Random Movie-Post-Thought For Time-Day

*looks up at title* Yeah, I don't know what that's about either.

Seeing as there was absolute jack-all on TV, I popped an old favorite of mine into the Xbox (Which also serves nicely as my DVD player): High Plains Drifter. I love that movie. The eerie music (especially during the opening and ending credits), the miserable cowards who inhabit Lago, the way the blood is as bright red as the paint they use on the town, the way the drifter will appear suddenly behind a character, as if being off camera makes him as invisible to the other characters as he is to us. Plus, there's the exchange between "The Stranger" (Clint Eastwood) and the preacher after Clint has everyone else thrown out of the hotel:

Preach: You cannot do this, it is inhuman brother, inhuman.
Stranger: I'm not your brother.
P: We are all brothers in the eyes of "Gaw-d".
S: You mean all these people are your brothers and sisters?
P: They most certainly are.
S: Then you won't mind if they come over and stay at your place, will you? *settles back into chair, pulls brim of hat down over his eyes*
Preach *turning to the crowd*: Brothers, sisters, have no fears. We will find shelter for you in our own homes (pause) and it won't cost you one cent more than regular hotel rates.

The part that really makes it work is how after that, Eastwood abruptly jerks his head up, with a look on his face like "What the hell is with these people?" I laugh at that every time.

Anyway, in all the times I've watched the movie, this particular question had never occured to me before: What happened to the people of Lago after the movie ended? We know Sara Belding (by then the estranged wife of hotel owner Lewis Belding) is leaving town. But what of the others? SPOILERS from here on out!!!! The whole thing started because the marshall found out the mine that was supporting the town was on federally-owned land, and he was going to spread the word. Thus he was whipped to death in the streets by hired gunmen. Ouch.

But the town is still there and the people don't seem to be impoverished, so I figure the mine is still active, seeing as no one ever told the Feds. So did the people give up and leave? Having been confronted with all the crap they did to enhance their prosperity, did they ultimately flee the town and try and start over? The guys who were reps of the mining company, Morg Allen and Dave Drake, are both deceased, but if the mine is still profitable the company will send more. And the miners will need some place they can get supplies readily, which is probably the whole reason the town is there in the first place (thank you, History of the American West!). So I could see new people moving in, to fill the vacancies left by those who can't stay.

I guess the person I'm really interested in is Mordecai, who I doubt was allowed to retain his titles of sheriff and mayor after The Stranger departed. He'd been throwing his weight around pretty good while Eastwood had his back, and given the kind of people that seem to live in this town, I don't doubt they'd amp up their cruelty towards him, just to repay him for that. So I'm really hoping he got out of Lago somehow, or at least kept that shiny revolver he had, so he could cap anyone who tried to give him trouble. Not like that fat lump of a sheriff would be able to do anything about it.

Sadly, I'll never know. So I guess it's up to my imagination! *tries real hard to imagine Mordecai in a better place* Shoot, I can't really think of a place in the 1870s that would treat him any better. *imagines Mordecai stowing away on Doc Brown's steam-driven train time machine* That's much better!