Pale Rider **** (1985, Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress) – Classic Movie Review 1169

Producer-director Clint Eastwood’s 1985 Western Pale Rider impresses with its riffs on the very similar 1953 classic Shane and his own 1973 film High Plains Drifter. The first mainstream Hollywood Western after the catastrophic financial failure of Heaven’s Gate (1980), it became the highest grossing Western of the 1980s, grossing $41,410,000 in North America, against a $6,900,000 budget.

Storywise, it adds a smart Eighties gloss over the now familiar, traditional story of a mysterious avenger coming to town to help Californian gold-mining families in trouble when they are terrorised by their ruthless mine-owner who sends his henchmen over to attack their homes.

As star actor, Eastwood, playing Preacher, shows why he is the sole heir to John Wayne in a fine, commanding performance. The central Idaho scenery is spectacular, Bruce Surtees’s cinematography is outstanding, Lennie Niehaus’s score is notable, and Edward C Carfagno’s production designs are outstanding.

The hints at the religious, supernatural and the mythic in Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack’s screenplay add another strange dimension, refreshing the formula, as they did in High Plains Drifter. Here you have to come to your own conclusions about the nature of the central character, but Eastwood has said that Preacher ‘is an out-and-out ghost’.

The first-rate star supporting cast give excellent performances too: Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Christopher Penn, Richard Dysart, Richard Kiel, Doug McGrath, John Russell, Sydney Penny, Charles Hallahan, Marvin J McIntyre, Fran Ryan, Richard Hamilton, Jeffrey Weissman and Billy Drago, all of them at home in the Western. Eastwood casts ideally and gets powerful work from his actors. And, above all, the film is lovingly crafted by the great Western film-maker expert Eastwood.

There is some Western violence, but Pale Rider is relatively low-key for an Eastwood film. It was filmed in the Boulder Mountains and the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho, just north of Sun Valley in late 1984.

Pale Rider’s title refers to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as the rider of a pale horse is Death. It is taken from The Book of Revelation, chapter 6, verse 8: ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’

The 7’2 tall, Detroit-born actor Richard Kiel died on September 10 2014 at the age of 74.

Billy Drago (1945–2019).

Billy Drago, who plays Deputy Mather, died on 24 June 2019 in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke, aged 73. He often played the charming villain role and appeared notably in The Untouchables.

http://derekwinnert.com/heavens-gate-classic-film-review-95/

http://derekwinnert.com/shane-classic-film-review-229/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1169

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/