High Plains Drifter (1998, DVD)

Having made a great debut behind the camera (as well as in front of it) with the 1971 suspense thriller PLAY MISTY FOR ME, Clint Eastwood found a way to return to the kind of role that made him an international superstar in the first place--the mythical "Man With No Name" that he personified in that outrageously successful trilogy of spaghetti westerns he made with director Sergio Leone in the 1960s. That way was through HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, courtesy of Oscar-winning screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (of SHAFT and THE FRENCH CONNECTION fame). But rather than try for a retread of Leone, Eastwood, both in front of and behind the camera, went for something even darker, something more Gothic, perhaps even supernatural. As a result, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER was easily one of the most successful westerns of the 1970s.

Eastwood is the mysterious Stranger, who rides out of the desert heat waves and into the town of Lago, situated on Mono Lake in eastern California. He almost immediately raises the interest and the ire of the townsfolk there, killing three toughs and raping a woman in the process, and raising a great deal of fear. And fear is something the townsfolk of Lago have had to live with for the last twelve months. For these same people allowed a trio of hired gunmen (Geoffrey Lewis; Anthony James; Dan Vadis) to bullwhip their town marshal to death after this marshal was prepared to close down a mining operation illegally being done on land belonging to the federal government. Of course, the gunmen were immediately arrested and taken to jail; and not surprisingly, once they're out, they plan to come back for revenge.

Having been given free reign in exchange for defending Lago, Eastwood also manages to set everyone on edge--all except the town outcast, Mordecai (Billy Curtis), who seems to sense something solid in this stranger. The people of the town are prepped by Eastwood; and in the meantime, through stealth, Eastwood manages to get Lewis and his cronies rapidly on the move towards Lago. The end result is as Eastwood anticipates, with the people chickening out, and Lewis, James, and Vadis having their way. But there's a little surprise in store at the end...

Rather than shoot this film on the backlot, as the studio brass at Universal wanted, Eastwood chose to film HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER on the very shores of Mono Lake, building the town of Lago from scratch, and doing it with complete buildings, not mere facades, for the purposes of interior shooting. He also got a really good cast together for the project, including Verna Bloom (MEDIUM COOL), Mitchell Ryan (MONTE WALSH), Jack Ging, Stefan Gierasch, Marianna Hill, John Hillerman, John Quade, and Robert Donner, among others. Lewis, who would star in more films with Eastwood in the future, makes for a thoroughly scuzzy outlaw, but he is less the villain of this piece than the underhanded characters of Ryan and Ging, who covered up the killing of that ex-marshal. And at the same time, as Eastwood and Tidyman show, there may be more of a connection between that long-dead marshal and this high plains drifter.

Superbly photographed by Bruce Surtees, who worked on many films with Eastwood, and featuring a haunting score by Dee Barton, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, despite the fairly nasty rape scene and slightly graphic violence, is a consistently intriguing piece, with more than a few horror elements and echoes of past films like HIGH NOON and BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, as well as nods to Eastwood's cinematic past. Not to be missed by aficionados of the Western, let alone those with a yen for Eastwood.