Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Cruel and Dirty
Clint Eastwood reprises his cigar-smoking, whisky-swilling, sharp-shootin' Western hero, but with a significantly darker aspect in this film. Eastwood's no Kurosawa or Leone, and his direction is less interested in building dramatic tension, sweeping over the brown Western desertscapes, or focusing in on the eyes of hardened gunfighters. Rather, this is a psychological Western, zooming in on the cowardly inhabitants of Lago and Eastwood's violent and total domination of them.Frequent flashbacks of a brutal - and unjust - whipping that took place before Eastwood's arrival eventually explain the protagonist's behavior, which includes several cold-blooded murders and two [forced couplings] that must rank among the most anti-feminist moments in modern cinema. First a cheap hussy, then a respected townswoman fall under the spell of Eastwood's [member]. A midget gets appointed sheriff and mayor, and turns the tables on his tormentors. No one gets shot in the back, but that's about the only depth of human depravity not plumbed here. By the time the final scene arrives, you share the directorial disgust with the town he's created, and the murderous denouement is welcome. The music is nowhere near as good as Ennio Morricone's, and the DVD transfer adds nothing to the mono soundtrack. Picture quality is OK - no better. The chapter index is decent, but skip the DVD extras - a set of cast bios and an Eastwood filmography. Great fun, but don't play it for the kiddies - stick to 'A Fistful of Dollars' for that.
Rating: - One of the best and most original westerns of all time.
"High Plains Drifter" (1973) is one of the best and most original westerns of all time. It is also of of the best films that Clint Eastwood has ever made. It was only the second film that Eastwood ever directed, yet it is a western masterpiece, as it funnels all of the violent, harsh, and brutal images and themes that were first seen in the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns (which made Eastwood an international star) into one picture. No other film blurrs the lines of good and evil like this one. No other film has humor that is so dark and so black. No other film tests and re-defines the nature of screen heroism, as Eastwood plays his darkest and most enigmatic character ever. This film strips the western to its most brutal, raw, violent, and merciless essence, revealing the old West to be a truly immoral and corrupt land. Eastwood's compulsive, surrealistic imagery is both haunting and powerful, and it works in pefect tandem with Dee Barton's eerie score. Filmed around Mono Lake, California, the hellish locations of the film add to its haunting atmosphere. The western town, constructed by Henry Bumstead out of raw wood is a classic, and helps to reveal the mean-spirited hypocrisy and vicious economic determinism of the townspeople. The film has an unexpected, spontaneous, and completely anarchic quality that eliminates the western's typical predictablity and simple cliches. It is extremely challenging, unnerving, apparitional, allegorical, and curiously memorable. This is Clint Eastwood at his most daring and outrageous, as both an actor and director, testing the audience to see if it will support this most radical of anti-heroes. "High Plains Drifter" is my favorite film of all time, and it is not to be missed! END
Rating: - One of the Great Existential Westerns
High Plains Drifter stands as a testament to the spirit of the art-film Western, and carries the Sergio Leone inspired existential qualities within it. The Stranger (Clint Eastwood) rides into a corrupt town full of cowards, blows some of 'em away, and takes advantage of a luscious female. I consider it a misinterpretation to call what Clint does rape. His character basically treats people exactly the way they deserve, and this hot blonde in effect approached him, not vice-versa. As Bill Curtis (who played a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz) says, she tries to kill him because she loved the sex, but afterwards he ignored her.Ambiguities abound in the film. Is the Stranger the ghost of the marshall that the town had killed? The film implies this, hence he knows a lot more about the townspeople then he lets on. Also contains an impeccable understated performance from Verna Bloom. At the heart of all this is sweet revenge, and the Stranger gets it good. Ranks with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and the Hired Hand as one of the all time great Westerns.
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