Pale Rider (1985)

[John Baldwin]

Just watched this movie...I found it very good; very "Leone" movie, if you see what I mean...   I like Clint's character, an other man with no name. The story is...not so bad, the direction is good, Clint is...GREAT. And I like very very very much the costums, which make me think to OUATITW (Cheyenne's gang), and Eastwood suit.

[JJ_Snakes]

I like this movie. I'd change only some little things(for instance: I would've liked to see Clint use more western world technique in fighting using a stick. Should've been just, PLUNK!, right against the head of the badguy, without these acrobatics.)

[cigar joe]

Well, this one and "High Plains Drifter" are the closest to Leone, and you might also say that "Two Mules for Sister Sara" is a Zapata Western.  

[visitor]

PALE RIDER is a pale(pardon the pun) remake of the much superior SHANE - including Eastwood and Moriarty pounding sledgehammers into the boulder vs Shane and Starrett trying to remove the tree stump & eastwood's "love triangle" with Penney and mother vs Shane's with son Joey and Mother(Jean Arthur)

[CloseUpEye]

 I mean no ill to Clint, as of course of I am a great fan, but "Pale Rider" was dull to me when I saw it when it first came out... A pretty dull script, and  semi off paced feel.  
   However, I only watch westerns if I have people I like or of course that lovely side genre of the S.W.!  (IE: I don't like Wayne much at all beyond a few movies, but love my Fonda) so I have seen it two more times in the years, and it has "gotten better", but it still isn't as great as other westerns Eastwood did post-Leone.
   Don't rip me too hard.  
 -Tom

[cigar joe]

The biggest problem with most of Eastwood''''s post Leone westerns is that they all seriously lack a strong villian. Only Unforgiven came close with Hackman, and I didn''''t find Hackman that villanous. Ramon, Indio, Frank, and Angel Eyes were way better.

I started a while ago a whole thread on the flaws of each of Eastwoods post Leone westerns if you want to get into this in more depth .

It seems that Eastwood and others have over the years brought the western back almost to where we were before Leone, we get oversentimental melodramas with the only caveat to SW''''s being the realistic action and Eastwood''''s reincarnations of the MWNN attitude in his various characters.  

We don''''t have that surrealistic feel of something that''''s familiar but equally strange. We don''''t have that Iconic West.

What we don''''t have is a director who over a period of years made whole complete movies in his head perfecting his vision way before he got the chance to direct them.

[redyred]

The biggest problem with most of Eastwood''''''''s post Leone westerns is that they all seriously lack a strong villian. Only Unforgiven came close with Hackman, and I didn''''''''t find Hackman that villanous. Ramon, Indio, Frank, and Angel Eyes were way better.

Good point, like in Josie Wales there''s a really strong revenge motive, but no central villain figure for it.

[John Baldwin]

Good point, like in Josie Wales there''''s a really strong revenge motive, but no central villain figure for it.

This movie is the only Eastwood I stoped to watch. I really dislike this movie!!!

[cigar joe]

I suspect Eastwood of having developed some kind of deep-seated philosophical distaste for the idea of the uber-villain whose death makes all things right: it''''s such a formula of the movies that made him famous, and yet so utterly absent from most of his own creative projects (especially the really serious ones), that it''''s hard to see any other explanation.

One thought that comes to mind is that perhaps he didn''t like being upstaged by first Mortimer and then Tuco, he mentions this about haveing less and less screen time in Leone''s films. An Uber Villian would have meant sharing screen time. But his best later films have strong villians "Dirty Harry", "In The Line of Fire", and to a lesser extent "Unforgiven" but Hackman is made a bit human for some unknown reason with the little house building sidebar, he just doesn''t reek badness.

[General Sibley]

. And I like very very very much the costums, which make me think to OUATITW (Cheyenne''s gang), and Eastwood suit.

Pale Rider''s ok, not Clint''s best effort.  I completely agree with you on the costumes JB, the hired guns in their dusters at the end of the movie are magnificent.  Great scene where the cold-blooded Marlboro Man leader guns down the drunken miner in the muddy street.  May not be an Indio ubervillain, but this scene certainly sets him up as a very menaciing force of evil to be reckoned with.  But still a minor character who''s not a threat to upstage Clint, I haven''t the vaguest notion of what this character''s name is supposed to be.

[cigar joe]

Wasn''t he (the bad guy) the star of the old wetern TV series "Lawman"?

[visitor]

Wasn''''t he (the bad guy) the star of the old wetern TV series "Lawman"?

John Russell
Yeah. he was in LAWMAN. Also in RIO BRAVO, and a couple more Clint flicks including JOSEY WALES(in the early scenes - he recruits Clint after his family has been killed)
My favorite movie he appeared in was YELLOW SKY with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark.

[cigar joe]

Thanks Lawman was one of the TV westerns I used to catch. I''ll keep an eye open for Yellow Sky.

[Belkin]

Some mervellous scenes in PALE RIDER, but what lets it down are the "KUNG-FU" style stick swirling and the corny semi-comic bits with "JAWS". Oh, and the crappy acting style of the young girl. What ever happened to her?

[cigar joe]

I just never thought that he had a very strong villan playing opposite him in most later films, which is a detriment to them all as a whole. 

In his ensemble films not many had stars of Clints caliber, I would say Burton in "Where Eagles Dare", and George Kenedy perhaps though he didn''t have a lot of screen time in his two films.

Unforgiven of course was different.