“Couldn’t be worse if the devil himself had ridden right in.”
It’s uncommon to mix Horror with Western, but the results are often interesting because we’re in a time and place where the law is often ignored, so evil forces often run wild. For example, here we have a town marshal brutally killed by three bad men while the rest of the town did nothing. Eastwood plays a mysterious stranger who rides in and is quickly sized up as someone who might be able to stand up to the killers. The Stranger takes advantage, renaming the place Hell and having everything painted red, taking the town harlot against her will and killing anyone who objects. In many ways he’s as bad as the men he’s been hired to face, and the town mostly accepts this out of fear or guilt for what happened. Eastwood’s stranger also vaguely reminds people of the former marshal, as if he’s returned from the dead to exact supernatural vengeance.
With an older film, there’s sometimes a conversation to be had about how some moral choices play today. Scenes that were considered inoffensive at the time can ruin the entire experience now. High Plains Drifter is the film that strikes hard across the face because it’s like a typical revenge western, but the Stranger’s behavior is so immoral and that Stranger is played by the Director. Eastwood’s mysterious cowboy is the lead, but you wouldn’t call him a hero. He’s a demon who’s come to punish the town as much as protect it from the other evil that’s headed their way. The way Eastwood wields his authority is largely funny, all the while building to a climax that’s grim on a supernatural scale.
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