourson	....	assistant film editor (uncredited)

Music Department
Bob Bain	....	musician: guitar (uncredited)
Mike Deasy	....	musician (uncredited)

Other crew
Dominic Santarone	....	caterer (uncredited)
Ruth Santarone	....	caterer (uncredited)

Production Companies

• Malpaso Company, The

Distributors

• American Broadcasting Company (ABC) (1974) (USA) (TV) (broadcast premiere)
• Universal Pictures (1973) (USA) (theatrical)
• Cinema International Corporation (CIC) (1973) (France) (theatrical)
• CIC (1973) (West Germany) (theatrical)
• MCA/Universal Home Video (1992) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Action Gitanes (1997) (France) (theatrical) (re-release)
• Universal Studios Home Video (1998) (USA) (DVD)
• CIC Video (2001) (Germany) (DVD)
• Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment (2001) (UK) (DVD)
• Universal Studios Home Video (2001) (USA) (DVD)
• Action Gitanes (2003) (France) (theatrical) (re-release)
• Universal Pictures Benelux (2003) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• C.I.C. (197?) (Norway) (theatrical)
• CIC Vídeo (Brazil) (VHS)
• Columbia TriStar (Brazil) (DVD)
• MCA/Universal Home Video (USA) (VHS)

Other Companies

• Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment  camera cranes
• Cinematique  cosmetics
• Universal Title  titles and optical effects

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Iceland:16 | USA:R (MPAA rating) | New Zealand:R16 | Spain:18 | Argentina:16 | UK:X (original rating) | Canada:18+ (Ontario - 2006) | Brazil:18 | Netherlands:12 | South Africa:16LV | Australia:M (cable rating) | Australia:R (original rating) | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 (heavily cut) | Singapore:M18 | South Korea:15 | Sweden:15 (heavily cut) | UK:18 | USA:R | West Germany:18 | Norway:(Banned) (1983-2003) (cinema release) | Canada:R (Nova Scotia) | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Filming Locations:

Inyo National Forest - 351 Pacu Lane, Bishop, California, USA

Company:

Malpaso Company, The

Trivia:

The character of Marshal Duncan was played by stuntman Buddy Van Horn, a long-time stunt coordinator for Clint Eastwood, in order to create some ambiguity over whether he and The Stranger are one and the same.

Goofs:

Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Stacey, Cole and Dan come across three campers in the mountains, they have plenty of ammo despite their guns being given back to them empty when they left prison. However, it can be seen that their gun-belts still had ammunition in them.

Quotes:

[first lines]
The Stranger: Beer... and a bottle.
Lutie Naylor: Ain't much good, but it's all there is.
[brings drinks]
Lutie Naylor: You want anything else?
The Stranger: Just a peaceful hour to drink in.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Clint Eastwood: The Man from Malpaso (1993) (TV)

Not a chick flick

Obviously this was produced before the age of feminist political correctness. The anti-hero with no name--Clint Eastwood, of course, a throwback to his days making spaghetti westerns in Italy with Sergio Leone--comes riding tall in the saddle down into a valley with a mining town by a lake. (The movie was shot around the Mono Lake area of California.) Particularly effective in this unforgettable opening scene is the music sounding like the high whine of the wind off of the desert. This town would be "Lago" later to be renamed "Hell" by Eastwood's character who is identified in the titles as "The Stranger." The stranger really just wants a shave and a bath and something to drink and eat and place to lay his head for the night. What he gets is a bad time from some roughnecks and a woman (Callie Travers, played by Marianna Hill) who has attraction/avoidance feelings for him. He shoots the three guys and rapes the woman before the movie is twenty minutes old. What I mean by this not being politically correct is that, despite herself, she likes it! That sort of thing is not done in cinema these days. The idea that a woman might be turned on by being raped would not play before today's audiences, nor would a Hollywood producer make such a film.

I won't go any further into the plot but suffice it to say that Eastwood is just beginning to kick tail. It seems that everybody in town is cowardly and without the will to protect themselves from the bad guys, especially the three who just got out of jail and are headed their way. How Eastwood, who directed from a script by Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection [1971]; Shaft [1971] etc.), handles the familiar revenge theme is interesting.

First it is no accident that Eastwood's protagonist is named "the Stranger." That is the English title of a famous novel by Albert Camus that surely influenced Eastwood. Camus's stranger is an existential anti-hero, a kind of benign sociopath who really doesn't feel anything for others except as they affect his life. But he is not particularly violent and just lives from one day to the next without any direction or goal. He just "exists." Eastwood's stranger does more than just exist. He takes action, and he is very good at it. Indeed, I can't recall a western movie in which a gunman could draw faster or shot straighter, or any movie hero who was less afraid of putting his life on the line. So, in a sense what Eastwood has added to Camus's stranger is Nietzsche's superman. And herein lies, I think, the underpinning of Eastwood's philosophy and his "message." Note that the people in the town to a man are cowardly. The only exception is Sarah Belding (Verna Bloom) who, like the aforementioned Callie Travers, can't resist the stranger's forceful charm, and falls in love with him. This somehow inspires her to leave the corrupt town.

Yes, the town, like most of human society is corrupt. And yes the average man in the street is cowardly and without the will to defend himself. It is only the ubermensch, that rare breed celebrated in the works of the German philosopher, who has the skill, the strength and the will to bend events to his liking and to take on those who would use violence to achieve their ends.

So what Eastwood does here in his second directorial effort (following Play Misty for Me, 1971) is to diverge from Leone's formula. While there is some very funny and intentionally ridiculous dialogue in such films as, for example, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), or For a Few Dollars More (1965) or A Fistful of Dollars (1964), there is little that is funny, intentionally or otherwise in High Plains Drifter. Furthermore, whereas Leone just wanted to make a buck and saw that tough-minded heroes or anti-heroes involved in action-filled revenge plots was a good way to do it, Eastwood is interested in also making a philosophic (and perhaps political) statement. We are degenerate, we humans, he is saying, except for those rare individuals who take the law into their own hands, make their own rules, and through superior skill and bravery, make their own luck and create their own reality, as does his stranger.

In this film there is also an element of the supernatural, or so it would appear. The stranger "sees" in his head the whipping of a past sheriff of the town. Perhaps it comes from the mind of the dwarf Mordecai (very well played by Billy Curtis, by the way) who witnessed the tortured death while hiding under the saloon. At any rate, the stranger shows that he is just as handy with the whip himself as he is with his six-gun.

By all means see this for an early look at the work of Clint Eastwood as both an actor and a director. You will not be bored I can assure you. But don't invite the girl friend over. If there was ever an anti-"chickflick," this is it.