Pale Rider
Short description
In the gold fields of northern California, a group of independent prospectors is being pressured to give up their claims by Coy LaHood, the powerful owner of the surrounding mining operations. LaHood's men terrorize the settlement, and the miners, who have families and little means of defense, seem ready to surrender. Then a lone rider in a preacher's collar appears among them. He says little about his past, but he takes the side of the small community, and his skill with a gun turns the conflict around.
Clint Eastwood directed and produced the film and plays the stranger, with Michael Moriarty as the miner who takes him in, Carrie Snodgress as a widow in the settlement, and Sydney Penny, Chris Penn and Richard Dysart in supporting roles. Dennis Shryack and Michael Butler wrote the screenplay. The film was Eastwood's eleventh turn as director, following Sudden Impact and preceding Heartbreak Ridge, and it returns him to the western genre he had helped define as an actor. It was made for about 7 million dollars and took in roughly 41 million worldwide.
On IMDb, voters rate it 7.3 out of 10 from around 70,000 votes, and on TMDB it holds 7.2 from a much smaller pool of about 1,250. A critics' rating of 7.5 from 32 reviews places it slightly above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The title of the film is a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from chapter six of the Book of Revelation. Megan reads it when the Preacher first appears at her house (verse 8: “And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth”).
- The Preacher, played by Clint Eastwood, is never referred to by name throughout the entire film. One version suggests he is called the Preacher because he was wearing a priest's cassock at his first appearance on screen.
- During filming, Clint Eastwood suffered what he described as the worst injury of his acting career. He dislocated his shoulder when his horse broke through thin ice.
- The railroad station created for this film was later used in the filming of Robert Zemeckis's science fiction comedy "Back to the Future Part III", and the barbed wire salesman there was played by Richard A. Dysart, who also played Coy LaHood in that film.
- The "Wells Fargo & Co." office where the Preacher retrieves his weapon from the bank vault was filmed in Columbia, California, a city that was a gold mining town in the 19th century.
- In this film, Clint Eastwood reprised his role as the Man with No Name. This character is the protagonist of Sergio Leone’s (1929-1989) “Dollars Trilogy,” consisting of the spaghetti westerns “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965), and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966). The character became recognizable thanks to his iconic poncho, brown hat, cowboy boots, cigarettes, and his reluctance to speak. Although the character had a name in each film, he is traditionally known as the “Man with No Name.”
- The placement of the wounds on the back of the character played by John Russell at the end of the film exactly matches the placement of the wounds on the Preacher's back (Clint Eastwood) in the bathing scene.
- The railway station built for this film was subsequently used during the filming of the sci-fi comedy Back to the Future Part III.
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