Dust

Dorothy Johnson was a Western writer ahead of her time. Women saved men, heroes died unwept and unsung, whites lived with Indians and benefited from the experience. Three of her stories were made into films and many critics consider "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" to be the cornerstone of the modern western. This documentary looks back on Dorothy's life, and her place in history.

When he thinks his brother has let him down, a cowboy goes bad.

Bounty hunters seek shelter from a raging blizzard and get caught up in a plot of betrayal and deception.

A Mexican bandit is about to be executed in the United States, so his brother takes over a train and holds the passengers as hostages unless his brother is released. Now both the Americans and Mexicans are baffled as to what to do. One of the passengers — who wrote the letter for their captor — has a suggestion: call mercenaries Hank Brackett and Johnny Reech. They do, and as expected they do come up with a plan, but the president of the railroad is not sure if it will work.

Cheyenne Jones comes to the Blue River Ranch and asks for a job as a cowpuncher. Actually, Jones's real name is Buck McCloud and he's the new owner of the spread, having inherited it when his uncle died a year earlier. He's roaming the range incognito while trying to identify who's behind the cattle rustling that is afflicting his new business.

American Matt Quigley answers Australian land baron Elliott Marston's ad for a sharpshooter to kill the dingoes on his property. But when Quigley finds out that Marston's real target is the aborigines, Quigley hits the road. Now, even American expatriate Crazy Cora can't keep Quigley safe in his cat-and-mouse game with the homicidal Marston.

Legless Southern inventor Dr. Arliss Loveless plans to rekindle the Civil War by assassinating President U.S. Grant. Only two men can stop him: gunfighter James West and master-of-disguise and inventor Artemus Gordon. The two must team up to thwart Loveless' plans.

Three of the original five "young guns" — Billy the Kid, Jose Chavez y Chavez, and Doc Scurlock — return in Young Guns, Part 2, which is the story of Billy the Kid and his race to safety in Old Mexico while being trailed by a group of government agents led by Pat Garrett.

Lucky's band of outlaws holds a rich girl for ransom and plans a new series of robberies. Meanwhile, a peasant who was widowed by one of Lucky's men teams up with a Preacher/Bounty Hunter to plot a premature end to Lucky's lucky streak.

Filmed in Nevada's barren Black Rock Desert in July 1969, "Hard Core" opens with an establishing shot of an expansive blue sky immediately evoking the American West, which sets the scene for De Maria's innovative and experimental film. The work intercuts two differing cinematic approaches: one that explores the observational potential of the medium through wide-angle, 360-degree shots that pan over the changing desert landscape, and the other that appropriates familiar visual tropes taken from the Hollywood Western movie genre—such as pistols, Levi's jeans, boot spurs, and leather chaps—and implements them in a performance. The soundtrack is an edited compilation of two of De Maria's "drum compositions," "Cricket Music" (1964) and "Ocean Music" (1968), which creates a sense of anticipation for the viewer. In the last minute of the film, a series of unexpected events unfolds in rapid succession, producing a dramatic climax.

Chon Wang, a clumsy imperial guard, trails Princess Pei Pei when she's kidnapped from the Forbidden City and transported to America. Wang follows her captors to Nevada, where he teams up with an unlikely partner, outcast outlaw Roy O'Bannon, and tries to spring the princess from her imprisonment.