A lone drifter comes riding in from the horizon. He arrives in a peaceful-looking town called Lago where he is picked on by three toughs, supposedly the town’s protectors. The drifter guns them all down and the town turns to him for protection when they get word that a gang was being released from prison that wants revenge against Lago for setting them up for a crime they didn’t commit. The drifter, an unnamed rustic, agrees but the price is too high: anything he wants, including the town's complete cooperation. From taking anything from the shop to a date with the woman he raped, to literally painting the town red and calling it Hell, he makes the people of Lago pay for their hypocrisy. By the end, we see that the town was rotten to the core and responsible for the murder of a marshal, having the outlaws kill him to protect the secret that the mine near the town did not belong to them. The wrongdoers are punished, including the gang that had killed the marshal in the first place, and the conspirators. In the next morning, the unnamed drifter rides back in the direction from which he came. This is the premise for the fire-and-brimstone western High Plains Drifter.
Clint Eastwood directed this offbeat offering back in 1973 under difficult conditions including an unstable landscape, weather that damaged cameras, and the red paint was poisonous. Eastwood plays the Stranger. Some may see him as a murderous, raping degenerate, but observe that he kills men that deserve to be killed and the woman he raped was not innocent, having been complicit in the murder of the marshal; of course, this doesn’t make him a good guy. He also uses his newfound pull in town to give away a shopkeeper’s goods to a Native American and his kids and makes the local little person Mordecai the sheriff of the town, which indicates moments of compassion. Overall, his motives seem inscrutable, but the results come in the form of restoring balance in the town and ripping out its corruption by the roots even if it has some rebuilding to do. I see him as a personified plague, one of God’s punishments that was sent to wipe out the evil that infested the town, and essentially give it a new start, an amoral entity that might not even be human.
It is a complex movie in which we are presented with a moral dilemma of whether or not to root for the Stranger. The movie has action, terror, and an ironic, if bitter sense of humor. We are offered glimpses of humor by the Stranger giving Mordecai some leverage to assert himself and not be picked on by the townsfolk. We also see a glimpse of humanity in Sarah, the innkeeper’s wife, who tried to do the right thing when the marshal was killed but was essentially powerless to make an impact.
During my first viewing of the movie last year, I was a little surprised at first, then a little baffled, and then I caught on onto the vision came to realize that this movie wasn’t a typical story of a lone gunslinger with a heart of gold who rides in, shoots the bad guys, is offered a place in the community, and then humbly turns it down so he can ride in the sunset. Only a couple of people really appreciate what the Stranger is doing (including Mordecai, who was referred to by Eastwood as the town’s conscience). This feeling was reinforced the second time I watched the movie this year and I came to appreciate it even more.
It’s not a story of good and pure-hearted heroism, it is a story of evil and of justice served cold, about a town that so corrupt, short-sighted, and cowardly that it hires the Stranger to fight its own battles, and he scourges it in turn. Fire will burn out the impurity, but it will burn the infected too. This movie stands out as one of the most uncompromising films I’ve ever seen and is a stellar example of the Weird Western and what kind of story could be told in that form.
Written by Nick Montelongo
Clint Eastwood directed this offbeat offering back in 1973 under difficult conditions including an unstable landscape, weather that damaged cameras, and the red paint was poisonous. Eastwood plays the Stranger. Some may see him as a murderous, raping degenerate, but observe that he kills men that deserve to be killed and the woman he raped was not innocent, having been complicit in the murder of the marshal; of course, this doesn’t make him a good guy. He also uses his newfound pull in town to give away a shopkeeper’s goods to a Native American and his kids and makes the local little person Mordecai the sheriff of the town, which indicates moments of compassion. Overall, his motives seem inscrutable, but the results come in the form of restoring balance in the town and ripping out its corruption by the roots even if it has some rebuilding to do. I see him as a personified plague, one of God’s punishments that was sent to wipe out the evil that infested the town, and essentially give it a new start, an amoral entity that might not even be human.It is a complex movie in which we are presented with a moral dilemma of whether or not to root for the Stranger. The movie has action, terror, and an ironic, if bitter sense of humor. We are offered glimpses of humor by the Stranger giving Mordecai some leverage to assert himself and not be picked on by the townsfolk. We also see a glimpse of humanity in Sarah, the innkeeper’s wife, who tried to do the right thing when the marshal was killed but was essentially powerless to make an impact.
During my first viewing of the movie last year, I was a little surprised at first, then a little baffled, and then I caught on onto the vision came to realize that this movie wasn’t a typical story of a lone gunslinger with a heart of gold who rides in, shoots the bad guys, is offered a place in the community, and then humbly turns it down so he can ride in the sunset. Only a couple of people really appreciate what the Stranger is doing (including Mordecai, who was referred to by Eastwood as the town’s conscience). This feeling was reinforced the second time I watched the movie this year and I came to appreciate it even more.
It’s not a story of good and pure-hearted heroism, it is a story of evil and of justice served cold, about a town that so corrupt, short-sighted, and cowardly that it hires the Stranger to fight its own battles, and he scourges it in turn. Fire will burn out the impurity, but it will burn the infected too. This movie stands out as one of the most uncompromising films I’ve ever seen and is a stellar example of the Weird Western and what kind of story could be told in that form.
Written by Nick Montelongo
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