Way Overdue Movie Overview: High Plains Drifter

After Paint Your Wagon, Clint decided to scale up

There's a certain town I'll call Stupid Asshole, USA..."S.A., USA". The sign greeting visitors should say, among many other things, "Population: 120,000 Stupid Assholes." I haven't been there in years, and have no plans to return on purpose. It seems that just about every time I've been there, something very bad happened or almost happened. My best hope for that cursed town is that it gets hit by a giant meteor and then gets swallowed up by a giant sinkhole which sends it on a speedy journey straight into hell or communist China, where it and most of its residents totally belong.

Right here on VJ's website I watched one of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies, 1973’s High Plains Drifter, and greatly appreciated the story of someone taking revenge on a shitty town and its even shittier residents that fully and completely had it coming. I also liked the movie in that unlike most, if not all of Eastwood's other work, this movie has a supernatural element to it. The score is full of eerie sounds that greatly add to the overall effect of spookiness in certain scenes.

Eastwood once again plays a version of "The Man With No Name"...or does he? It's not a Spaghetti Western, so we'll call him (duhhhh) the High Plains Drifter, or Drifter for short. The Drifter and his horse trot their dusty asses into a dusty-ass little town called Lago. As per usual, the Unwelcome Wagon is rolled out in the form of three obnoxious assholes that start to give the Drifter a hard time from the get-go, and like most people who do that to the Drifter when he’s trying to chill out, they all wind up perforated and very, very dead, being quickly and expertly dispatched by the Drifter's pistol-packing wizardry. 

"Your feet are almost as big as your mouth."

The Drifter then proceeds to rape what appears to be the town whore, before finally renting a room at the town’s hotel, where he has either a dream or a flashback of someone who looks a lot like him being savagely bull-whipped by three leering and grinning goons.

The cowardly and incompetent sheriff of Lago, instead of placing him under arrest for the triple homicide and the rape, tells the Drifter a strange tale. The three thugs that just got smoked by the Drifter were actually hired guns to protect the town from three more thugs who are about to be released from prison and had sworn to take revenge on the town and its people for railroading them. The sheriff, like everyone else, was impressed by the Drifter's skills with hand-held shooting irons, and attempts to recruit him to defend the town against the impending attack of the thuggish trio. The Drifter, showing profound indifference, initially declines the request with contempt, until the sheriff makes him a tantalizing offer; anything he wants in the town is his. Anything. The Drifter accepts.

It doesn’t take long for the pillars of the community to realize the mistake they just made in handing over a blank check and the keys to the city to the Drifter. The Drifter immediately takes maximum advantage of the situation, helping himself to anything and everything in the town he was interested in. In addition to his own personal plundering, the Drifter shows a generous side by, among other things, treating people to drinks and cigars (at the bar’s expense, of course) and reshuffles the town’s civil service by making a midget (one of the few people in the town he seems to like, or at least not hate) both the mayor and the sheriff. The pillars of the community, not liking any of this one bit, start to scheme against the Drifter, and reveal some hitherto unknown and sordid details about the genesis of the unfolding situation, which to them is getting more and more out of control.

Some of the locals, led by one of the pillars of the community, ineptly attempt to dust the Drifter in the hotel, but wind up getting dusted themselves. The Drifter is not pleased with this unfriendly visit, which also resulted in most of the hotel being destroyed. The hotel owner’s wife, perhaps the only one in town who isn’t afraid of the Drifter, protests the destruction of her business and announces the only room left intact is hers; the Drifter immediately proceeds to commandeer and requisition both her and the room. 

Mrs. Hotel Owner - Smoking after sex?

After some initial reluctance, the woman succumbs to the Drifter’s charms and winds up having sex with him with some enthusiasm. Talking in bed, the woman tells the story of how a certain Marshal was bull-whipped to death in the middle of the town and buried in an unmarked grave just outside of it; she also says something to the effect of spirits dislike being in unmarked graves.

Things begin to happen rapidly. The pillars of the community finally reveal why the newly-released thugs are on their way to have their way with them. The Marshal that was bull-whipped to death was going to report them for some sort of real estate fraud that would get them in big trouble with the government; the three bull-whipping thugs were hired to kill him, which they did, but then the pillars of the community double-crossed them as well. 

The Drifter with his only friend, His Honorably Excellency The Mayor and Sheriff of Lago

The pillars of the community still think that they are good, God-fearing people…yeah, right! More flashbacks by the Drifter reveal the various residents of Lago looking on while he’s being murdered, with only the midget and the hotel owner’s wife expressing any regret or sympathy toward him.

The bullwhipping trio on their way back to Lago

Meanwhile, getting closer and closer to Lago, the three thugs get a course in psychological warfare from the Drifter, who inexplicably backs off and allows the three thugs to triumphantly re-enter Lago, since renamed Hell. They waste no time whatsoever in taking their revenge, tearing up the town and murdering several people, including the sheriff, but later on in the evening, the Drifter makes his presence felt again by killing the thugs one by one. The sheriff/mayor midget saves the Drifter’s life by shooting one of the pillars of the community that almost got the drop on him. The movie ends with the Drifter finally leaving Lago; the midget tells the Drifter that he never got his name, but the Drifter replies that he did. The midget is making a grave marker with the bull-whipped sheriff’s name on it. The Drifter then disappears into the High Plains, while the spooky music starts again. The End.

My main takeaways from this movie are that “God-fearing, good pillars of the community” are often the lowest form of scum, and that whenever you make a deal with the Devil, count on getting burned. Payback is a bitch.