10 Criminally Underrated Westerns You Must See Before You Die

8. Pale Rider

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.