Pale Rider
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Actor: Allen Keller, Charles Hallahan, Richard A. Dysart, Richard Hamilton, Richard KielBrand: EASTWOOD,CLINT
Primary Contributor: Michael Moriarty
Primary Contributor: Sydney Penny
Primary Contributor: Snodgress, Carrie
DVD: 2 Sides, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1997-11-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Pale Rider
DVD Review: Really exciting and very entertaining
Summary: 5 Stars
Coy LaHood (played by Richard Dysart) is a man unused to people standing in his way. He is a successful hydraulic-miner, and he is going to blast a small community of pan-miners out of his way. However, when a preacher (Clint Eastwood) rides into the community, he finds that things aren't necessarily as easy as he had hoped. Can the preacher stand up to LaHood and survive? Perhaps, but the crossfire is going to be murderous!
This is another one of Clint Eastwood's great Westerns, one that I never seem to tire of. It's got an interesting plot, and a lot of great action. I liked the peak the movie gave into Californian history, showing the hydraulic mining that was so environmentally destructive it was banned during the 19th century. It's a great movie, really exciting and very entertaining. I highly recommend it!
DVD Review: Pale rider
Summary: 3 Stars
Great film , image as *** and sound *** (included castilian spanish) 22 days send to SpainDVD Review: Derivative and fairly simple, but nonetheless great fun as usual from a master
Summary: 4 Stars
Every few years since the early 1970s it seems we get a year when the "rebirth of the western" is touted, because of one or two films that are seen as somehow predictive of a return to glory - either through good box-office, awards, or both. Somehow it's never quite really happened, despite "Dances With Wolves" and "Unforgiven" both being huge box-office hits and Best Picture winners in the early 90s, and neo-western "No Country for Old Men" repeating in 2007. Ah well, the western will probably never get back to where it was in the early 1970s, let alone the 1950s, but the pundits have to keep trying...
One of the first times I remember such comments being made was in 1985, the year of Lawrence Kasdan's 'New Hollywood' western "Silverado", and Clint Eastwood's third essay in the genre as director (and first in 9 years), "Pale Rider". I remember the Kasdan pic having a slightly higher profile at the time, and it's the one I saw first - I never caught the Eastwood in the theater nor for years afterward, and I just got around to giving it a rewatch this past week. "Silverado" seems to have something of a cult following, and I always just assumed it was a bigger hit, but it turns out that the film grossed about $10 million less than "Pale Rider" and cost about $20 million more - it may not have been a flop, but it was an expensive effort at a genre that most thought dead, and I'd imagine Eastwood's film must have been seen as an exception because of it's star/director.
A small mining community, somewhere in the west in the late 1800s. Terrorized by a wealthy landowner who wants them to leave so that he can steal their land, Hull Barrett (Michael Moriarty), his wife-to-be (of sorts) Sarah Wheeler (Carrie Snodgrass) and her teenage daughter Megan (Sydney Penny) are among those who are praying for a miracle, which comes in the shape of Preacher (Eastwood) who rides into the nearby town just as Barrett is about to get beaten to death by four of landowner Coy LaHood's (Richard Dysart) thugs. "Nothing like a good piece of hickory" he exclaims after beating the tar out of the four with an axhandle. From then it's just a quick couple of scenes before both Wheeler women are falling in love with him and he's urging the miners to stick up for themselves. It becomes pretty clear that he's no ordinary man of God, if he's one at all and that any lessons in self-reliance he can teach these people will run secondary to Clint Eastwood badassery with a pistol, which comes at the end after LaHood has hired guns led by Stockburn (awesomely cold-eyed John Russell) in cool cream-colored dusters take on Preacher in a classic showdown. "Shane", anyone?
"Pale Rider", like most of Eastwood's films, improved somewhat for me on this second time around - but not all that much. A couple of basic problems are present from the outset - first, that Eastwood is essentially replaying not just "Shane", but both his character and the storyline of "High Plains Drifter" as well - with most of the metaphysical and allegorical/symbolic material removed or heavily muted (despite his character being called, and dressing as, a Preacher), so it has a rather generic "man with no name rides into community to save the little people from the bad greedy corporate villains" storyline without nearly as much stylistic strangeness to make it interest. He even has a back scarred with bullet holes - in the same pattern which he'll shoot into one of the bad guys at the end. And second, there are a fair number of just badly or sketchily put-together scenes, a problem I think more with the screenplay (an original by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack) than Clint's direction - the Preacher's relationship with Carrie Snodgrass' character who apparently falls in love with him right away though it's pretty hard to tell, and the scene where Preacher and Barrett ride into the main LaHood mining camp and lay waste to it with dynamite, completely unopposed. And beyond the similar aspect to his own earlier film there are also a lot of parallels with Shane
But on the plus side, it moves along nicely - at less than two hours it's relatively short for Eastwood - the acting is all pretty solid, with Moriarty a standout, given a nice little speech by the fire exhorting his fellow miners to stand up to LaHood - and the technical aspects are all first-rate, especially considering the under-$7 million budget (can that really be correct? seems cheap even by Clint's modest standards). I love the typical contrast in the photography between piercingly bright winter skies and the very dim, naturally-lit intereriors and there really is a sense of hardness to the life depicted here in this rugged mountainous terrain. Lennie Niehaus' music is fine, if not one of his best scores, though it has a couple of nice "Josey Wales" references at one point. And there's a spareness and simplicity to the dialogue (except for some of Moriarty's longer parts) that fits the somewhat minimal and stripped-to-essentials feel of the film as a whole.
Still few of the westerns made in the next several years seem to have taken much from Eastwood's classical style or tight, cheap and lean filmmaking - and none of them were even remotely as successful. Not only can you not teach an old dog new tricks, you can't teach a new dog old ones, it seems.
DVD Review: Thanks
Summary: 5 Stars
Thank you for the dvd, it works great and I have had no problems with it.DVD Review: Pale Rider, BluRay
Summary: 1 Stars
Very, very poor HD transfer - save your money and make warner Brothers do this one right. The new BluRay release has poor picture quality. Buying this one for $10 does not justify a poor transfer. The 20 - 25% of this film that takes place in a brighter sky does look very nice. But a dominant amount of the film reveals poor black levels, look at the far right side of your screen - throughout the film. Even visible to some degree in the brighter scenes. The story is a classic, but hang on to your DVD for a while longer. Shame on you Warner Brothers!
Description of Pale Rider
A nameless stranger who rides into a small California gold rush town finds himself in the middle of a feud between a mining syndicate and a group of independent prospectors.DVD Features:
Production Notes
Theatrical Trailer
After a nine-year break from the genre that made him an international star (the Western just before this one was The Outlaw Josey Wales, from 1976), Clint Eastwood returned in this gritty Western, crafted in the tradition of Shane and High Noon. Eastwood directed and stars as the nameless stranger known only as "Preacher," because he rides into a beleaguered mining town wearing a clerical collar. He's either an agent of death or an angel of mercy, and the echoes of Shane ring loud and clear when he comes to the aid of independent miners who are being terrorized by a local tycoon (Richard Dysart) and his ruthless band of hired guns. Befriended by a miner (Michael Moriarty) and idolized by the miner's wife and daughter (played by Carrie Snodgress and Sydney Penny, respectively), the "Pale Rider" sparks the defiant spirit of the underdog miners and takes after the bad guys with single-minded purpose. --Jeff Shannon
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