"High Plains Drifter" (1973)

High Plains Drifter (1973) is a landmark film for Clint Eastwood: his second feature as a director (following the stalker-thriller Play Misty for Me) and his first western as director. Among his darkest works, it’s a surreal, disturbing tale that plays out more like a horror movie than a traditional western. Inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese (killed in public in 1964 while people looked on), High Plains Drifter is also a sharp critique of how society—and especially cinema—fetishes and romanticizes violence and brutality. Gorgeously filmed by Bruce Surtees, who transforms the western landscape into a blazing hellscape, the full infernal glory and grim beauty of High Plains Drifter is on display in a new Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.