When Clint Eastwood announced he was directing his first Western movie, many people were excited about what it would look like. Eastwood’s first directorial effort was the psychological thriller Play Misty for Me, but it was the Western genre that Eastwood thrived in. Eastwood’s breakout came thanks to Westerns, with his appearance as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy proving he was the biggest Western star of his era. However, no one could have known what they would see in High Plains Drifter.
On the surface, High Plains Drifter looked a lot like Eastwood’s most famous Western roles. Just like in A Fistful of Dollars, a mysterious stranger rides into town and ends up dealing with dangerous cowboys and rustlers who threaten the peace of the small town. The stranger then does everything in his power to end the threat, leaving countless ᴅᴇᴀᴅ bodies in his wake. However, when the stranger finishes in High Plains Drifter, he hints that he is not a simple mortal man, which is also hinted at throughout the film.
Clint Eastwood Added Supernatural Aspects To High Plains Drifter
The Stranger Might Have Returned From The Grave
High Plains Drifter started like no other Western movie before it. A mysterious man arriving in a town in need was not new. However, when Clint Eastwood’s The Stranger arrived in town, he did things that seemed shocking for a Western at the time. The Stranger showed up in town and killed the men who the townspeople hired to protect them. He then came across a woman named Callie and raped her while the townspeople stood by idly. High Plains Drifter shows that this man is not a hero from the start.
Things got dark when The Stranger had a nightmare about a U.S. Marshal named Jim Duncan. An outlaw who had the town in fear whipped the marshal to death, and the townspeople did nothing to help him. It was clear why The Stranger had no care for many of the people in the town, but he was here for a different reason. He targeted the outlaws, and no one got out of this alive.
The Stranger killed every outlaw one by one, like any other slasher killer.
Clint Eastwood directed this like a horror movie but in the form of a Western. There was a scene where the outlaws were in a saloon, and The Stranger whipped a man to death in the streets, with every lash of the whip intercutting with the shocked expression on someone’s face. With the town burning as a backdrop, The Stranger killed every outlaw one by one, like any other slasher killer that would follow in the next two decades. It all ended up even more shocking in the final scene.
High Plains Drifter’s Supernatural Elements Made Clint Eastwood’s Character More Intriguing
Eastwood Also Brought The Character Back In Pale Rider
High Plains Drifter ends with The Stranger leaving the town after killing all the outlaws. On his way out of town, he rides his horse past Mordecai, the downtrodden dwarf that The Stranger named the sheriff and mayor of the town. When Mordecai looks at The Stranger, he says he never knew the man’s name. However, that is when The Stranger cryptically says, “Yes, you do.” Mordecai seems to realize the truth. The sheriff stands beside a tombstone that says, “Marshal Jim Duncan, Rest in Peace.”
The Stranger rides into the desert and disappears into the heat waves, making it look like he isn’t a human but the returning Jim Duncan seeking revenge from the grave. However, High Plains Drifter allowed viewers to decide for themselves if he was supernatural or not. Interestingly, in 1985, Eastwood directed another Western called Pale Rider with another mysterious man, and this time, he admitted that this character was a ghost, stripping away much of the mystery that High Plains Drifter offered.
