Dust to Dust

The fastest gun in the West tries to escape his reputation.

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.

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

A group of young gunmen, led by Billy the Kid, become deputies to avenge the murder of the rancher who became their benefactor. But when Billy takes their authority too far, they become the hunted.

Willington's only love, Mariana, is about to get married to René, Willington's cousin. While Willington is trying to get her back, a demobilization process concerning an illegal armed group is underway in the region, and new killings, besides rumors of a thief at large, will endanger Mariana's new family.

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.

Chon Wang, a clumsy imperial guard trails Princess Pei Pei when she is 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.

After being drafted to a pro track team, a midwestern young teen needs to decide between his future career and his dementia-ridden grandfather.

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.

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

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.