High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973): We've been singing the praises of a lot of anti-heroes lately, from fascists, to dupes, to men driven to criminality . . . What say we crank that tune up to eleven and set our sights on the ultimate anti-hero, Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter?

The abstract of the film tells you everything you need to know to get a bead on where it's coming from: the nameless stranger played by Clint rides into town, kills three men, rapes a woman, and then decides to get nasty. Eventually, the town, in need of protection from some recently-released baddies, puts him in charge, at which point he appoints a midget as mayor, paints the whole town red, renames it Hell, and organizes a picnic.

That picnic is not, it should be noted, a festive event. In fact, it turns out rather poorly for the town. But the town had it coming . . . you see, years ago, they stood idly by while these same bad desperados murdered the town Marshall Jim Duncan (convincingly played with a lot of bleeding bullwhip welts by stunt man Buddy Van Horn, who would later direct Clint in The Dead Pool, Pink Cadillac, and one of those chimpanzee movies). Could Clint be the ghost of Jim Duncan, returned to enact revenge on the townsfolk who watched him die? Or is he just your average drifter, strolling into town, as he puts it, "for a bottle of whiskey and a nice hot bath"?

Some say it's left ambiguous, some (like me) say it's spelled out in neon, but either way, that town does a lot of suffering, and Clint does a lot of squinting.

High Plains Drifter would seem to be of the generic Western/Samurai/A-Team tradition wherein the stranger comes to the aid of a town in trouble, with the glaring difference that Clint leaves this town a lot worse off then when he got there. Sure, the midget would probably make for a hell of a mayor, but that administration seems poised on the brink of a no-confidence vote by the time Clint gets done trashing everything.

The other distinguishing feature of High Plains Drifter is the nice sense of self-parody. One character actually disparages Clint as a "squinty-eyed son of a bitch" and with all the murdering, and raping, and ghosts around, the whole enterprise is hard to take too seriously.

It is disturbing in its way, though, and memorable. The helplessness of Jim Duncan and the cowardice of the townsfolk is something that'll stay with you, particularly if you've ever been bullwhipped to death (or maybe just rat-tailed to mortification). The Stranger's revenge is a satisfying, disheartening mixed bag of a karmic realignment. But it's a bag worth dipping into.