High Plains Drifter

Clint Eastwood is the quintessential Western loner in High Plains Drifter, the story of a man who rides into an isolated Western town which is his last stop on a long trail of vengeance.

Clint directed this movie himself, and it presents him very much in the Man Without a Name and Dirty Harry style - enigmatic and alone, answering only to his own strangely warped code of morals.

High Plains Drifter has a token nod to emblematic symbolism, in its suggestions throughout the movie that perhaps, just perhaps, the stranger is Marshall Jim Duncan, who was in fact cruelly murdered, with the townsfolks' connivance, a few years earlier. That's not giving away any of the plot - this is a suggestion which underlies the entire movie.

It's also a suggestion which weakens the movie - a pretty strange sort of vengeful spirit, this one, which can drink whisky, take a shave and a bath, and take two women to bed (on separate occasions). It's not quite believable - too simplistic, really, to create any special resonance.

But if we ignore that suggestion, it does still stack up as a pretty good Western drama, and definitely as one of the best early-Clint roles.

There's lots of violence and gunslinging to keep things moving along - but there is also a feature which is totally repugnant - two virtual rape scenes where Clint does his best to suggest to the gangling adolescent audience out there that when a woman says no, she's really meaning yes, and that after putting up a bit of a struggle she'll suddenly surrender into a quivering orgasmic bundle of delight. Well, it doesn't happen that way, and even back then in Clint's heyday he should have known better.

With that in mind, I'm surprised that this film has attracted only an M-15 rating, and not an R. As usual, Australia's censors have got it all upside-down. They give films with detailed consensual sex an R certificate, while making it comparatively easy to see sex which is linked to total violence and hatred of women. Sex is seen 'officially' as far worse than violence, which is such a sick and wrong attitude.

The video quality in this anamorphic transfer is really great. For a time I switched from straight 16x9 to 16x9 zoom to see how it shaped up, and the transfer still looked clean and clear, with no lines or artefacts evident. The shimmering opening as Clint Eastwood rides seemingly out of a mirage towards the town is wonderfully presented, as if filmed yesterday.

This transfer comes from Universal, the people who have given us so many of the classic widescreen movies of Alfred Hitchcock in atrocious pan-and-scan versions. Let's hope High Plains Drifter is the way they intend to present all such movies from now on.

This has mono audio which actually sounds very dynamic when spread across the stereo stage. It's not outstanding, but it is very presentable.

Very simple production notes, an original theatrical trailer and cast and film-makers' notes add up to a fairly bare-bones features presentation.

The production notes are well-scripted and give a thorough account of the making of this, the second film Clint Eastwood directed (the first was Play Misty For Me. But while they're an interesting read, it's not the same as a well-made documentary.

The original preview trailer starts out in non-anamorphic widescreen, and after a few moments changes to pan-and-scan. It is in reasonably good condition, with little damage to the well-used print.

This list makes the special features sound pretty chary. But the film itself is 101 minutes long and there's very little more needed. The film doesn't really need any backgrounding or special explanation, just take it at face value.

High Plains Drifter is for renting unless you're a totally committed Clint Eastwood fan. It boasts a great transfer, and provided you can stand the repellent nature of some of the violence, it's a good dramatic Western of the old-school full-on vengeance style.