Pale Rider
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Pale Rider is a 1985 English language Western film, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. This movie has plot similarities to the classic Western Shane, including a final scene that is very similar to the famous final scene of the earlier movie. There are also similarities to Eastwood's previous Man with No Name character, and his 1973 western High Plains Drifter. The title is a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as the rider of a pale horse is Death.
Pale Rider was filmed in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, just north of Sun Valley, Idaho. It also features Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Christopher Penn, Richard Dysart, Sydney Penny, Richard Kiel, Doug McGrath, and John Russell.
Pale Rider is the only Eastwood film to have clear religious overtones throughout.
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[edit] Plot
The plot centers on a conflict between a group of simple poor miners and the most powerful man in the nearby town. A drifter (Clint Eastwood) rides in and defends one group of miners from a gang of ruffians with unexpected skill wielding a hickory axe handle, then compounds this surprise by wearing a minister's attire when invited to dinner. The preacher behaves reasonably enough in the beginning of the story, but finally shows his true ability as a gunfighter in the end by eliminating a crack group of guns-for-hire posing as deputies who stand in the miners' way.
In this movie, Eastwood plays a character with some similarities to his earlier Man with No Name from Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and its sequels, although this time the character dresses as—and is considered by other characters to be—a preacher. One interpretation is that the preacher is the Man with No Name approaching retirement and trying to make a more peaceful life for himself, but he is forced to return to his violent ways before the end. Eastwood gives this theme of an inescapable past a much more explicit treatment in his 1992 film Unforgiven.
Another possibility is that the Preacher and Eastwood's High Plains Drifter character known as the Stranger are one and the same. The Preacher in Pale Rider arrives on a pale horse very much like the one that the Stranger rides out of Lago. He also enters the movie wearing clothes (namely a kerchief, hat, and coat) that each have a striking similarity to items worn by Eastwood's Stranger character. Fading in as an entrance while the Stranger's exit from High Plains Drifter was a fade-out, and coming down from on-high to the back-voiced prayers of young Megan Wheeler, add to the possible connection.
[edit] Religious overtones
In Pale Rider, Clint Eastwood has revealed that his character "is an out and out ghost," in an audio interview that can be found at his homepage, http://www.clinteastwood.net/welcome.html. All one needs to do is select from his filmography and then listen to his comments by clicking the audio link. The idea that the Preacher is a supernatural being is suggested early in the film when he is shown with six bullet wounds on his back—wounds that a mortal could not survive. Furthermore, the character arrives riding a pale horse at the same moment that a teenage girl—who had earlier asked help from God—reads from the Bible in Revelation of the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, Death, riding on a pale horse.
[edit] Trivia
One of the pieces of music featured on the soundtrack is "Best Endeavours" by Alan Hawkshaw. The piece is better known in the UK as the theme to the Channel 4 News.
