For viewers who enjoyedClint Eastwood’s 1985 westernPale Rider, one underrated ‘60s movie starring Glenn Ford is well worth a watch.Pale Rideris unique amongClint Eastwood’s many Western moviesas the 1985 revenge story sees the director and star toy with supernatural elements more explicitly than ever before. When a family is driven out of their hometown by a mining magnate’s hired goons, a mysterious drifter appears to assist them in standing up to the money-hungry developers. Eastwood himself admitted that his title character was a ghost, lending the Western movie a rare air of paranormal flair.
Pale Rider Cast & Character Guide
Pale Rider is a 1985 western starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. Here’s a cast and character breakdown for the cult favorite.
AfterHigh Plains Drifterplayed with the concept of making Eastwood’s character an outright ghost,Pale Ridertook things further and became theonly movie where Eastwood plays a supernatural character. Outside this twist, most of the movie’s plot is an homage to 1953’s iconic Alan Ladd vehicleShane. There, a gunslinger also stands up for a family who are also unfairly targeted by violent goons hoping to take their land via intimidation tactics. Despite this obvious creative debt toShane, there is another Western thatPale Riderfans ought to seek out for further viewing.
Glenn Ford’s Heaven With A Gun Character Is Very Similar To The Preacher
Pale Rider Borrowed From Glenn Ford’s Earlier 1969 Western
1969’s Glenn Ford movieHeaven With a Guntechnically has a few differences fromPale Rider. The hero isn’t a ghost, for one thing, and the land dispute is over water rights rather than mining. However, as well as being a fun Western in its own right,Heaven With a Gunis very similar toPale Riderin terms of its story and style. Arriving at the tail end of the ‘60s,Heaven With a Guntakes Ford, the star of many Golden Age Westerns, and drops him into a murkier, bloodier story that feels in tune with the decade’s darker offerings.
The brutality of the ’60s anti-Westerns meld well with Ford’s old-school performance
While not as peerless as Sam Peckinpah’sThe Wild Bunchor Clint Eastwood’sbest WesternThe Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,Heaven With a Gundoes imbue the world of Ford’s weary gunslinger with the grit and nastiness of these violent, morally complex revisionist Westerns. The ending might be shockingly idealistic, but it only arrives after Ford’s Jim Killian has done a lot of bloodletting in the small town of Vinegaroon. The brutality of the ’60s anti-Westerns meld well with Ford’s old-school performance, offering a marriage of Golden Age and Revisionist Western aesthetics in the same story.
Why Heaven With A Gun Is Worth Watching
Heaven With A Gun Strips Away Eastwood’s Supernatural Ambiguity
SinceHeaven With a Gundoesn’t feature the same supernatural elements asPale Rider, it is admittedly a little less of a guilty pleasure. However, it is also not aWestern where the bad guys winin the end, and the protagonist learning to put down his guns feels genuinely revolutionary in a genre where violence is usually only ever met with more violence. After the repugnant events earlier in the movie,Heaven With a Gun’s ending is a surprise that evenClint Eastwood’sPale Ridercan’t match and a welcome reprieve for Western viewers who are tired of thoughtless bloodshed.
Heaven With a Gunis available to rent on Amazon and Apple Tv.
