Bandits lead by Matt the Mute enter a bar and kill multiple people. Randy Bowers comes to town and is framed by Matt the Mute, who is working with the sheriff (who doesn't know Matt is really a criminal). Randy escapes with the help of the niece of the dead owner of the bar. Bowers ends up running from the sheriff, and ends up in the cave in which the bandits have their hide-out…
CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.
A Texan sheriff and his younger brother travel across the border into Mexico to confront the man who killed their father.
Marshall Dan Mitchell, who is the law in Abilene, has the job of keeping peace between two groups. For a long time, the town had been divided, with the cattlemen and cowboys having one end of town to themselves, while townspeople occupied the other end. Mitchell liked it this way, it made things easier for him, and kept problems from arising between the two factions. However…
Shortly after Moody Pierson saves Sheriff Tim's life, Moody is arrested for murder. Tim doesn't believe he did it and lets him get away. Kicked out as Sheriff, Tim goes after the real kiler and this leads him to the town controlled by Red Slavins.
William Blake, an accountant turned fugitive, is on the run. During his travels, he meets a Native American man called Nobody, who guides him on a journey to the spiritual world.
Zara Montalve, half Spanish and half America, returns to her native California in time to see her parents murdered for their hacienda and gold by Sheriff Jim Harding and his gang. Posing as Lola Belmont, an American visiting from Detroit, teams up with Joaquin Murietta, posing as Carlos Del Rio, to form a Robin-Hood type band that takes vengeance on the gang and restores stolen gold to its rightful owners, aided by militia leader Dan Hinsdale.
Upon receiving reports of missing persons at Fort Spencer, a remote Army outpost on the Western frontier, Capt. John Boyd investigates. After arriving at his new post, Boyd and his regiment aid a wounded frontiersman who recounts a horrifying tale of a wagon train murdered by its supposed guide -- a vicious U.S. Army colonel gone rogue. Fearing the worst, the regiment heads out into the wilderness to verify the gruesome claims.
Retired wealthy sea captain Jim McKay arrives in the Old West, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between his future father-in-law, Major Terrill, and the rough and lawless Hannasseys over a valuable patch of land.
A former gunslinger is forced to take up arms again when he and his cattle crew are threatened by a corrupt lawman.
A small-town sheriff in the American West enlists the help of a disabled man, a drunk, and a young gunfighter in his efforts to hold in jail the brother of the local bad guy.
The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.
Following the Civil War, headstrong rancher Thomas Dunson decides to lead a perilous cattle drive from Texas to Missouri. During the exhausting journey, his persistence becomes tyrannical in the eyes of Matthew Garth, his adopted son and protégé.
After serving a five year prison sentence for allowing his men to destroy a town in a drunken spree, a trail boss is hired by the same town's leading citizen to drive their cattle to Fort Clemson. Complicating matters, a rival cattle baron also hires the cattle driver to lead his herd.
A study in greed in which treasure hunters seek a shipment of gold buried in Death Valley.
With a heavy haul of 250 kilograms of gold bullion, the grizzled criminal mastermind, Rhino, and his ruthless gang of cutthroats, head to a ramshackle retreat somewhere in the Mediterranean to lay low on a scorching day of July. However, the unexpected and rather unwelcome arrival of the bohemian writer, Bernier, his muse, Luce, along with a pair of no-joke gendarmes further complicates things, as the frail allegiances will soon be put to the test.
Ruthlessly pursued by the Rogers family following a dispute over cattle, Ben Caine (Benito Stefanelli) is chased back to the Caine Ranch. Despite his wife Maria's (Michèle Mercier) desperate pleading, the Rogers family hangs Ben Caine, forcing Maria to watch. Consumed with revenge but finding her two brothers-in-law reluctant to assist, Maria enlists the help of Manuel (Robert Hossein). Manual, presumably preoccupied with the past, wears a single black glove and lives alone in a ghost town. Manuel agrees to Maria's plan with reluctance, in part because of his deep feelings/attraction to her. Manuel finds employment as foreman at the Rogers' ranch and surreptitiously kidnaps Pa Rogers' (Daniele Vargas) only daughter Johanna (Anne-Marie Balin). With Johanna as the bait, Maria will be in the perfect position to exact her revenge on the Rogers but things don't turn out quite as planned.
Lightning Carson's nephew has been falsely accused of murder. To get in with the gang, Lightning poses as a Mexican. He also appears as himself making his costume changes at his sister's ranch. Just as he about to bring in the gang, a henchman finds evidence of his masquerade and arrives to expose the hoax.
In 1870s America, a peaceful American settler kills his family's murderer which unleashes the fury of a notorious gang leader. His cowardly fellow townspeople then betray him, forcing him to hunt down the outlaws alone.
During the Klondike Gold Rush, a misanthropic cattle driver and his talkative elderly partner run afoul of the law in Alaska and are forced to work for a saloon owner to take her supplies into a newly booming but lawless Candian town.