Pale Rider (1985)

If anyone could and would make a serious western in the mid-'80s, it was Clint Eastwood. Indeed, PR made more money at the box office than any other '80s western, partly, I suppose, because Eastwood didn't direct any others that decade. Of course, this was no guarantee of high quality to me.

On the outskirts of a fictional California town named for Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart), who owns most of it, LaHood's not-so-coy hoods, led by his son Josh (Chris Penn), wreak havoc on the less successful gold miners, trying to drive them away. The LaHoods claim to own the land, but their actions bespeak an illegal desperation, and the only "lawmen" ever in the vicinity are mercenaries led by Marshal Stockburn (John Russell). Things start to look up for the prospectors when a man who never gives his name (you know who) comes out of nowhere and protects Hull (Michael Moriarty), one of the few brave enough to go into town anymore. Hull gives him room and board, tho semi-fiance Sarah (Carrie Snodgress) has misgivings -- until they see his clerical collar, whereafter everyone calls him "the Preacher." Nothing like a man of faith to inspire mass confidence in a cause, but how much can the miners depend on a wanderer?

It's not entirely clear whether the stranger is a real pastor of some sect, a former one, or a fraud who acquired the collar dishonestly. He doesn't pray or preach, at least not religiously. OTOH, for all his fighting prowess, he doesn't blatantly contravene Christian values, so he must not be the guy from the Man with No Name Trilogy. It's possible that he has undepicted sex with Sarah, which comes uncomfortably close to adultery, but the synopses I found didn't say so. He certainly has the decency to gently turn down Sarah's randy 14-year-old daughter, Megan (Sydney Penny).

That touches on one thing that annoys me a tad about Eastwood: His characters, whatever their moral fiber, are almost always supposed to be awesome, as if he couldn't bear to play anything else. This one's an improbable badass, an apparent dreamboat to the ladies, and not even an antihero. Still, that can be appealing if you view the individual role apart from the overarching pattern.

If the title makes you think of the Angel of Death, that's no coincidence, as the film drives home the likeness early on. I'm not saying that the stranger is Death, but he brings it easily to anyone who threatens him or others with it. Eastwood has supplemented the movie by saying that the Preacher is actually a ghost. I don't normally see ghosts as solid, food-eating, shadow-casting sorts, but it would explain a few things: bullet wounds in his back, Stockburn believing him to have died a while ago, an uncanny ability to disappear as soon as you look away (like Batman minus the gun aversion), a complete lack of fear for himself.... That said, if you subscribe to "death of the author," it's not hard to see the Preacher as merely good at what he does. I'd hate to think he was completely invincible, allowing suspense only for the miners' well-being.

Adding to our sense of surrealism is the tendency of six-shooters to shoot far more than six, except when the plot demands they run out. Then there's Richard Kiel in a minor role as "Club." Yes, he was a giant in RL, but I doubt he was quite so laconic, like he had muscle for brains. To me, Club is only slightly more credible than Kiel's Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

You might say that PR is a ghost of the Man with No Name trilogy itself. Fortunately, the latter was so great to begin with that I rather enjoy the former. What it lacks in moral complexity, it basically makes up for in classic western style with somewhat more modern cinematic flair.