When Clint Eastwood directed Westerns, he challenged his audience to think deeper. On the outside, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, and High Plains Drifter were old-school Westerns with pistols and horses designed to entertain a wide audience – and they do. As an actor, no one embodied the wonder and peril of the old West quite like Eastwood, and he quickly established himself as the John Wayne of his generation. Rather than replicating Wayne’s stalwart heroism and totemic ideals, Eastwood’s Western protagonists, or anti-heroes in his case, were ominous figures – abstract in their desires and motivations. No Western of his displayed a more spiritual outlaw than his original revisionist film, High Plains Drifter, whose anonymously named “The Stranger” is believed to be an apparition.
‘High Plains Drifter’ Presents a Dark, Nightmarish Side to the West
Twenty years before Unforgiven, the haunting anti-Western that saw the archetypal cowboy reckoning with his sins, won Best Director and Best Picture at the Academy Awards, Clint Eastwood brought the genre to bleak depths with High Plains Drifter. The film follows a gun-fighter, The Stranger (Eastwood), hired by a small town to defend the townsfolk against three ruthless outlaws with unfinished business about to released from prison. The townspeople gradually reconsider the sensibility of their decision as The Stranger is proven to be a violent figure with a dark streak. High Plains Drifter was the first Western Eastwood directed, and it set the tone for the brand of subversive Westerns that defined his career and the genre itself. Nowadays, if a Western isn’t grappling with the identity and history of Western expansion and vigilante justice, audiences feel cheated.
The Stranger almost feels like a continuation of Eastwood’s reticent, steely, and squinting outlaw of Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy. In High Plains Drifter, he renders this character as a ghostly and ominous figure. His presence creates an eerie cloud over this sun-baked mining town of Lago. The only outlined character trait of the Stranger is his depravity. Eastwood unflinchingly portrays the Stranger as a devilish savage, as he depicts harrowing sequences of physical and sexual assault on women. He rules the town with an iron fist to prepare them for a war with the freed outlaws, who are revealed to have been framed by the town to satisfy their self-interest in profiting off their gold mine. In case anyone is still unsure of his morality, the Stranger orders the townspeople to paint every building red, with himself painting the word “Hell” over the town’s welcome sign. It’s no surprise that John Wayne interpreted this movie as pure sacrilege.
Is Clint Eastwood’s Stranger Character in ‘High Plains Drifter’ a Ghost?
The character that looms over High Plains Drifter is Jim Duncan (Buddy Van Horn), the town Marshal whipped to death by the outlaws, Stacey Bridges and brothers Dan and Cole Carlin. The Stranger sees Duncan’s beating in his sleep, with a lurid dream showing the townspeople standing by as the outlaws humiliate and murder him. The sheer violence surrounding Duncan’s death explains why they resorted to hiring the malicious Stranger to protect them. Between the ghostly existence of the Stranger, and the casting of Buddy Van Horn, Eastwood’s longtime stunt double, as Duncan, fans have theorized that the Stranger and Duncan are not only the same being, but the Stranger is the ghost of the slain Duncan.
Clint Eastwood told James Lipton on Inside the Actor’s Studio that he was drawn to the allegorical nature of High Plains Drifter. However, the abstract nature of the film was undermined by the original script by Ernest Tidyman (of French Connection fame) explicitly outlining that the Stranger was Duncan’s brother. “I made it very ambiguous, so the audience can draw their own conclusions. Was this some sort of mythical deal? Was this some sort of apparition?” Eastwood said. When defending his film against criticism thrown at him by John Wayne, Eastwood insisted that High Plains Drifter “was meant to be a fable.” The film evokes the sentiment of a grim cautionary tale, one that exhibits the harsh realities of violence and justice in the Old West. The townspeople, derelict in their duties, were oblivious to the Stranger’s savagery.
Ultimately, there is no clear-cut answer to whether the Stranger in High Plains Drifter is a form of supernatural retribution. As a director, Clint Eastwood allows his audience to interpret his protagonists, including outlaws, law enforcement officers, or historical figures, with complete freedom. However, the mythical and hazy depiction of the Stranger heavily suggests he’s fantastical. While Duncan represents the idyllic law enforcement officer of the old West, the Stranger symbolizes the dark underbelly of the genre that Eastwood has reflected on for 50 years. The Stranger embodies a burning desire for vengeance, which serves as the twisted cousin of Western justice. Going off Eastwood’s knack for revisionist storytelling, the Stranger is the authentic version of the cowboy that the genre has historically sanitized. From a more direct perspective, the Stranger could also merely be a drifter who seeks violence and retribution as a way of life, an archetype that hits close to home for Eastwood. No matter how you shake it, High Plains Drifter remains one of Eastwood’s finest works, presenting an ugly side to the West that only exists in our nightmares.