High Plains Drifter (1973) on Netflix
A stranger rides into a mining town where three hired gunmen taunt him; he shoots all three dead. The townsfolk hire him to hold off three outlaws due out of prison.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.4/1074,230 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Stranger arrives out of the desert at Lago, an isolated mining town. While he sits for a shave, three gunmen who guard the town taunt him, and he shoots all three dead. The town council, left without protectors, offers the Stranger whatever he asks if he stays and defends Lago against Stacey Bridges and the Carlin brothers, who are due out of prison. He accepts and sets his own terms: the dwarf Mordecai becomes sheriff and mayor, the saloon serves free drinks to everyone, and a Native American and his children get blankets and candy that the shopkeeper refused them. He also orders the hotel's owners, Lewis and Sarah Belding, and the other guests out, keeping the building to himself.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about High Plains Drifter (1973)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Screenwriter Ernest Tidyman based the story of a town that lets a lawman die on the real 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York, where eyewitnesses reportedly did nothing as she was attacked.
- Clint Eastwood loved the offbeat nine-page treatment for High Plains Drifter enough to pitch directing it to Universal himself, making it the first Western he both directed and starred in.
- To build the town of Lago as a real, walk-through set rather than a false-front backlot, Eastwood scouted Oregon, Nevada, and California by pickup truck before choosing Mono Lake, where more than 50 workers erected 14 houses, a church, and a two-story hotel in just 18 days.
SPOILER
Clint Eastwood cast his own longtime stunt double, Buddy Van Horn, as murdered Marshal Jim Duncan so the Stranger could be read as the same man, and cut an earlier script line explicitly making the Stranger the marshal's brother, though the Italian, Spanish, French and German dubs restored that line.
