8mm Forum: High Plains Drifter.

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Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on June 22, 2005, 01:51 PM:

Carrying on with the U8 2x400footers this is one of my all time favourite cutdowns. This film continues Clints Eastwoods familiar role as the un-named stranger riding into town although this one appears to have a supernatural touch to it.
Appearing through the desert heat at the start with the usual edited original titles the film begins as Clint arrives in the small town of Lago. Its not long before the first trouble makers arrive as he's having a shave at the barbers. After a short dialouge with Clint remaing silent the men try to shoot him up but guess what? Clint has a hidden gun on his lap and all three get blown away before they get a shot in. True clint style. The next sequence is the towns slapper (to use a loose term) deciding to walk right into clint and soon tells him what she thinks of him, "a bottle of whiskey for coruage and the manners of a goat", Grabing her arm he tells her she needs a lesson in Manners and proceeds to take her to the barn and force his wicked way with her, it soon turns to be just what she likes as she herslf turns from cries of help to cries of passion.(Well he is good lookin' B*****d)
As the film moves on the towns sherrif realises Clint can be of use as he pleads for his help in protecting the town from Stacey Bridges and the carlin brothers who are about to be released from jail and want revenge on the town of Lago. Offering Clint "anything he want" we move onto some nicely edited sequences of Clint trying to get the towns people trained up with the three jailed men being released. As they get out, one of the three asks the gaurd "where are our horses, we had three good animals"? the gaurd replies "what do you think you bin eating the six months". Then there is more of Clint training the towns people in between the outlaws shooting up a camp site to steel new horses. Next we move on to a flashback sequence which shows the three jailed outlaws whiping to death the previous sheriff while the towns people stand by and watch helplessly, the sherrif has an uncanny resemblance to Clint. mmmmmmmm. This vicious whipping seqence on its original 1974 release was edited down for the cinema release in the UK, here it is complete and uncut. So ends part one.
Part two, opens with Clint asleep with a female, Slowly and quietly a group of the towns people creep toward him with wooden bats, the girl, who is in on this, wakes and nips outside where she meets the gang. As they now enter the room and surround the bed one of them speaks,"welcome you Lago you son of a bitch" as they beat the (empty) bed.As the camera pans back outside we see Clint on the ledge lighting up a dynamite stich with a high pitch ghostly note from the music of Dee Barton. then action as we see Clint take out the baddies with plenty of explosive action and gunshooting. Morgan Allen,(Jack Ging)injured, manages to get away on horse back. Next up, and daylight, we see Clint with some townspeople telling them he wants "everything" painted red.
Moving on to the seqence where Morgan Allen meets up with the three outlaws, after a short conversation Stacey Bridges,(Geoffrey Lewis) stabs him in the throat with a sharpened stick, yuck!! At this point a well hidden Clint begins his taunting by shooting at the three men and letting off dynamite, as Clint gets back on his horse to get bach to Lago Stacey Bridges yells out, "come down out of there you bastard i'll cut your heart out, i'll kill every man in lago". Arriving back in Lago with everything now painted RED Clint rides past the towns namepost which now has Hell painted over Lago.
The outlaws come charging into Lago with some superb stunts with men being shot & falling from high rooftops etc, all done in one take, no dummys or CGI graphics here, cut to night time and the three have gathered up the towns popoele and now want to know, "who was that son of bitch that ambushed us, thats what i wanna know", Suddenly a whip grabs one of three and pulls him out, against the fiery burning town of the night, this is one excellently filmed revenge killing as Dee Bartons eerie music plays through it. Each crack of the whip is accompanied by an expression of horror on the faces of the towns people.
The whip is thrown back into the bar and the remainig two outlaws now go in search of the stranger. The first one gets Clint dropping a noose around his neck and pulling him up, hanging him till death.
Stacey, on his own now, slowly walks along then Clint throws an oil lamp toward him,Stacey panics and empties his gun of bullets at the lamp. A voice (Clints) whispers, "help me, Heeeelp Me". As Stacey loads his gun, we see Clint walking in the background and directly in front of a Burning building. This really does make the scene for the final bloody draw.
The film concludes in front of a grave where one of the towns men tells clint, "i never did know your name", Clint replies, "yes you do" as he rides back into the desert heat the camera slowly zooms in on the grave marked, Rest in peace. Marshall Jim Duncan. spooooky.
Against one of original titles clint fades into the heat with Dee Bartons music playing the film out almost exactly as it begins.

One of my favourite ever cutdowns and my print has excellent colour and sound with the print masked off for widescreen.
U8 have done a top rate job on this film considering how Castle ballsed it up on the 200 edition. Its full of action, and the eerie music truely brings the film to life with some quite visious scenes. Very highly recommended for anyone who loves plenty of action and also the full story kept on board and NO eratic edited to be seen. One of the best.
Picture A sound A. It also fits perfectly on one 600foot spool as does most of the U8 2x400footers.
DID YOU KNOW, John Wayne was so offended by Eastwoods harsh revisionist view of a frontier town that he wrote to Eastwood objecting that this was not what the spirit of the west was all about. the Audiences, however, wernt so worried as in 1973 they made Clint a top box office draw.
Now go buy it, its cheap and now appears quite often on the lists. Beware as all U8's are colour prone so check before you buy.
Have i over done it again ~Kev/ Doug [Big Grin]

Posted by Douglas Meltzer (Member # 28) on June 22, 2005, 03:20 PM:

Excellent job, Tom. I agree that U-8 did a good job on what had to be a tough film to edit down. Love that film's ending.

Doug

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on June 22, 2005, 03:35 PM:

Thank you Doug, (Phew) [Wink]

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on August 10, 2005, 10:09 PM:

Good review. Do you know as to whether this was ever released as a full feature by anyone? (With more and more titles popping up on optical sound around the world, I wouldn't be suprised if someone owns a copy on optical sound super 8!)

all de best!!

Posted by Andrew Wilson (Member # 538) on April 10, 2006, 04:38 PM:

a very good review there tom.its one of my favoroite cutdowns too.a very good editing job from universal8.my copy though has now got slightly warm colours now,how about yours.andy

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on April 11, 2006, 02:15 PM:

Yes, unfortunatly. there is still a lot of colour in my print but that slight red tint is appearing particularly on the night scenes. Did U8 ever realise the problem with the stock and actualy release any of there titles in later years on low fade stock?

Posted by Andrew Wilson (Member # 538) on April 30, 2006, 12:37 PM:

sorry tom,no one knew about it at that time;or so were lead to beliveve.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 15, 2017, 03:17 PM:

Latest images taken tonight from this excellent release from U8.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on August 16, 2017, 12:15 PM:

You're print has held up well! Great job with yet another great review!

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 16, 2017, 12:30 PM:

Thanks Osi, this is one of the few films i bought brand new. [Wink]

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on August 17, 2017, 11:32 AM:

It's also a shame that the 200ft edition (the screwed up one [Smile]

) is full frame which, even if it did have footage that you could add to the 2X400dt digest, it would look awkward!

There were a few of the 2X400ft digests that either red Fox or someone else re-released on L.P.P. film stock (one of them was XANADU, which i know for a fact). I'd love to find that this one was re-released on L.P.P. as well! [Smile]

Posted by Marshall Crist (Member # 1312) on August 18, 2017, 10:50 AM:

I wonder if anyone would be up to describing why the 200' edition of this is so bad? I have not seen the feature, but am not afraid of spoilers.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on August 18, 2017, 12:03 PM:

Tom, you lucky bugger! My print is more faded than yours is so I put a piece of light blue cellophane over the lens to help a little. This IS one of U/8's best digests and a personal favorite. I, too, am curious if the 200'er is different. I know there's an over-dub where Clint says "ear" rather than "ass" which I've heard upset Clint so much when he saw the digest that he refused Castle to release anything further.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on August 18, 2017, 12:07 PM:

I'd forgotten about that change of dialogue! [Smile]

I don't remember the 200ft digest being all that bad as a digest, i just didn't like the fact that it was full frame when the 2X400ft digest was letterboxed. I wonder why they did that with the 200ft? Does anybody know as to whether the 200ft digest came out first?

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on August 18, 2017, 12:21 PM:

Osi, the 200'er was released in 1976. U/8 acquired Castle later that year and began re-packaging Castle titles as well as issuing the extended versions the following year. The first batch of Castle editions to be eliminated were all the 50'ers after a very brief re-package of about a dozen of them. U/8 felt Headliners were no longer relevant to the hobby. Next were any titles that ranked in the bottom 50% for sales (majority were cartoons like "Buccaneer Woodpecker" and the "Comi-Color" titles). Finally, Silent 200'ers were the last batch to get ditched selling off all remaining inventory to Select Film Library in NY in a Lot sale. I got this info from the Operations Manager for SFL just before the hobby went to VHS/Beta/Laserdisc exclusively.

[ August 19, 2017, 12:24 AM: Message edited by: Brad Kimball ]

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 18, 2017, 04:06 PM:

we had the castle 200 footer for years before this one came along. It was certainly done for a general audience. That dialouge change was pretty laughable and pointless. No wonder clint Eastwood was not amused [Big Grin]

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on August 19, 2017, 10:39 AM:

Brad! That was totally awesome info! [Smile]

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