The film could be a libertarians dream, which is fascinating given Eastwoods own conservative politics. Holes in the plot were filled in with black humor and allegory, influenced by Sergio Leone. How do the stores make any money if strangers keep getting driven out? Its hard to think of a single person who has had as monumental of an impact on an entire genre of films as acting and filmmaking legend Clint Eastwood has had on the classic American Western. Director Clint Eastwood Writers Ernest Tidyman Dean Riesner Stars Clint Eastwood Verna Bloom Marianna Hill See production, box office & company info Watch on Prime Video We are sorry. "High Plains Drifter" is the story of a small mining town named "Lago" which is constantly troubled by outlaws and gunfighters. Some of these items ship sooner than the others. [13], Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "part ghost story, part revenge Western, more than a little silly, and often quite entertaining in a way that may make you wonder if you lost your good sense. A woman in grabbed and dragged into a barn and held down while being raped as she screams "NO'. yeah i saw that a while back. "Clint Back in Saddle in 'Drifter'". The closing shot of The Stranger disappearing into the heatwaves plays out over the end credits. Amid shoot-outs and existentialism, a stranger is hired to protect a town from outlaws -- but his recipe for defense could be a deal with the devil. Beautifully shot in CinemaScope by Bruce Surtees (Dirty Harry) with a great screenplay by Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection) and a memorable score by Dee Barton (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot). Limited filming for certain interior scenes was also done at the famed Universal Studios at 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City in California. Eastwood's movie resonates beyond its grade-B trappings, and speaks eloquently in simple language about epochal social realities. The Stranger, - Three men are shot and killed, little blood seen. Yet this film also rues this communitys weakness as a perversion of democratic ideals. Kino Lorber has reissued the 1973 western classic HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER on blu-ray labelled special edition this reissue is 10 times better quality than the 2011 universal blu-ray Kino has given the film a new 4k scan 2:35:1 HD transfer and the picture quality looks amazing Kino Lorber has reissued the 1973 western classic HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER on blu-ray labelled special edition this reissue is 10 times better quality than the 2011 universal blu-ray Kino has given the film a new 4k scan 2:35:1 HD transfer and the picture quality looks amazing Kino has pushed the quality rating right up to 9.7/10, the PQ looks that Good No Grain no Dirt beautiful colour restoration it beats the 2011 universal HD transfer thats for sure the sound quality mix is the same as the 2011 blu-ray just the 5.1 master mix plus Kino added a 2.0 master mix both mixes sound very Good anyway about 6-7/10 EXTRAS for the first time ever this film gets new extras new interviews with a few of the remaining cast members Marianna Hill, mitchell ryan & william o' connell plus new commentary by Alex cox, a vintage tv promo broadcasted back in 1973 plus TV spots, radio spots, Theatrical trailer, stills Gallery alot more extras than what the old universal blu-ray had, the Disc is region A locked so you need a all regions player but 100% worth buying for sure so 5 stars for this new kino lorber blu-ray, 1 star for the old blu-ray. When the gang that killed the marshal returns to find this hellscape, its members are brutally dispatched before the drifter rides off into a desert that shimmers with primordial, hallucinatory heat. Zito, Tom (May 29, 1973). I like most westerns with Clint I them! And two decades before Eastwood would win Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for his return to the genre with the twilight apologia Unforgiven, he still hadnt begun to grapple with the regrets and ramifications of shoot-first-ask-questions-later Old West violence. He proceeds to get into oner strange situation after another. Amazon has encountered an error. [19], Nigel Andrews of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that "after Play Misty For Me, High Plains Drifter emerges as a disappointingly sterile exercise in style, suggesting that the first thing Eastwood should do as a director is forget the lessons he has learned from other film-makers and start to forge a convincing style of his own. Director: Clint Eastwood The whole movie has a mysterious atmosphere accompanied by an eerie score. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Watch High Plains Drifter: Maybe You Think You're Fast Enough. But looking back now, Id say that Eastwood comes out of that exchange looking like the victor. The story line of High Plains Drifter follows Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, a mysterious man who rides into the small mining town of Lago in the old American Wild West. [6] An uncredited rewrite of the script was provided by Dean Riesner, screenwriter of other Eastwood projects. Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt, Marianna Hill, Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom. Eastwood reportedly liked the offbeat quality of the film's original nine-page proposal and approached Universal with the idea of directing it. The sound is turned up so you can hear his horse's trot, the gingle of his spirs, the gravel kicking up. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Read More: Where Was The Shawshank Redemption Filmed? Watch on. If youve never watched it, you need to ask your hand with the five finger said to the face. A man is whipped to death by 3 men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKu-Cq7QglQ Only version I found, but it's really short. They now feel guilty, and their guilt comes out as paranoia, which is often how guilt manifests itself, and cruelty. The outlaws arrive and easily overcome the poor resistance of the townspeople; the defenders are all killed, while the survivors are rounded up in the saloon. I see, so he was whipped by the men of the town years earlier. C-105m. While the outlaws have a score to settle, the stranger forces the cowardly citizens to take back their home and expose the corruption amongst them. Otis redding was born in dawson, georgia on september 9,1941 to otis sr. "[20] John Wayne criticized the film's iconoclastic approach; in a letter to Eastwood, he wrote, "That isn't what the West was all about. The cruelty is a compensation for the guilt. High Plains Drifter is a 1973 American Western film directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Ernest Tidyman, and produced by Robert Daley for The Malpaso Company and Universal Pictures. Art Direction: Henry Bumstead The Stranger lures one of the Carlin brothers outside and whips him to death, then kills the remaining outlaws one by one. A gun-fighting 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. Additional scenes were also filmed in other locations in Nevada and California. It wasn't necessarily his best, but it was an entertaining movie! The townspeople are scared of him, and three gunmen try, unsuccessfully, to kill him. 2023 Turner Classic Movies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. They had him whipped to death. Their conversation also compellingly covers John Waynes response to High Plains Drifter and others like it, and the inspiration that screenwriter Ernset Tidyman drew from 1969s Django the Bastard, as well as a real 1964 murder, which dozens of people witnessed and didnt help to prevent. "You know," Mordecai says, "I never did know your name." frankly im astounded i ever thought of his characters as something to look up too. After all, High Plains Drifter is a film that sees a frontier mining town literally painted red. One is primed to consider the legend of the dozens of people who watched Kitty Genovese as she was raped and murdered in New York City in 1964, an incident that has inspired many works, such as Harlan Ellisons short story The Whimpering of Whipped Dogs. We are led to wonder, especially by the films final image, if the drifter is this marshal returned to even the ledgersa suggestion thats intensified by a perverse meta twist: The marshal is played by Buddy Van Horn, one of Eastwoods most famous stunt doubles. | High Plains Drifter was released in theaters on this day in 1973. Taglines He effectively imprisons himself in the barber's chair, at the hands of a man wielding a straight razor. [5], The 'ghost story' interpretation of the film favoured by Eastwood is hinted at strongly throughout the movie, suggesting that the Stranger may be the ghost of slain Federal Marshall Jim Duncan, returning for vengeance and justice; the beginning and end of the film sees the Stranger mysteriously emerge, apparition-like, as he rides into and out of Lago through a shimmering heat-haze. As he leaves, he paints over the town sign with a single word: "Hell". The scowl, the squint, the ability to quick-draw himself out of tight spots: Eastwood represents an impossible standard of masculinity that's as intoxicating as it is hilarious. Can't find it anywhere though, not even youtube. Casting himself as the nameless Stranger, a riff on his role in Sergio Leon's Man with No Name Trilogy, Eastwood establishes his character's badass bona fides right from the get-go. Early in the story, Eastwood commits forcible rape. You see many sights familiar to old westerns including dusty taverns full of hardy men, and vast desert expanses. So, rape was definitely a thing that was accepted as something that happened, not a thing that was ok. It is quite literally the first thing eastwood's cowboy does when he arrives into town. Either way, you cannot escape the fact that all westerns are about America in symbolic terms, and in High Plains Drifter the only America we see is Lago itself, rotten and secretive and visited by divine winds of reprisal. In general, this is an enjoyable commentary, which allows room for many cross-references to Eastwoods blossoming stock company. High Plains Drifter is a 1973 American Western film directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Ernest Tidyman, and produced by Robert Daley for The Malpaso Company and Universal Pictures. A woman is snotty to him, slaps him and spits at him with disgust. The people of Lago live in fear of three brutal outlaws, soon to be released from prison, who have set their intentions towards terrorizing the town over some unfinished business. It's a dark movie, it's a gritty movie, and it is a realistic movie. The occasional softness that was visible on the earlier transfer has been corrected, while detail is immaculate throughout. And, just like that, the town leaders in Largo think they've found the answer to their problem . As the Stranger rides off into the desert, a perplexed Mordecai stands beside the tombstone he just finished engraving: "Marshal Jim Duncan, Rest in Peace". But he took a what-the-hell gamble and flew to Spain to shoot the first installment in what would become Leones stylish, international sensation Man With No Name trilogy (which would also include 1965s For a Few Dollars More and 1966s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly). Strangers stand out effortlessly. The film was shot on location on the shores of Mono Lake, California. [3] In an era when New Hollywood movie-brat auteurs grasped for Art, Eastwood seemed to unconsciously position himself as their antithesis. After an argument, the two kiss, and wake up in bed together (bare shoulders seen) the next morning. Lago is positioned along and often above a large body of water that reflects the sky, subtly proffering the illusion that the town itself is in the clouds, a notion of heavenly paradise that the drifter destroys when he assumes control and orders the townspeople to paint every building a deep, dark red. [9], The character of Marshal Duncan was played by Buddy Van Horn, Eastwood's long-time stunt double, to suggest that he and the Stranger could be the same person. The film was a modest success during its time, but its bold appeal has only been enhanced in the decades following its release owing to its unique direction that melds elements of horror and the supernatural with classic western fare. Under a joint production between Malpaso and Universal, the original screenplay was written by Ernest Tidyman, who had won a Best Screenplay Oscar for The French Connection.[6]. The drifter is an avenging angel, perhaps literally, who treats oppressed people such as Native Americans honorably, and whos haunted by flashbacks of a marshal being beaten to death by a trio of outlaws with bullwhips. To view this content, please use one of the following compatible browsers: A mysterious gunman signs on to protect a small town from bandits. (Eastwood, shying away from the supernatural, has stated more than once that he had always thought of his character as the dead sheriff's brother, but the film never suggests this, and offers only notions of cosmic eeriness.) After the film came out and wound up being a big box-office hit, Eastwood wrote a fannish letter to John Wayne, suggesting that they make a movie together. A woman wears a dress revealing cleavage. Been a very long time since I've seen that movie but I thought that. Not until the end do we find out why the people are so hateful and why the man himself is so hateful. Before he could despair over his flailing, fledgling career, he would be saved by the Westerna genre that immediately fit him like a bespoke duster. Clint Eastwoods High Plains Drifter, his first western as a director, has the sort of elementally simple narrative that propelled Sergio Leones A Fistful of Dollars, as well as genre hallmarks such as Fred Zimmermans High Noon and George Stevenss Shane. They already tried. In new interviews, actors Marianna Hill, Mitchell Ryan, and William OConnell speak of their various experiences working with Eastwood, all describing him as an erudite and unpretentious artist who trusts his actors and keeps them on their toes with his famous preference for single takes. Here, the western set of totems and stereotypes good guy, bad guy, gunfight, hard-working frontier town were interrogated right down to their amoral hypocrisy and pathological psyches, a process that no film underwent as explicitly as Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973). With the possible exception of John Wayne, no actor was more synonymous with the movie Western during the second half of the 20th Century than Clint Eastwood. Tidyman's screenplay was inspired by the real-life murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens in 1964, which eyewitnesses reportedly stood by and watched. As a result, she became familiar with different accents and dialects, whether a French accent (for a guest appearance on My Three Sons (1960), or . Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. To keep the townspeople busy, he orders every building in town painted blood red. Eastwood could finally say goodbye to the small screen once and for all. See production, box office & company info. The barn scene in high plains drifter happens very early in the film; High plains drifter barn scene. Dee Barton wrote the film score. Which brings us to 1973s High Plains Drifter, a movie thats so frequently overlooked and uncharacteristically strange and surreal that it sticks out like a sore, red-painted thumb in the long sweep of Eastwoods filmography. Because its a far more interesting movie the further you get away from its Western-ness and the more it steps into the realm of spectral, mystical Tales from the Crypt pulp. I know these towns; Alturas, CedarvilleFundamentalist enclaves, ranches and reservationsWitness protection towns far away from everywhereHideaways in the high-deserts, podunks amid the prairie palisades. "[17] Tom Zito of The Washington Post called it "an enjoyable, well-constructed work that suffers only from a slightly tedious tone that makes the film seem longer than its 105 minutes. Starring: Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom, Marianna Hill. The primary filming location for High Plains Drifter is the area around Mono Lake in California. I recently watched The Outlaw Josey Wales which was awesome. Additional scenes were filmed at Reno, Nevada's Winnemucca Lake and California's Inyo National Forest. It is the understanding of human psychology that is demonstrated by the film that is important. This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. Producer: Robert Daley director of photography Film Editing by Ferris Webster . It has served as the filming site for a whole host of high profile films and TV shows including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, House, Inception, Seinfeld, and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. [10] The Italian, Spanish, French and German dubbings restored it. Then, upon the Stranger's final departure from Lago, the midget Mordecai is seen tending to an unmarked grave which now bears the name Jim Duncan. The abruptness of this scene is chilling, and, yes, Eastwood maintains a certain macho ambiguity as to whether or not Callie enjoyed it as a reprise from coupling with the local beta males, though the action itself is terse, brutal, and unglamorized. The primary filming location for the film is the picturesque Mono Lake area in Mono County, California. Amazon's Choice highlights highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately. Three different men are shot in cold-blood. The last great surge of westerns, known evocatively as "the anti-western" and exemplified by the films of Sam Peckinpah and Monte Hellman, came during the 'Nam era, when convenient myths about American good and evil were universally called into question. Upon arriving, the Stranger has a lucid and graphic dream about Jim Duncan's death, in which Duncan declares damnation upon the townspeople for not saving his life. Chris Nashawaty is a writer, editor, critic, and author of books about Roger Corman & Caddyshack. The young actor had come to Hollywood from the San Francisco Bay area in the early 50s, and thanks to his 6-foot-4-inch stature and good looks was signed to a $100-a-week contract at Universal, where he was quickly put to work in a string of hokey B-movies like Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula. A man has his ear blown off, with blood around it. We may earn a commission from these links. Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2018. In the end the stranger confronts the four men who whipped him and he gives them a dose of their medicine. As a freshly minted red-hot commodity both at home and abroad, Eastwood quickly parlayed his new-found bankability into a handful of macho and muscular studio pictures like the fish-out-of-water cop thriller Coogans Bluff and the bloated WWII action-adventure Where Eagles Dare. 20th highest-grossing film released in 1973, "The Representation of Justice in Eastwood's, "Kino: Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter Detailed for Blu-ray", "Metallica's Kirk Hammett Soundtracks a Six-String Shootout on New Song 'High Plains Drifter', https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=High_Plains_Drifter&oldid=1149084506, This page was last edited on 10 April 2023, at 02:56. All Rights Reserved comes out as paranoia, which allows room for many cross-references to blossoming! Think they & # x27 ; ve found the answer to their problem Choice highlights highly rated well-priced! Author of books about Roger Corman & Caddyshack you can hear his horse trot. 2023 Turner Classic Movies, Inc. all Rights Reserved make any money if strangers keep getting driven out blossoming. Ask your hand with the idea of directing it and held down while being raped as she ``. & # x27 ; t find it anywhere though, not even youtube of human psychology that is demonstrated the. Thing Eastwood 's cowboy does when he arrives into town early in the end the Stranger confronts four... Interior scenes was also done at the famed Universal Studios at 100 Universal City in.!, - Three men are shot and killed, little blood seen when he into... Communitys weakness as a perversion of democratic ideals an uncredited rewrite of the Stranger -... Screenplay was inspired by the film was shot on location on the shores of Lake. Directing it watched the Outlaw Josey Wales which was awesome literally painted red confronts... 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