Pale Rider: Steelbook (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: May 01, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Clint EastwoodRelease Date(s)
1985 (April 29, 2025)Studio(s)
The Malpaso Company (Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
A group of settlers are in crisis. They have claims to the land that they’ve been working, but a ruthless baron is trying to intimidate them into leaving. They’ve been struggling to make a living in their own simple way, but his industrialized methodologies are capable of exploiting the land to a much greater extent, generating profits far beyond their means. Yet he’s greedy and not willing to pay them what the land is worth to him, so he resorts to harassment instead. When a mysterious stranger rides into town, one of the families takes him into their home. Their child becomes enamored of him, creating a rivalry between the stranger and one of the parents, and he becomes a romantic rival as well. Yet he has the necessary skills to defeat the baron’s goons, which rallies the family and the other settlers living around them. So, the baron ends up bringing in some outside talent in order to finish the job. The hired gun even taunts one of the other settlers into drawing his gun before shooting him down mercilessly. That forces an inevitable showdown between the stranger, the gunfighter, and the baron. Naturally, the stranger manages to save the day, but he’ll never be able to fit into this kind of polite society. So, he rides off at the end, leaving the child to cry out into the wilderness, begging for his return.
It’s a classic tale that epitomizes the traditions of the Western genre, which is hardly surprising considering that it’s a summary of the plot to George Stevens’ Shane, one of the most traditional Westerns of all. It does omit any conflict with Native Americans, but despite the fact that the genre sometimes has been referred to as “cowboys and Indians,” that was never an essential component to it. In fact, as Westerns evolved during the Fifties, Native conflicts started taking a back seat to the conflicts between lawmen and gunmen (or some variation of that formula), with the lines between both sides starting to blur. While Shane is very much a traditional Western, it still helped to usher in the greater psychological depth of the Westerns that followed during the Fifties and Sixties, at least until the revisionist Westerns of the Seventies started to deconstruct the entire genre.
As a filmmaker, Clint Eastwood has never been particularly interested in deconstruction, but he’s always been fascinated by the psychological underpinnings of human conflicts, so it’s not surprising that he eventually turned to the story of Shane with his 1985 Western Pale Rider. As an actor, he had helped to redefine the Western genre for American audiences with A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. While Sergio Leone’s films were hardly the first spaghetti Westerns to make their way to American shores, Eastwood’s charismatic presence gave them greater popular appeal. When he turned to directing, his first Western High Plains Drifter still stayed firmly in the Leone milieu, but it started to explore the nature of Leone’s mysterious strangers, albeit somewhat ambiguously. Eastwood’s second Western The Outlaw Josey Wales dispensed with his so-called “Man with No Name” characters entirely by putting the name right in the title, and it further explored what drives men like Wales to do what they do. Yet by the time that The Outlaw Josey Wales was released in 1976, Westerns had been dying a slow death on American shores, and Eastwood wouldn’t return to the genre for nearly a decade.
Pale Rider was something of an anomaly in 1985, one of two different attempts to revive the Western genre for the Reagan-era moviegoing public. While Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado was essentially the Star Wars of Westerns, borrowing as many elements as possible from previous films and then throwing in the kitchen sink for good measure. Eastwood’s focus was much narrower in Pale Rider, which is one reason why the Shane template proved so fruitful. The screenplay was by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack, both of whom had penned Eastwood’s 1977 film The Gauntlet and also wrote a rejected screenplay for the fourth Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact (a script that ended up being retooled for Chuck Norris as Code of Silence). It’s not entirely clear why they turned to Shane as inspiration for Pale Rider, but that provided the structure that they needed in order to frame the central conflict. Yet perhaps even more importantly, they chose to model the supernatural nature of this conflict from High Plains Drifter instead, and that’s what elevated an otherwise traditional Western into pure myth. But more on that in a moment.
All of the basic elements from Shane are present in Pale Rider, with a few twists. The Preacher (Eastwood) is the mysterious stranger, with Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart) as the baron who wants to take over the rightful claims of the settlers. When he finally has had enough, he brings in the mercenary “lawman” Marshal Stockburn (Rio Bravo’s John Russell, who had a small cameo in The Outlaw Josey Wales). Yet these aren’t homesteaders in Wyoming, they’re gold miners in California, and LaHood is a mining magnate rather than a cattle baron. Hull Barret (Michael Moriarty) is the one who takes in The Preacher, but rather than having a son who becomes enamored of the stranger, it’s his sort-of fiancée’s teenage daughter Megan (Sydney Penny). That changes the dynamic completely, adding a sexual awakening element since Megan’s interest in The Preacher is very different than Joey’s platonic hero worship of Shane. Yet Hull’s fiancée Sarah (Carrie Snodgrass) is attracted to The Preacher as well, so not only does Hull see The Preacher as a threat to his potential as a husband and father, but Megan sees her mother as a threat to her fantasies of learning the ways of the flesh from the mysterious stranger.
Yet while The Preacher isn’t completely immune to the temptations of the flesh, at least where Sarah is concerned, his real spirituality is of an entirely different sort. That’s where High Plains Drifter comes into play. In that film, it’s eventually revealed that the mysterious stranger has ridden into town in order to avenge the death of the marshal, but Eastwood left things ambiguous regarding who he actually may be. In the script, it was clear that he was the marshal’s brother, but in the film, it’s also possible that the marshal himself has returned from the dead. Either way, he’s still an avenging angel. In Pale Rider, Eastwood leaves no doubts whatsoever that The Preacher has returned from the grave, at one point showing a pattern of fatal bullet wounds across his back. In this case, the bullets were delivered by Marshal Stockburn, and while The Preacher first appears in answer to Megan’s prayers for deliverance, Stockburn’s involvement means that it’s no accident why The Preacher was the one chosen in order to serve as angel of both deliverance and vengeance.
In other words, Pale Rider is really Shane meets High Plains Drifter, minus any ambiguity, plus a multilayered approach to female sexuality. It was a perfect combination for Eastwood, because it allowed him to make his most traditional Western while engaging in mythmaking of the highest order. Eastwood has always been an iconic Western figure ever since his Rawhide days, let alone in any of his collaborations with Sergio Leone. Yet with Pale Rider, he engaged in open iconography. Every detail of his costuming, from the familiar jangle of his spurs to the most perfect hat that he’s ever worn in a Western, is all designed to be archetypical, not realistic. Longtime Eastwood cinematographer Bruce Surtees keeps him consistently backlit and frequently shot from below in order to enhance his mystery and stature. Even Stockburn and his deputies, all of them clad in dusters like the ones that Cheyenne’s men wore in Once Upon a Time in the West, are composed perfectly across the Panavision frame. In fact, every single frame of every single shot in Pale Rider is a masterclass in iconic Western imagery. It may not be Eastwood’s greatest Western, but it’s certainly his most beautiful.
Audiences responded to that imagery by turning Pale Rider into a sizable hit, outgrossing Silverado and earning far more of a profit due to its much lower budget (less than a third of what it cost to produce Kasdan’s epic). Unfortunately, it failed to revitalize the Western genre, so Eastwood hung up his hat yet again. Despite an occasional blip like Young Guns in 1988, Westerns remained unsuccessful until Eastwood picked up that hat one last time with his genuinely revisionist Western Unforgiven in 1992. That would go on to be the most successful Western of his entire career, winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards and earning him his first Oscars as both director and producer. It also opened the door for other successful Westerns like Tombstone.
Yet it’s a mistake to overlook Pale Rider, which sometimes gets smothered by the nearly universal praise for both Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales. There’s something to be said for traditional Westerns, even in the modern era, especially when they’re as well-executed as Pale Rider. It’s a classic tale starring an iconic figure, embracing and even magnifying all of the archetypes of the Western genre, and so it is indeed mythmaking of the highest order.
(Postscript: John Russell wasn’t the only actor with a small role in The Outlaw Josey Wales to make a more substantial appearance in Pale Rider. Doug McGrath, who plays the hapless Spider Conway, also had an easy to miss cameo in The Outlaw Josey Wales as the less talkative of the two rubes who try to jump Josey after the “Missouri boat ride.” And just as interestingly, while it’s well known that Billy Drago played one of Stockburn’s deputies, it’s easier to miss that another one of them is played by Robert Winley, aka the Cigar Biker in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.)
Cinematographer Bruce Surtees shot Pale Rider on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.39 for its theatrical release. This new 4K master is based on 8K scans of the original camera negative, with all digital restoration work handled by Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging. The restoration pipeline was completed at 4K in P3 D65 colors space, with grading supervised by MPI senior colorist Jan Yarbrough (who has experience working on Eastwood films). Everything was approved by editor Joel Cox. This version is encoded on a triple-layer BD-100, with High Dynamic Range in HDR10 only.
The improvements over the aging Blu-ray master are immediately obvious, even during the opening title sequence. Along with the other opticals in the film, it’s softer than the surrounding material, yet it’s still much sharper in 4K than it was previously. The only compromise is that Warner Bros. has decided to deal with the coarser grain of this dupe footage by applying some heavy grain reduction, but the reality is that the image degradation from optical printing has always stood out one way or the other, so it’s a compromise no matter what. It’s not clear what stocks that Surtees used, but the grain throughout the rest of the film is tight and refined, and while it’s still probably been massaged somewhat, it’s less obvious here than it was with either Dirty Harry or The Outlaw Josey Wales. Fine details such as costuming and facial textures are nicely resolved, much more so than they were on Blu-ray (although an 8K scan may have been overkill in the case of a film like this).
The HDR grade has been used to enhance the contrast range, more or less within the limitations of what Surtees intended. Yarbrough resisted the temptation to wring more detail out of the shadows, and he wasn’t afraid to let them trail off into pure blackness. Yet the highlights within those shadows have been enhanced slightly, setting them off into even sharper relief against the darkness than they were before. Like with The Outlaw Josey Wales, it’s stronger contrast than could ever be produced on a film print, and I would have preferred it to be toned down slightly. Yet I suspect that I might be an army of one in that regard. Given how often that people complain about HDR grades being too dark (which is usually a tone mapping issue on their end, but that’s another story), I suspect that most people will be thrilled with how Pale Rider looks here. I am as well, just with that one minor reservation that’s purely a matter of taste.
Primary audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos and 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio. Pale Rider was released theatrically in Dolby Stereo, and this is indeed the original theatrical stereo track with encoded surrounds, not a fold-down of the Atmos or the old 5.1 remix. (It’s the first time that Warner Bros. has included it on any DVD or Blu-ray release of Pale Rider, so kudos to them for their newfound commitment to preserving the original audio experience.) The new Atmos version was created by Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services sound mixer Doug Mountain, using the best available archival sound elements and the original multitrack music recordings.
The previous 5.1 track was a fairly straightforward discrete encoding of the original four channels, and in keeping with that spirit, this new Atmos mix doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. There’s greater channel separation and more accurate steering of directionalized effects, but the use of the surround channels is generally limited to where they were in the 1985 mix, while the height channels are reserved for light ambient effects only. Essentially, it’s a smoother, more natural-sounding version of the original mix, with a little extra bass sweetening in the LFE channel to give it a bit more heft. This was one of the first few films where Lennie Niehaus composed the score for Eastwood, and his music supports the ominous atmosphere of Pale Rider perfectly. It sounds equally good on both tracks. You can’t go wrong with either one, but even if you generally prefer the original mixes, do give the new Atmos version a listen first.
Additional audio options include French, German, and Italian 1.0 mono Dolby Digital, plus Spanish (Spain) and (Spanish Latin America) 2.0 stereo Dolby Digital. Subtitle options include English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Spanish (Spain), Dutch, Spanish (Latin America), Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish.
The Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment Steelbook release of Pale Rider is UHD only—like most of their current releases, it doesn’t include a Blu-ray copy. It does include a Digital Code on a paper insert, however. Like all of their new Steelbook releases of classic Eastwood films, the new artwork prominently features Eastwood himself, and should please most fans as it’s based upon one of the film’s alternate theatrical posters. There’s also a non-Steelbook option for those who prefer more standard packaging. The following extras are included on both releases:
- The Diary of Sydney Penny: Lessons from the Set (HD – 7:26)
- Painting the Preacher: The Cinematography of Pale Rider (HD – 8:36)
- Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy – Reinventing Westerns (HD – 17:36)
- Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story (HD – 61:41)
- The Eastwood Factor (HD – 98:27)
Warner Bros. has added two all-new extras for this release, as well as three archival extras that weren’t on previous versions. The Diary of Sydney Penny: Lessons from the Set is a new interview with the actor, who describes her experiences working with Eastwood as well as her thoughts about the relationship between Megan and The Preacher. Painting the Preacher: The Cinematography of Pale Rider is a look at the composition and lighting in the film, featuring new interviews with Penny, John Trafton, Jim Hemphill, Dr. Leah Aldridge, Dr. Debarati Byabartta, Professor William McDonald, Joel Cox, and Sue Richardson. Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy – Reinventing Westerns is an episode of the seven-part 2021 Warner Bros. documentary on the actor/producer/director, focusing on Eastwood’s complex relationship with the Western genre. It includes interviews with Eastwood, Cox, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Frank Darabont, John Lee Hancock, James Mangold, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Frayling, and more. (Yes, this is the exact same featurette that Warner Bros. included with their 4K release of The Outlaw Josey Wales).
Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story was produced in 2013 for Turner Classic Movies and was first included in the Clint Eastwood: 20 Film Collection Bu-ray boxed set. Written, produced, and directed by critic and Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel, it features interviews with Eastwood, Cox, Costner, Freeman, Scorsese, Tim Robbins, Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Marcia Gay Harden, Gene Hackman, Reni Santoni, and many more. When it comes to Eastwood, Schickel has always been more of a hagiographer than a biographer, and true to form, this is a glowing portrait of the actor/filmmaker. Still, it offers some interesting stories from the participants, some of whom are at least willing to admit that Eastwood has occasionally lost his temper on set.
Finally, The Eastwood Factor is a 2010 documentary that was also produced for Turner Classic Movies. It was released three years later in an extended version as a part of the 20 Film Collection set. Written, produced, and directed (yet again) by Richard Schickel, it’s a more intimate portrait of the artist, his life, and his career. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the interviews this time are mostly confined to Eastwood himself (although his longtime costume supervisor Deborah Hopper makes an appearance at one point to stroll through memory lane at his costume archive on the Warner Bros. backlot). There’s also an abundance of clips from most of his films all the way up through Invictus. While The Eastwood Factor is as laudatory as anything else that Schickel has ever done, the fact that Eastwood is front and center from beginning to end means that his self-deprecating charm keeps bringing things back to Earth.
From a quantity perspective, that’s fewer extras than Warner Bros. has included with their 4K releases of Dirty Harry and The Outlaw Josey Wales, but considering that all of their Pale Rider releases have been bare-bones aside from trailers, going all the way back to the LaserDisc days, this is a substantial improvement. Speaking of trailers, once again Warner Bros. has omitted any of those from this version, but that’s readily available elsewhere so it’s no major loss. The extras here are all worthwhile, and combined with substantially improved video quality, a fine new Atmos mix, and the original theatrical Dolby Stereo track for the first time since LaserDisc, you have an upgrade that’s an easy recommendation for any Eastwood fan.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).