High Plains Drifter is a 1973 Revisionist Western film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, wherein he plays a character clearly influenced by the Man with No Name from Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and its sequels. Eastwood's direction, too, was inspired by Leone, as the film uses often beautiful widescreen compositions (by cinematographer Bruce Surtees) very similar to those seen in the "Dollars" films. High Plains Drifter has a much quicker pace, however, which also indicates the stylistic influence of Eastwood's other mentor, Don Siegel (in fact, Eastwood has noted that the graveyard set featured in the film's finale had tombstones reading "Sergio Leone" and "Don Siegel," intended as a comical "dedication" to both then-living directors).

Filmed on location on the shores of Mono Lake, California, High Plains Drifter is morally complex in the manner of the spaghetti westerns. The screenplay was written by Ernest Tidyman and an uncredited Dean Riesner, and Dee Barton provided the film's eerie musical score.

A stranger rides out of the hot desert into a small town in the wild west. The towns people are scared of him, and 3 gunmen try, unsuccessfully, to kill him. He takes a room and decides to stay. Meanwhile, a group of outlaws are about to return to the town and take their revenge - will the towns leaders convince the mysterious man to help ? Written by Colin Tinto

A mysterious gunfighter without a name rides across the desert landscape and arrives in the mining town beside the sea "Lago" to stay for the night. After gunning down three desperado's who tried to kill him, the town hires the gunfighter to help defend the town from three murderous outlaws, Stacey Bridges, Bill Borders and Cole Carlin who have been released from jail after they brutally whipped to death the town's local lawman Marshal Jim Duncan who is in his grave with a unmarked gravestone, the three outlaws set out to return to "Lago" to get their vengeance. Can the mysterious gunfighter without a name stop the three outlaws? Written by Daniel Williamson