High Plains Drifter [4K Ultra HD Blu-ray]

Director: Clint Eastwood, Robert Daley Clint Eastwood

Overview

"Who are you?" the dwarf Mordecai (Billy Curtis) asks Clint Eastwood's Stranger at the end of Eastwood's 1973 western High Plains Drifter. "You know," he replies, before vanishing into the desert heat waves near California's Mono Lake. Adapting the amorally enigmatic and violent Man With No Name persona from his films with Sergio Leone, Eastwood's second film as director begins as his drifter emerges from that heat haze and rides into the odd lakefront settlement of Lago. Lago's residents are not particularly friendly, but once the Stranger shows his skills as a gunfighter, they beg him to defend them against a group of outlaws (led by Eastwood regular Geoffrey Lewis) who have a score to settle with the town. He agrees to train them in self-defense, but Mordecai and innkeeper's wife Sarah Belding (Verna Bloom) soon suspect that the Stranger has another, more personal agenda. By the time the Stranger makes the corrupt community paint their town red and re-name it "Hell," it is clear that he is not just another gunslinger. With its fragmented flashbacks and bizarre, austere locations, High Plains Drifter's stylistic eccentricity lends an air of unsettling eeriness to its revenge story, adding an uncanny slant to Eastwood's antiheroic westerner. Seminal western hero John Wayne was so offended by Eastwood's harshly revisionist view of a frontier town that he wrote to Eastwood, objecting that this was not what the spirit of the West was all about. Eastwood's audience, however, was not so put off, and an exhibitors' poll named Eastwood a top box-office draw for 1973.

Product Details

Release Date:	11/22/2022
UPC:	0738329261092
Original Release:	1973
Rating:	R
Source:	Kl Studio Classics
Language:	English
Time:	1:45:00
Format:	Blu-ray
Sales rank:	8,650

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Clint Eastwood	Stranger
Verna Bloom	Sarah Belding
Mitchell Ryan	Dave Drake,Dave Drake
Jack Ging	Morgan Allen
Ted Hartley	Lewis Belding
Billy Curtis	Mordecai
Stefan Gierasch	Mayor
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
Jane Aull	Townswoman
Dan Vadis	Dan Carlin
Reid Cruickshanks	Gunsmith
James Gosa	Tommy Morris,Tommy Morris
Jack Kosslyn	Saddlemaker
Russ McCubbin	Fred Short
Belle Mitchell	Mrs. Lake
John Mitchum	Warden
Carl C. Pitti	Teamster,Teamster
Chuck Waters	Stableman
Buddy Van Horn	Marshal Jim Duncan
Mariana Hill	Callie Travers
Alex Tinne	Actor
English	Voices
Mitch Regan	Actor
Dee Barton	Composer

Technical Credits

Ernest Tidyman

Dean Riesner

Clint Eastwood	Director
Ernest Tidyman	Screenwriter
Jennings Lang	Executive Producer
Robert Daley	Producer,Director
Buddy Van Horn	Stunts
James R. Alexander	Sound Effects
William Griffith	Sound Effects
Edwin J. Somers Jr.	Sound Effects
Jerry Whittington	Sound Effects
Dean Riesner	Screenwriter
Jim Alexander	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood's first Western behind the camera -- and only his second effort as a director, may owe a lot to his former collaborator Sergio Leone, but it also marks the point at which he begins to come into his own as an artist. The leisurely, dialogue-heavy asides may bog this film down at times, but it's an approach that would bear fruit later in Eastwood's directorial career. But Drifter works quite well even outside the context of Eastwood's other work, thanks to a harsh, wind-swept mysticism all its own. Leone and Eastwood's Man With No Name films helped usher in an era of revisionist Westerns, but with this film Eastwood doubles back, reconnecting those films' dark humor and mysterious loner character (introduced riding ominously through the entire length of a small town) to the realm of folk tale and myth. The script by Shaft author Ernest Tidyman is as unforgiving as its protagonist -- it might be argued that an early rape scene goes too far -- but there's no denying this film's unique appeal. It's a revisionist Western extreme even by the standards of the time. Like the Machiavellian hero who defends it, the film looks upon a superficially idyllic Western setting and finds virtually nothing to like.

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