Midweek Mention... High Plains Drifter
Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review!
This week, we saddle up for a gritty supernatural western as we take on Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter — a film that’s equal parts revenge tale, eerie morality play, and genre deconstruction. With Eastwood both in the saddle and behind the camera, this one takes the dusty tropes of the western and coats them in something much darker.
🌵 The Plot: Ghosts, Guns, and Guilt
Eastwood stars as The Stranger — an unnamed, steely-eyed drifter who rides into the seemingly ordinary frontier town of Lago. He barely speaks, shoots with brutal efficiency, and immediately disrupts the uneasy status quo. The town, we soon learn, has a shameful past: three gunmen are heading back to wreak vengeance on the townspeople, and in desperation, they hire The Stranger to protect them.
But The Stranger doesn’t just defend the town — he takes it over. He appoints a dwarf as mayor and sheriff, paints the whole town red, and renames it “Hell.” What unfolds is not your typical good-versus-evil shootout but a surreal reckoning with collective guilt, complicity, and justice from beyond the grave.
🎬 Why It Stands Out
Clint’s Second Rodeo:
As his second film as director, Eastwood shows he’s not just copying Sergio Leone’s spaghetti-western aesthetic — he’s twisting it into something nightmarish. There are echoes of A Fistful of Dollars here, but also of horror films and allegorical ghost stories.
Moral Murkiness:
This isn’t the John Wayne-style western where the hero wears a white hat and the villains are cartoonish. High Plains Drifter is more interested in what happens when a whole town turns a blind eye. Everyone’s guilty. Everyone’s afraid. And The Stranger — whether he’s man, myth, or spectre — is there to make them pay.
Unsettling Tone:
There’s a dreamlike, almost supernatural quality that haunts the film. Is The Stranger the avenging spirit of Jim Duncan, the murdered marshal? Is he just a gunslinger with a wicked sense of justice? Eastwood never says — and that ambiguity gives the film its eerie power.
🧠 Themes: Retribution and Regret
At its core, this is a film about what happens when a community covers up evil. The townspeople of Lago stood by and watched as Duncan was whipped to death — and now they’re dealing with the consequences. It’s not just a story of revenge — it’s a ghost story dressed in dusters and six-shooters. High Plains Drifter plays with the idea that guilt doesn’t die easy, and sometimes the past rides back into town.
So join us this week as we ride into Lago, dig into Eastwood’s weird west vision, and debate whether The Stranger is ghost, man, or myth. Either way, he’s got a message: you can’t outrun the past.
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