High Plains Drifter (1973)

Brutal story-line which is about as close to an explicit allegory as the western has ever come.

What’s most notable is how Eastwood holds fast to the rebel spirit of the spaghetti Westerns and revisionist New Hollywood Westerns of the previous decade, but packages it in a film that’s slicker and more mainstream-friendly.

Clint Eastwood is the ultimate thinking man’s cinematic killing machine. High Plains Drifter is his spooky, dark, and vicious version of the Sergio Leone Man With No Name Spaghetti Westerns he once starred in, and a moody existential meditation on gunplay, revenge and karma. Payback!

A gothic horror story and revenge thriller, it’s one of the darkest Westerns going. As much a ghost story as anything else, it stars Eastwood as a gunslinging cowboy paid handsomely to protect an idyllic Californian mining town from bandits.

Full of delirious color symbolism and macho cruelties, but not without its humor as well. The story is pure dime-store allegory, but the director/star knows his western cliches and uses them like a master.