For those of you who enjoy the bizarrely surreal visuals of American cowboys drifting across sun-bleached Spanish landscapes in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, High Plains Drifter will no doubt make for a delicious Alls-Hallow-Eve trick and treat. Coming back to his American homeland, Clint Eastwood directs and stars in this otherworldly 1973 western filmed on the barren shores of Mono Lake, California. It starts off with the traditional cowboy narrative of a mysterious drifter stopping into the local saloon for a drink. But things immediately go astray. Eastwood’s character, The Stranger, a not-so-distant cousin of his former role as The Man with No Name, kills several thugs hired to protect the town. Fearing revenge from three felons about to be released from jail, the nervous citizens of Lago contract Eastwood to lead their defenses, promising Eastwood “anything he might want.”

But The Stranger makes some strange arrangements in preparing for the bad guys. He appoints a mischievous midget, Mordecai, as both sheriff and mayor, orders up a giant banquet feast for the expected villains, and paints the entire town red, writing “Welcome to Hell” on the city limits sign. While the townspeople become outraged by Eastwood’s insults and bravado, their sordid secrets begin to bubble up through the cracks of Main Street’s boardwalk. In haunting flashbacks, we watch as the three felons, hired by the town, brutally whip the previous marshal to death after he discovers Lago’s mine is illegally on US government property. The town’s citizenry are complicit in this dark murder and they get their just do as The Stranger’s turn their lives upside down. By the film’s end, the town is in smoldering ruins, the felons whipped, and many of Lago’s citizens dead. Eastwood rides out of town on a gray horse, passing by Mordecai, who’s finishing writing on a grave marker in the local cemetery.

“I never did know your name,” Mordecai says.

“Yes, you do,” says a cryptic Eastwood.

A final glance at the inscription on the marker lays this movie’s mystery to rest. Eastwood’s mysterious figure rides off into the distance, triumphantly creating a whole new genre in American film — the supernatural western.

NOTE: John Wayne was so disturbed by this “inaccurate depiction of the West” that he wrote Eastwood about it. Also, unlike your typical 2-D facades on a Hollywood lot, Eastwood built an entire town, filming its gunslinging action inside, on top, and around the local homes and shops.