High Plains Drifter (1998, DVD)

In an early directorial effort, Clint Eastwood caps off his spaghetti western trilogy with a tip of the hat to mentor Sergio Leone. TV star Eastwood (Rawhide) had made his splash on the big screen with the so-called spaghetti western, filmed by an Italian crew with German funding in Spain. High Plains Drifter is an illustration of karma what goes around, comes around. Eastwood explores a dark vision of townsfolk of an isolated western town bonding together for protection of their common interest but too cowardly to do the dirty work themselves. His mysterious Stranger holds a mirror up to...

Stranger: You're going to look pretty silly with that knife sticking out of your ass. Directed by Clint Eastwood Clint Eastwood as The Stranger High Plains Drifter 1973 Story / Plot A stranger shows up in this little hole in the wall town with a bunch paranoid schizophrenics, a horny woman and a midget. It sounds like a logger joke but it s not. High Plains Drifter is one of the great all time westerns. This is not your normal stranger either, he is as fast as lightning with his pea shooter and he respects no one. The paranoid schizophrenics decide if they can t kill him, they ll hire him to..

This is the movie that made me a fan of Clint Eastwood. Not only does he play the character that every man envisions himself as from time to time, but I later discovered he directed this classic as well. There aren't many traditional humor spots in the action/cowboy movie, but you will find yourself laughing at several situations. When Eastwood rides into the corrupt town of Largo everything changes. Almost instantly we see the unnamed gunslinger is extremely proficient with his tools as he promptly eliminates three of the town bullies. Impressed, the town's people give Clint his run of the...

Having made a great debut behind the camera (as well as in front of it) with the 1971 suspense thriller PLAY MISTY FOR ME, Clint Eastwood found a way to return to the kind of role that made him an international superstar in the first place--the mythical "Man With No Name" that he personified in that outrageously successful trilogy of spaghetti westerns he made with director Sergio Leone in the 1960s. That way was through HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, courtesy of Oscar-winning screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (of SHAFT and THE FRENCH CONNECTION fame). But rather than try for a retread of Leone, Eastwood,...