Western Weekends - High Plains Drifter

Content Warning: This post will contain a brief discussion of sexual assault.

Last week I looked at High Noon. This week, I'm going to look at something more in line with the return of Deadlands which inspired me to revive this series. Released in 1973, High Plains Drifter is the first of several western films to be directed by genre icon Clint Eastwood. It combines High Noon, The Magnificent Seven, and A Fistful of Dollars, but also combines a possible weird element.

Eastwood plays a wandering gunslinger known only as The Stranger, who has recently arrived in the frontier mining town of Lago. Not long after arriving, he kills three local toughs who harassed him. Instead of being charged, he is given the job they had; to protect the town from a reprisal by Stacey Bridges and the Carlin Brothers, who are due to be released from the territorial prison where they were sent for murdering Lago's marshal, Jim Duncan. Through a series of flashbacks, it's revealed that the outlaws whipped the marshal to death in the street, in full view of the townspeople (which is only the tip of the iceberg). The Stranger initially refuses to help, until he's offered "anything" and takes the offer literally. He takes over the town and makes peculiar demands, up to and including having the town painted red.

While High Noon and The Magnificent Seven utilised heroic protagonists, this one doesn't. After arriving in the town and killing the three gunfighters, The Stranger rapes a woman who deliberately bumps into and provokes him. That does make it difficult to root for the protagonist, and it doesn't really contribute to the story (although the same woman does later sleep with him willingly as part of a plan to ensnare him when some of the townspeople rebel against his rule). Granted, the whole point of the story is that Lago's residents are all terrible people, but nobody deserves that.

That aside, there is still a lot of speculation about who The Stranger actually is. Some claims are that he's Jim Duncan's brother looking for revenge. It's also strongly implied that he is Jim Duncan, who has come back from the grave to punish the town for their role in his murder. As stated above, they're all terrible people, with only two exceptions: Mordecai, a barbershop employee with dwarfism who's bullied by everyone around him, but is made both the sheriff and the mayor by The Stranger; and Mrs Belding, the hotel owner's wife, who is revealed to be the only person who tried to intervene in Jim Duncan's execution.

The film does feel slow and kind of silly in some places, like The Stranger's initial arrival in town being something akin to the West's biggest staring contest. But I like how The Stranger's demands on the townspeople create an uncomfortable atmosphere. And the eerie soundtrack, combined with the subtle and implied paranormal element work together to present something that's actually quite haunting.

I'd say it's worth at least one viewing.