High Plains Drifter

UPC: 025192015229

Studio: Universal Studios

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Not For Children, Western Violence]

Summary: "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. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Category: Western

Features: Production notes
Talent bios
Film highlights
Theatrical trailer

High Plains Drifter

Format: DVD

Release Date: 02/24/1998

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cinemascope

Audio: 2 PCM stereo

Runtime: 106 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French

Subtitles: Spanish,English,French

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Side #1 --
0. Chapter List
1. Main Titles: The Stranger [7:12]
2. Encounter At The Saloon [6:16]
3. The Stranger Gets Acquainted [4:47]
4. A Dream [4:53]
5. A Hot Bath [3:17]
6. The Town Council [3:16]
7. Anything You Want [8:50]
8. Volunteers [11:22]
9. The Gunfighter Stays [5:38]
10. Remembering [8:39]
11. The Church Meeting [6:50]
12. A New Room [7:28]
13. The Ambush [8:12]
14. Trouble Rides To Town [6:19]
15. The Stranger Returns [9:46]
16. The Name On The Grave (End Titles) [2:01]

Keith Phipps

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. ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Reid Cruickshanks  Actor 
Jack Kosslyn  Actor 
Dan Vadis  Actor 
James Gosa  Actor 
Robert Donner  Actor 
Russ McCubbin  Actor 
Walter Barnes  Actor 
John Mitchum  Actor 
Buddy Van Horn  Actor 
Paul Brinegar  Actor 
John Quade  Actor 
Mitch Regan  Actor 
Ted Hartley  Actor 
Carl Pitti  Actor 
Chuck Waters  Actor 
Billy Curtis  Actor 
Geoffrey Lewis  Actor 
Scott Walker  Actor 
Richard Bull  Actor 
John Hillerman  Actor 
L. William O'Connell  Actor 
Jane Aull  Actor 
Belle Mitchell  Actor 
Anthony James  Actor 
Dee Barton  Composer (Music Score) 
Robert Daley  Producer 
Clint Eastwood  Director 
Jennings Lang  Executive Producer 
Ernest Tidyman  Screenwriter 
Clint Eastwood  Actor 
Verna Bloom  Actor 
Marianna Hill  Actor 
Mitchell Ryan  Actor 
Jack Ging  Actor 
Stefan Gierasch  Actor 

Country: USA