Vengeful bounty hunter Ben Brigade (Scott) captures the notorious, psychotic outlaw Billy (James Best), to trap the gunman's equally deranged brother Frank (Lee Van Cleef), the man who murdered Brigade's wife. He enlists the help of two other vigilantes (Pernell Roberts and a young James Coburn in an early screen role), but who have plans of their own for Billy... Dense, complex and wonderfully ambiguous, this suspenseful western drama is perhaps the most revered of the Boetticher/Scott collaborations, and has been cited as a major inspiration by filmmakers including Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese, and by critics as one of the finest American westerns of the 1950s.