Find High Plains Drifter stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. See production, box office & company info. The Stranger's instructions that all buildings should be painted red and the town's name of Lago be replaced by a sign labelled 'HELL' echoes Duncan's dying words that the residents would suffer in Hell for failing to prevent his death. The barn scene in high plains drifter happens very early in the film; High plains drifter barn scene. Instead of cutting from a picturesque location to an obvious set, Clint Eastwood and cinematographer Bruce Surtees frequently capture interiors and exteriors simultaneously, tightening claustrophobia as well as our impression of knowing this town. The film was released in 1973 and was widely acclaimed by critics, as it presents an interesting turn on a traditional Western story. Eastwood could finally say goodbye to the small screen once and for all. THEYD NEVER FORGET THE DAY HE DRIFTED INTO TOWN! Later, Stranger has dinner with the same woman, and it is implied they have sex later in the evening. He later orders the hotel owners, Lewis and Sarah Belding, and all the other guests to vacate the premises, leaving him its sole occupant. Where Was The Shawshank Redemption Filmed. [3] Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. This 4K release also includes a new commentary with the always dependable film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson, who do a great job contextualizing the state of the western in the early 1970s. High Plains Drifter released in the year 1973. "Clint would shoot em in the back" isn't even close to describing this anti hero. It's just this movie and the one where he kisses 10 year olds that I don't like. After committing three murders in the first 20 minutes, The Stranger is hired by the towns citizens to protect them from the three vengeful gunmen about to be released from jail. To view this content, please use one of the following compatible browsers: A mysterious gunman signs on to protect a small town from bandits. Clint Eastwood while filming 'High Plains Drifter . The occasional softness that was visible on the earlier transfer has been corrected, while detail is immaculate throughout. film editor Casting By Written by Ernest Tidyman, who was a bit of an uncategorizable genre schizophrenic himself having already written both the Blaxploitation classic Shaft and earned a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The French Connection, High Plains Drifter is a haunting and haunted supernatural revenge story about a mysterious, cigarillo-chewing man with no name (guess who?) When the Stranger is first sipping his beer at the saloon, the bottle of whiskey is placed on the bar to the left of his glass of beer. Theres one last reason why I adore High Plains Drifter and it really has nothing to do with what happens on screen. The film was well received by many critics, and rates 94% positive on Rotten Tomatoes based on 32 reviews. I'm still a fan of Clint but this scene still has me irked because I don't think it's right to rape anyone. Anushka Pathania. Tonight I started High Plains Drifter and I'm kind of dumbfounded by this scene I just watched. We will write a custom Essay on "High Plains Drifter" a Film by Clint Eastwood specifically for you. Eastwood portrays a mysterious stranger who emerges out of the heat waves of the desert and rides into the guilt-ridden town of Lago. Thanks to the success of Sergio Leone's immortal Westerns, Eastwood was noticed and soon he began to work in very good projects, with great results. ${cardName} not available for the seller you chose. 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. [citation needed], Universal released the R-rated High Plains Drifter in the United States in April 1973, and the film eventually grossed $15.7 million domestically,[3] ultimately making it the sixth-highest grossing Western in North America in the decade of the 1970s and the 20th highest-grossing film released in 1973. "[14] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "What does work very well indeed is Eastwood's presence, personal style, and direction. An extremely violent and vicious rape towards the beginning of the film. document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a4f0cc001f149350713e0d3cd72dc529" );document.getElementById("facec42938").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. It's a good western, with Clint Eastwood in it! A woman wears a dress revealing cleavage. Rape is wrong. He keeps things lean and simple. Sold by muboutletstore and ships from Amazon Fulfillment. Callie and several men, including Morgan Allen, decide to kill the Stranger. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKu-Cq7QglQ Only version I found, but it's really short. "[26], Siskel, Gene (April 20, 1973). Your email address will not be published. [19] Jon Landau of Rolling Stone concurred, noting "thematic shallowness" and "verbal archness"; but he expressed approval of the dramatic scenery and cinematography. Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt, Marianna Hill, Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom. 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. The cruelty is a compensation for the guilt. Which is not to suggest that Eastwood's movie is a dead-serious intellectual indictment it's raw pulp, with plenty of adolescent overripeness and crude narrative ideas. Meanwhile, he picks up a brush to drip the letters H-E-L-L in crimson on a signpost at Lagos border. It's also a pretty violent business that won't disappoint the millions who flocked to the Leone westerns. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. "[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. A woman in grabbed and dragged into a barn and held down while being raped as she screams "NO'. Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, his first western as a director, has the sort of elementally simple narrative that propelled Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, as well as genre hallmarks such as Fred Zimmerman's High Noon and George Stevens's Shane.The story involves that old chestnut in which a mysterious man (Eastwood) rides into some town and helps its people prepare to do . The Stranger drags Sarah, kicking and screaming, into her bedroom (the only room in the hotel not damaged) where they have sex. | The Stranger replies, "Yes, you do." A man is whipped to death by 3 men. Or the ghost of Duncan, hanging in a tortured purgatorial limbo, until he can get a proper burial, a shred of justice, and some overdue payback. From her native southern California, her family moved around quite a bit, including to Canada, Spain and Great Britain. Over the course of the movie, Eastwoods Stranger acts as if hes Lagos savior, but hes not interested in protecting them, he wants them to pay for Duncans murder. Blood is shown all over his face and body. They already tried. He rents a hotel room and the owners of the hotel stare at him as if he has leprosy. It's a dark movie, it's a gritty movie, and it is a realistic movie. He pushes her into a barn and rapes her. 1996-2023, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, Select a location to see product availability. The town's backstory hovers over the action like a thunderhead in the recent past, a sheriff who'd been gearing up to report the mining company's territorial infractions got horsewhipped to death in town, and virtually every citizen had either participated or watched. Taking advantage of the town's quaking fear over a trio of returning outlaws (led by Geoffrey Lewis, Juliette's dad), the gunslinger essentially takes over, making a put-upon midget (Billy Curtis) sheriff and mayor, having a lavish welcome-home picnic set up for the impending criminals, and forcing the townspeople to literally paint the entire town blood red (one of the gritty '70s' most Boschian images). [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. Early in High Plains Drifter, Eastwood establishes the film's stark terms with a scene that's perhaps more shocking now than it was way back in 1973. Art Direction: Henry Bumstead High Plains Drifter Jump toSummaries (5)Synopsis (1) Edit Summaries 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. in the film's most wildly questionable scene, a rape of the town trollop (Marianna Hill). Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2018. Which is to say that High Plains Drifter honors and explodes the sicko pleasure of the vigilante film, which allows us to pretend that were the alpha and thusly indulge the alphas sense of superiority over what are, ironically, more accurate representations of ourselves. They are hateful because they, as a town, had their sheriff killed years back--so they thought. Rape scene appalling. Belding, aiming a shotgun at the Stranger's back, is shot dead by Mordecai. But looking back now, Id say that Eastwood comes out of that exchange looking like the victor. Sarah Belding. The List Price is the suggested retail price of a new product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. Directed by Clint Eastwood in 1973 and written by Ernest Tidyman, High Plains Drifter begins with the ominous image of a lone stranger (Clint Eastwood) on horseback emerging out of a desert mirage of sorts. Eastwood reportedly liked the offbeat quality of the film's original nine-page proposal and approached Universal with the idea of directing it. That isn't the American people who settled this country. 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. They had been held repressed by previous generations, and controlled. Your email address will not be published. It wasn't necessarily his best, but it was an entertaining movie! Cox also celebrates the films superb sense of location, as High Plains Drifter is set in a western town that was built out of scratch, including functional interiors in many of the buildings. Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. The Stranger lures one of the Carlin brothers outside and whips him to death, then kills the remaining outlaws one by one. This is my pick for the greatest Western ever made. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. How do the stores make any money if strangers keep getting driven out? In his second directorial outing, following 1971's Play Misty for Me, Eastwood seems hard to the point of self-parody. The townspeople are scared of him, and three gunmen try, unsuccessfully, to kill him. 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. Social mores have drastically changed in the past few decades. As stridently revisionist as any Western of the Vietnam era, High Plains Drifter is really only a Western on paper. Tidyman said that his script for High Plains Drifter was inspired by the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese case, where a 28-year-old Queens woman was stabbed and murdered as her terrified neighbors reportedly stared out their apartment windows and watched without calling for help. The most eye-catching and best-known sequence in the film occurs when Eastwood tells the cowering citizens of Lago to paint every building in the town red as they await the three murderers return. But Eastwood has always been cagier about interpreting his film, saying that that interpretation might be true, but its also possible that the Stranger is Duncans avenging brother. 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. Synopsis It was one generations Great Western Star reaching his hand out to the previous generations. Every scene is immaculately done. As for Eastwood, he had shown such vulnerability two years earlier in his directorial debut Play Misty for Me (1971), but in this, his second shot at directing, he effectively transports himself back to the inexpressive, squinting Man with No Name of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. They are seen in bed together, bare shoulders and back revealed. 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". I wonder why no one recognized him. All cuts were waived in 1987 when the film was granted an '18' certificate for home video. Strangers stand out effortlessly. [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. "You know," Mordecai says, "I never did know your name." THE BEST BLU-RAY VERSION TO BUY 100% WORTH THE MONEY, MORE THAN 5 STARS, Reviewed in Australia on March 19, 2021. High Plains Drifter Mystery & suspense 1973 1 hr 45 min English audio R CC Buy or rent Clint Eastwood's second film as a director finds the celebrated action star returning to his. Full buildings were constructed rather than just facades; this allowed filming interior scenes on location as well. A strange rider trots slowly into the town. Mono Lake was chosen by Clint Eastwood himself after he extensively scouted for locations in Oregon, Nevada, and California while driving a pick up truck. Watch the scene below . As they unknowingly beat a dummy in the bed, the Stranger tosses a stick of dynamite into the room, destroying most of the hotel, then shoots two of his attackers dead, as Morgan flees, wounded. Callie Travers, - Even more unnerving is the townspeoples indifference to Callies violation, though we soon learn they have a habit of allowing atrocity to flower for their own convenience. 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 I think they were trying to portray him as a morally grey character, but yeah definitely uncomfortable to watch. Eastwood plays a nameless gunslinger who simply rides into Lago, a small, spare mining town built on the edge of a huge mountain lake. Another man watched the horrific attack and doesn't help her - he smiles instead. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Not until the end do we find out why the people are so hateful and why the man himself is so hateful. It is gradually revealed that the townspeople hired the outlaws to murder Duncan when he discovered that the local gold mine was illegally dug on government-owned land and would have to be closed, destroying the town's livelihood. High Plains Drifter was released in theaters on this day in 1973. Interestingly, we hardly blink at this laconic gunhand dispatching a few antagonistic frontier men with pistol blasts to the forehead and chest, but the rape which like everything else in the film is involved with a protracted plan for retribution sticks in our contemporary craw, even if the hateful woman in question does eventually return with her own gun, seeking vengeance. Theyre already in hell for their sins (at least everyone other than Verna Bloom, who was the only person who tried to help Duncan). Marshal, being whipped to death by outlaws Stacey Bridges and brothers Dan and Cole Carlin, as Lago's citizens watch in silence. (You must log in or sign up to reply here. (music) Cinematography by Bruce Surtees . Kinos 4K release offers the ultimate experience of one mean, bleak trip to hell. [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. The movie is commenting on female repression in multiple ways, one of them in a quite lighthearted manner (poking fun at her insatiable libido and shameless sluttiness). The location is relatively close to the Mono Lake area and has featured in a number of popular westerns including John Waynes True Grit and How the West Was Won, Steve McQueens Nevada Smith and Clint Eastwoods earlier film Joe Kidd. Will you want anything else? Of course he's not. The lakes ecosystem is based on its numerous brine shrimp and provides a critical habitat for millions of annual migratory birds. We respond to his iconic authority, envisioning perhaps that we would be him in such a scenario, even if most of us would be among the lambs. Not just politically, but also stylistically. It's a great gesture. In an interview, Eastwood said that earlier versions of the script made the Stranger the dead marshal's brother. If youve never watched it, you need to ask your hand with the five finger said to the face. Early in High Plains Drifter, Eastwood establishes the films stark terms with a scene thats perhaps more shocking now than it was way back in 1973. "[10] The graveyard set featured in the film's final scene included tombstones inscribed "Sergio Leone" and "Don Siegel" as a humorous tribute to the two influential directors. "Clint Back in Saddle in 'Drifter'". If you are not familiar with Clint Eastwood this is a good place to start. This is a classic Clint Eastwood that is entertaining and suspenseful no matter how many times you see it. Three men are shot and killed, little blood seen. He finally chose the area because he considered it to be highly photogenic. Early in the story, Eastwood commits forcible rape. Clint Eastwood ranks right alongside Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, and Charles Bronson as one of cinema's top-shelf tough guys. CREATIVE. The Rape Scene in High Plains Drifter Why can't I find it anywhere? That night, in his hotel room, the Stranger dreams of Jim Duncan, a U.S. The two scenes where the man is being whipped is intense and sadistic. This content is imported from youTube. This content is imported from youTube. A Clint Eastwood western is certainly NOT a John Wayne western. I see, so he was whipped by the men of the town years earlier. who rides into the small mining town of Lago and immediately begins to toy with the locals, playing judge, jury, and executioner for their sins. | This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. 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.