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The Old West: Bounty hunter Farrowood (Dale Sheppard) is still
recovering from his last job when he had to drag a body through half the
desert after his bounty (James Taylor) shot himself when his boss, the
psychotic Loomweather (Gary Shail) gives him his next assignment, to track
down and capture/kill a mysterious stranger (Gary Baxter) - and just how
mysterious Farrowood only learns when his partner for this job, McGonagal
(Richard Rowbotham), who calls himself the stranger's friend, tells him
about how they first met, and that the stranger might be more than just
human. Arriving at the stranger's, McGonagal is pretty much shot on the
spot while Farrowood is sent onto a weird trip that might explain things
or question everything, that might be the harsh truth or bitter lies, that
might be from this world or the next, and that might suggest that the
stranger is really the Devil himself - or not ... Paying
conscious hommage to the acid westerns of the 1970s (with Alejandro
Jodorowsky's El Topo at front and center), Day of the Stranger
still is a film that's pretty much unique: Starting out as a rather
nihilistic western and staying firmly within genre boundaries, it only
very gradually slides into the madness our hero is exposed to, where
linear storytelling is replaced with an associative approach with
psycho-sexual undercurrents that really draws a receptive audience in and
freaks its viewers out. That said, this film is probably not for just
everybody, as it's not a crowdpleaser in the traditional sense of the
word, and refuses to explain things away just for the sake of maximum
approach - but if the weird and trippy is your thing, this movie's pretty
much a must-see.
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