Pale Rider

Year of Release:  1985

Director:  Clint Eastwood

Screenplay:  Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack

Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Chris Penn, Richard Dysart, Sydney Penny

Running Time:  116 minutes

Genre:  Western

19th century, California: A group of independent prospectors, panning for gold, are regularly harassed by a gang of thugs in the pay of wealthy mining baron Coy LaHood (Dysart), who is determined to drive off the prospectors so he can seize their land.  Following a raid in which her pet dog is shot dead, 14 year old Megan Wheeler (Penny) prays for a miracle to save them.  Shortly afterwards a mysterious Preacher (Eastwood) arrives to help the prospectors.

Plot wise, this is similar to endless Westerns in which a lone hero arrives to defend the good and the helpless against brutal villains.  This film however has a strange supernatural angle to it, similar to Eastwood's directorial debut High Plains Drifter (1973).  It is very strongly hinted that the unnamed Preacher is a ghost, although it is left ambiguous.  The Preacher's backstory is hinted at, but never really revealed.  It's even hinted that the Preacher is Death himself.  He seems to appear in answer to Megan's prayer, riding in accompanied by thunder, lighting and howling winds, and he enters the prospector's camp accompanied by a reading if the Biblical verse from which the film takes it's title: "And lo, I beheld a pale horse, with a pale rider on it, and the name of the rider was Death.  And Hell followed him."  As an actor, Eastwood does what he does best, with his squinting glares, and snarling drawl, as a director, Eastwood handles the material with style, often using interesting framing and camera angles, that take advantage of every part of the screen, and the wintery landscapes are beautiful.  The influence of Sergio Leone, who directed the Dollars trilogy that made Eastwood a movie star, is very strong here.  There is also a slight environmental element to the film with LaHood's controversial hydraulic mining technique destroying the landscape, as opposed to the prospectors peacefully panning for gold in the river.  Michael Moriarty plays Hull Barret, the put upon but determined leader of the prospectors, Carrie Snodgress plays Sarah Wheeler, Megan's mother who has become increasingly cynical after she was abandoned by Megan's father, but with whom Barret is in love, and Chris Penn plays LaHood's son and head of the thugs.  Richard Kiel (best known as the metal-toothed Jaws in the James Bond movies The Spy who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)) has a small role as one of LaHood's heavies.  The performances are all fine, if unmemorable,  they do what they need to do.  Snodgress probably gives the best performance, and the film does build up a fairly complex relationship between Sarah and Barret.  There is a brief but very unpleasant scene of an attempted sexual assault on the 14 year old Megan, although is is stopped and she is rescued by the Preacher.  It sours an otherwise innocuous film, and really serves little purpose.  Despite being an action film, this is mostly quite a slow film, and all wrapped up in a fairly neat, if disappointing climax.  This is not an essential film but, if you like Westerns, you may enjoy it, but if you're not a fan of the genre this will not convert you.