Overview: Maniacal outlaws thirsting for blood! Corrupt capitalists profiting from the suffering of the common folk! Desperate people pushed to violent revenge!

The Italian western has never been grittier than in this quartet of later-period cult classics, in which the trademark cynicism of the genre escalates into the radical pessimism of the late 1960s / early 1970s world.

Blu-ray Verdict: In Paolo Bianchini’s I Want Him Dead (1968), American actor Craig Hill stars as an ex-Confederate soldier who vows revenge after his sister is raped and murdered, in so doing setting him on a collision course with a dastardly plot to disrupt peace talks between the North and South.

American actor Craig Hill made a name for himself in Europe in a variety of B-movies. He embarked on his acting career in Hollywood 1950, and he was billed fifth in his first western, Joseph M. Newman’s The Outcasts of Poker Flat in 1952.

Later, he layeda cavalry officer in the 1954 Van Johnson Oater Siege at Red River." In "God Made Them... I Kill Them director Paolo Bianchini’s above-average, but low-budget Spaghetti shoot’em up I Want Him Dead, Hill is cast a hard-luck wrangler named Clayton who finds himself in the middle of a secret plot to blow up a Union general and a Confederate general at a peace negotiation summit in the West.

This sounds rather like The Hampton Roads Conference, where Abraham Lincoln and William Seward met with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens to bargain for peace. Initially, our hero rides into the action with a saddle bag stuffed with worthless Confederate States of America bank notes. Clayton wants to buy some valuable property, so he can settle down. Unfortunately, the owner refuses to accept the worthless rebel currency.

If this weren’t awful enough, a gang of depraved ruffians kills his sister and leaves her body sprawled on the floor. Naturally, Clayton finds her, and he is furious. He inquires at a saloon about the men who killed his sister. A drunken lout of a gunman tries to kill him. Clayton guns him down as easily as swatting a fly.

Afterward, he learns to his chagrin that the drunk was the brother of the local sheriff, and he must slug his way out of jail. Meantime, a local businessman, Mallek (Andrea Bosic of Hornet’s Nest) hires one of the killers of Clayton’s sister, Jack Blood (José Manuel Martín of For a Few Extra Dollars), to kill the generals.

Basically, peace will be bad for his business. Blood and his cutthroat dastards ambush a Confederate wagon train and kill everybody. Disposing of the corpses, they masquerade as rebels to attend the summit and lay out the explosives.

Happily, Clayton thwarts them, but he suffers repeatedly at their grimy hands. During one rough and tumble fistfight, Blood and his cronies try to shove him headfirst into a blazing fireplace. They wind up leaving him trussed up in a chair, while the building burns. Fortunately, he escapes with the help of a girl that he had brought along with him.

Mallek meets an ill-fate when he shows up at a rendezvous with Blood’s men and threatens them with a fate worse than death if they don’t make good on their commitment to kill the generals. What the villains don’t know is that Clayton has eliminated Blood. In a surprise about-face, Blood’s men man-handle Mallek, take the loot that he had intended to pay them, and skedaddle with it.

During their escape, these bastards double-cross each other to obtain larger shares of the money. I Want Him Dead was cinematically shot in scenic Almeria, Spain, and the settings are spectacular looking. As usual, Craig Hill makes a stalwart hero, and he gets himself in lots of trouble throughout this sagebrusher. This is definitely a Spaghetti western to watch!

Next, in Edoardo Mulargia’s El Puro (1969), western icon Robert Woods gives arguably his greatest performance as a legendary gunfighter forced to emerge from hiding after the bounty hunters on his tail murder the tender-hearted barmaid who offered him a new life.

El Puro (Robert Woods, Massacre Mania, Lucifera Demon Lover) was once a dangerous and much feared gunfighter. But today, well, he’s a drunk, lying low in a nothing town, concerned that a killer trying to make his name by shooting him is behind every corner. He’s treated as a whipping boy by every man in the bar and only Rosie (Rosalba Neri!) - who knew his legend - treats him kindly. She’s been saving money so they can get away from all this.

Or they would, if it wasn’t for Gipsy (Marc Fiorini) and his gang, who are riding into town to collect the ten grand on El Puro’s bounty while also killing grandfathers and assaulting young women. Just as certain that El Puro will find redemption is the fact that Rosie won’t survive. That said, her death is beyond upsetting and sure, one hates when its only the death of a woman that galvanizes a man to action, but trust me, you’ll want him to get revenge.

Also known as The Reward’s Yours... The Man’s Mine; 10,000 Dollars for a Gunslinger and El Puro Sits, Waits and Shoots, this movie was directed by Edoardo Mulargia, who made the giallo Tropic of Cancer and Don’t Wait, Django...Shoot! He also directed two of the movies - Hotel Paradise and Escape from Hell - that were remixed for the Linda Blair movie Savage Island.

Oh, and he also wrote the script for this movie along with Ignacio F. Iquino, Fabrizio Gianni (second unit director on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) and Fabio Piccioni (the writer of Murder Syndrome and the director of The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe).

Then, in Mario Camus’ Wrath of the Wind (1970), genre superstar Terence Hill shows his darker side as an assassin who finds his conscience when he and his brother are hired by a ruthless landholder to kill the leaders of a growing labor movement.

Not technically a spaghetti western, The Wind’s Fierce is a simplistic, very earnest film about the conflict between workers and landowners in southern Spain at the turn of the 19th century. Given, however, that it’s a Spanish-Italian co-production, stars Terence Hill, and shares many themes with Zapata westerns, it seems reasonable to welcome it under the spaghetti western umbrella.

Credited to six different writers, director Mario Camus’ film fits in with the political slant of his best known works such as The Holy Innocents and La Colmena, particularly with regard to its anti-elite, collectivist message. Following a montage of the organizer rousing the masses, Marcos kills him without hesitation but, gradually, begins to think for the first time about what he’s doing and why.

Though there’s no indication of any political awakening on Marcos’ part — instead, his shift in attitude toward the workers comes via (wouldn’t you know it) a hot woman who is sympathetic to their cause. Moved by his relationship with her, naturally inclined toward conflict, and desirous of making amends for the death he caused, Marco accidentally slips into the position of movement advisor, referring to the workers as we, and helping to galvanize their fight for control over their own lives.

Whatever the reason for his change of heart, it brings Marcos into inevitable conflict with his brother, compounding the crisis through which he’s living, one that coincides with what the community itself is experiencing.

When one of the landowners decides that the workers were, not in fact, born to slave and die on the land of the wealthy, and elects as a result to pay them a fair wage, we’re treated to another montage, this time of happy workers in the fields, toiling their eight hours to the accompaniment of romantic music that reinforces the rectitude of their cause.

When the workers are happy, however, the wealthy are outraged and, determined to end what one of them refers to as the theft of what is ours, they hire Jacobo to kill the class traitor and restore the natural order of things.

The end of the film is violent and sentimental, cementing the heroism of sacrifice to a cause bigger than oneself, and confirming the near holiness of alignment with the working class and their ideas. The simplicity of Camus’ work means that it’s often not particularly engaging, but his idealism is admirable, and The Wind’s Fierce’s status as Terence Hill’s final film before They Call Me Trinity catapulted him to international, comedic stardom makes it an interesting artifact, if nothing else.

Following Trinity’s success, The Wind’s Fierce — humorless thought it is — was quickly retitled for international release, usually as either Trinity Sees Red or The Revenge of Trinity.

Finally, Fabio Testi and Tomas Milian star in Lucio Fulci’s Four of the Apocalypse (1975), in which a quartet of misfits go from sharing the same jail cell to embarking on a savage odyssey that will lead to torture, rape and cannibalism. Preyed upon by a ruthless bandit, the foursome fight for their lives - until the time comes for revenge.

This movie has the reputation of being very violent, and I guess that is true, but it’s not that violent at all when compared to other spaghetti westerns. The level and amount of violence is just about average. The only thing that sets this one apart is that some of the bullet wounds are shown as large gaping holes, more like what you might see in a horror movie. We also see a little bit of cannibalism, but the film goes for quite a long stretch in the middle without any violence or action at all.

Lynne Frederick is very nice to look at in this film. She isn’t as exotic as any of those beautiful dark-haired Latina’s that are in so many Euro-westerns, but she is very pretty in a vanilla sort of way. Her acting performance is also excellent and Tomas Milian is great in the role of Chaco - a sort of Charles Manson of the Old West.

He is definitely the most interesting character in the film. Too bad we don’t see all that much of him. The other actors are also good, and Fulci has them showing a lot of emotion. It’s a love story and a tragedy, and even a bit philosophical. It succeeds, for the most part, on all of those levels, but still only manages to be just OK as a spaghetti western; albeit a thoroughly enjoyable one, of course.

Four of the Italian western’s hardest, cruelest, bloodiest classics erupt from the screen in this feature-packed box set from Arrow Films. Featuring dazzling High Definition restorations and a wealth of brand new bonus materials produced specially for this release, Savage Guns delivers - from both barrels!