In the 1820s, a frontiersman, Hugh Glass, sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.
Just as Nevada wins $7000 in yellowback bills, Ben Ide takes his $7000 and heads out to buy mining equipment. Burridge has his man Powell kill Ide and retrieve the money and Nevada finds Ide just as the posse arrives. Found with the money Nevada is arrested and Burridge now gets Powell to incite the local citizens to lynch Nevada.
Gare uses the knowledge that his wife Amelia was imprisoned and had an illegitimate son to make her his subject. When her son Marc Jordan appears and falls in love with her daughter Judith, Amelia is forced to tell the truth. Gare then tyrannizes Judith. She tries to escape, but a fatal accident occurs first.
Dan Ballard, a respected citizen in the western town of Silver Lode, has his wedding interrupted by four men led by Ned McCarty, an old acquaintance who, as a US Marshal, arrests Ballard for the murder of his brother and the theft of $20,000. Ballard seeks to stall McCarty while tracking down evidence that will prove his innocence.
In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.
In one of his last film roles, legendary B-Western cowboy Sunset Carson roots out the varmints responsible for a false smallpox scare. After arriving in the small town of Quartzville, Carson determines that a crooked lawyer-and-doctor team created a false smallpox epidemic in order to seize a gold mine from an old man and his family. Carson and his friends set out to bring the villains to justice. Al Terry, Pat Starling and Lee Roberts co-star.
On vacation at his ranch, western actor Roy quickly finds himself involved with a horse rustling operation and a boy ward of one of the rustlers, leading to the kidnapping of Roy's trick horse Trigger by the gang with a demand for ransom.
Rangers Tex Haines and Dave Wyatt track a killer known as the Whispering Skull. In the wake of the Skull's slaughter, a band of thieves takes advantage of the fear he's brought to town.
One man wants to control all the land in the state to graze all his cattle. His band of outlaws are raiding ranchers and homesteaders, trying to drive them out. Rocky and Fuzzy are brought in to help stop the raiders and keep the land for the small ranchers and homesteaders.
Jerry Johnson inherits a 50,000 acre ranch. Lucky Miller wants to take over the ranch. Roy is trying to get a railroad spur right of way. Lucky has a woman come west to marry Jerry to get control of the ranch. After the wedding, Lucky has the owner killed. Roy’s gun is substituted for the murder weapon, so Roy is put in jail.
A Texan sheriff and his younger brother travel across the border into Mexico to confront the man who killed their father.
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.
After arriving at his new, remote Army outpost, Capt. John 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.
After encountering a group of bandits with plans to rape and steal from her, a young widow ventures into the wilderness in search of justice.
Cowboy Jack Horton searches for the killer of his father and brother, both of whom were found with an ace of clubs pinned to their bodies.
U.S. marshal Ritter arrives in town to round up bandits who are attempting to fix the local elections.
One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.
On the run after committing murder, an accountant encounters a strange Native American man who prepares him for his journey into the spiritual world.
Gold miner Edd Denmeade loves Lucy Watson, the sister of the official mining claim recorder. Denmeade suspects Watson of killing his father, who after a poker game was shot by a gambler "who shuffles with one hand." The real murderer, Sam Spralls, has convinced Watson that he killed Denmeade and threatens to expose him unless Watson assigns him all the gold claims. Spralls assembles a band of killers to jump the claims when Watson complies. Eventually, Denmeade learns the identity of the killer when he sees Spralls shuffle a deck of cards. He forms a vigilante party and rids the community of Spralls and his gang.