Not seen a Western for ages…so one is due.
2023 is the 50th anniversary of Clint’s ‘High Plains Drifter’ (1973).
I have so many good memories of this at the cinema…not seeing it, because I was only aged nine, but of mum and dad being with me as they asked innocently at the ticket booth if they could take me in to see it… 
The ‘HPD’ character looked so damned cool in the posters, that I wanted to know more…
Soon afterwards, I bought the ‘Ernest Tidyman’ paperback of the film, and ended up reading it five times, because it was a period before watching ‘GBU’ on TV in 1976, and then watching the first two ‘Dollar Westerns’ in 1979.
In other words, it was an opportunity for me (as a 9 year old) to experience the legend, the ‘cool guy’, the nameless gunfighter, before I got to fall for ‘Blondie’ in Leone’s third film…3 years later, on BBC TV.
Remember that, in my neolithic period, there was no way (apart from visiting the cinema) from experiencing the film, other than reading the book tie-in.
Also, I think that whoever did the artwork for the Ernest Tidyman novelisation did it in such a magnificent, provocative, iconic way…I
I’d love to know who the artist was for the '73 paperback, because it certainly whetted my appetite for anything Eastwood…
Anyway, to cut my memories short, I intend to watch ‘High Plains Drifter’ soon…
Clint at his best…even, in promotional pics at the time, paying homage to Leone and Siegel.
), this was actually an interesting way of handling it. Unfortunately, it missed the mark in my opinion and it was all I could do not to doze off. I wish I had spent my morning re-watching Tombstone instead.