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. In Paolo Bianchini's I Want Him Dead (1968), American actor Craig Hill (The Bloodstained Shadow) 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. Next, in Edoardo Mulargia's El Puro (1969; a.k.a. The Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine), western icon Robert Woods (My Name is Pecos) 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 (Rosalba Neri, Smile Be