Pale Rider is a 1985 Western film produced and directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood. This movie has plot similarities to the classic Western Shane (1953), including a final scene that is very similar to the famous final scene of the earlier movie. There are also similarities to Eastwood’s previous Man with No Name character, and his 1973 western High Plains Drifter. The title is a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as the rider of a pale horse is Death.
Pale Rider was primarily filmed in the Boulder Mountains and the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho, just north of Sun Valley in late 1984. The opening scenes featuring the jagged Sawtooth Mountains were shot outside of Stanley. The film also features Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgress, Christopher Penn, Richard Dysart, Sydney Penny, Richard Kiel, Doug McGrath and John Russell.
Pale Rider is the only Eastwood film to have clear religious overtones throughout – though several of his other films such as High Plains Drifter also make heavy use of spiritual and supernatural ideas and imagery.
The film is unique within the western genre because it focuses on the California Gold Rush. And although the film is not specifically dated, it may take place before the American Civil War.
Religious overtones
In an audio interview, Clint Eastwood revealed that his character Preacher “is an out and out ghost”. The idea that the Preacher is a supernatural, immortal being is suggested early in the film when he is shown with six bullet wounds on his back—wounds that no mortal could survive. Stockburn is shot in a near-identical pattern during the final stand-off. Furthermore, the Preacher character arrives riding a pale horse at the same moment that a teenage girl—who had earlier asked help from God—reads from the Bible in Revelation of the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, Death riding on a pale horse.
When LaHood describes Preacher to Marshall Stockburn, the Marshall says the man sounds familiar, except that the man he’s thinking of is already dead. Stockburn does indeed appear to recognize the Preacher in the film’s climax immediately before his own death.
There are several counterpoints to the idea that the Preacher is supernatural[citation needed] including: that the Preacher stores his sixguns in a safe-deposit box; that he possibly has sex with Sarah on the night before the big gunfight; and that his life is shown “saved” twice, once by Hull and again by LaHood thug Club.
Cast
- Clint Eastwood as “Preacher”
- Michael Moriarty as Hull Barret
- Carrie Snodgress as Sarah Wheeler
- Christopher Penn as Josh LaHood
- Richard Dysart as Coy LaHood
- Sydney Penny as Megan Wheeler
- Richard Kiel as Club
- Doug McGrath as Spider Conway
- John Russell as Stockburn
- Charles Hallahan as McGill
- Marvin J. McIntyre as Jagou
- Fran Ryan as Ma Blankenship
- Richard Hamilton as Jed Blankenship
- Graham Paul as Ev Gossage
- Chuck LaFont as Eddie Conway
