10 Criminally Underrated Westerns You Must See Before You Die
8. Pale Rider
Warner Bros.
1985's Pale Rider might have met a near-unanimously positive critical response, but one can't help but shake the feeling that it's Clint Eastwood's forgotten western.
Directed by and starring Eastwood as the eponymous protagonist, Pale Rider finds success in the supernatural, as well as in its immaculate direction. The film was Eastwood's eleventh in the director's chair, but it's a victim of circumstance, releasing in between The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven, with the latter bookending the actor/director's affair with Westerns and subsequently dominating 1992's awards season.
Pale Rider is no Unforgiven, but it is an excellent film. Eastwood plays a man with no name (again), referred to only as 'The Preacher', as he defends a mining town from the advances of a robber baron determined to take all the gold in the valley for himself. Throw in an interesting mystery surrounding the character's origins, along with an intelligently shot finale, and there really isn't a reason why Pale Rider should retain its status as Eastwood's forgotten classic.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
