![]() ![]() Like many readers will know, the same suggestions about a dead man risen from the grave, were made in relation to High Plains Drifter. ![]() ![]() The same amount of wounds, in the same pattern, will be inflicted on Stockburn, the leader of the hired killers, who apparently was the man who killed the Preacher in his former life. So many wounds in such a vital area of the body must have been mortal. There seems to be some evidence for this in the movie, when six scars from bullet wounds are visible on his back. There has been a lot of confusion about some of Eastwood’s utterances, suggesting that the title character is a ghost, a dead man who has risen from the grave. Although the rider on his pale horse is linked to the Apocalyptic rider called Death, he seems more a messenger from heaven. We never knew who or what the drifter from the earlier film was, but he seemed to come out of hell. The main difference however, is the identity of the stranger and – even more so – the place he’s coming from. Pale Rider is also reminiscent of Eastwood’s first western as a director, High Plains Drifter. Stockburn and his man kill one prospector, who has found gold and had come to town to provoke LaHood, but then they have to face the Preacher … An alarmed LaHood first offers the prospectors a good price for their claims, but when they decide to stay, he contracts a group of hired guns, assembled by a man called Stockburn ( John Russel). The preacher pulls the community of prospectors together and inspires them to fight for their rights. Hull lives with a widow ( Carrie Snoddgrass) and her blossoming daughter ( Sydney Penny), and both the woman and the daughter are attracted to the mysterious stranger, who is addressed as “Preacher”, because he wears a white clerical collar. He soon comes to the aid of prospector Hull Barret ( Michael Moriarty), who is beaten up in town by some of the men of LaHood ( Richard Dysart), who wants to lay his hand on the claims held by the prospectors, if necessary by brute force. Eastwood himself is the stranger whose arrival is accompanied by the teenage girl reading in the Bible about the horseman of the Apocalypse riding a pale horse, named Death, and hell followed him. Farmers have become gold-prospectors, a boy has become a flourishing girl, the Wyoming Frontier has become the California Gold Rush etc. Nearly all elements of Shane (1953), the most famous western cast in this mould, are copied, but usually with a minor twist. The story told here, is one of the oldest (and most prolific) in the history of the western movie, that of the mysterious stranger coming to the aid of poor defenceless people threatened by a local tyrant. Slated by critics, loved by his fans, this over-cooked, over-ambitious, over-everything western, Pale Rider (1984), Clint Eastwood’s third as a director, offers both the best and worst of its star and maker. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |