Outspoken New England school teacher Fletcher (Gian Maria Volante, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE) is forced into retirement by poor health and moves out west to Texas. An act of kindness to captured outlaw Beauregard aka Soloman Bennet (Thomas Milian, DJANGO KILL!) gets Fletcher taken hostage by the wounded man. Rather than letting him die, Fletcher nurses him back to health in his gang's mountain hideout. Charlie Siringo (William Berger, FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON) - whose credentials include several wanted posters - tracks down Bennett and proposes that they get his gang back together, but Bennet suspects the other man of being a Pinkerton detective. When Bennet is well enough to track down his dispersed and captured gang members, he sends Fletcher off to Purgatory City to catch a train back to civilization. Bennet has come to the town in search of cohort Aaron Chase (José Torres, DEATH RIDES A HORSE) and Fletcher once again saves his life (this time by shooting a man). Although Bennet tells Fletcher to go home, but Fletcher decides to join him as he rounds up his old gang members. While visiting the De Winton plantation to convince Maximilian (Ángel de Pozo, HORROR EXPRESS) to take up with them again, the sheriff plans to arrest Bennet against the advice of Siringo, who turns out to be a Pinkerton detective. When Siringo kills the sheriff, Bennet (taking a cue from Fletcher) goes with his brain instead of his gut and welcomes him into the gang. They go on to Puerta de Fuego (well, Pietra de Fuoco in the Italian dialogue and English subtitles), a colony of gold-less prospectors and forgotten outlaws, in search of Zackary Shawn (Aldo Sambrell), but they are told that he was taken and no one knows where he is being kept. Bennet tells the group that they will need a lot of money in order to gain information about Shawn's whereabouts and Fletcher devises a foolproof plan to rob a bank. Siringo secretly sends a communication back to the Pinkerton agency to have Shawn moved to a jail in a town near Puerta de Fuego. Bennet is ready to bust him out, but Fletcher (without suspecting Siringo) rightly suspects that it is a setup. They go ahead with the bank robbery, but Siringo's intervention causes a bloody shootout. Bennet is captured by Siringo and Fletcher is the only one to make it back to Puerta de Fuego with the loot. Fletcher forms a new Wild Gang out of the citizens of Puerta de Fuego, and then extends his recruiting to the best criminals from major cities. When Siringo's plan to send Wallace (Lorenzo Robledo, COMPANEROS) to infiltrate the gang fails miserably, the law responds by recruiting hundreds of vigilantes to massacre Puerta de Fuego.

Producer Alberto Grimaldi brings from his Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood trilogy production designer Carlo Simi and composer Ennio Morricone [along with conductor Bruno Nicolai and vocalist Edda dell'Orso], but the results are different under Seregio Solimma's (VIOLENT CITY) direction and scripting (with Sergio Donati would go on to script Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and DUCK YOU SUCKER). Although he had already memorable sadistic and paranoid spaghetti western villains in A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, Volante is afforded a much more complex character in this outing: a sickly, passive, and compassionate - though brimming with resentment - intellectual who becomes a cold-blooded, manipulative, calculating, brutal killer (and proto-fascist dictator). He makes his first kill reluctantly to save Bennet. When they get to Puerta de Fuego, he humors an aged outlaw by telling him that there are ballads sung about him and that there is still a $10,000 price on his head. When Fletcher volunteers to join him and the others on a robbery, Bennet rebuffs him more out of concern for his innocence than Fletcher's physical limitations, but it makes Fletcher feel like less of a man. Fletcher sets out to prove himself by practicing his shooting, raping Maria (Jolanda Modio, A STRANGER IN TOWN), and getting into a fist fight with Chase. Bennet had earlier told the others that Fletcher was intelligent and to listen to him, and inadvertently shifts the balance of leadership from brawn to brains. Bennet starts out as a brute, but gains his compassion as Fletcher loses it. When a child raises the alarm about Bennet's presence in town for the bank robbery, he cannot bring himself to silence him. When the child is shot by another gang member, Bennet's for the child rather than alerting Fletcher and the others gets him captured and the others killed. Bennet's new-found compassion drives him to escape when the vigilantes go after the residents of Puerta de Fuego, and to "do what's right" in the final face to face stand-off. The supporting cast is also stuffed with Italian genre regulars. Nello Pazzafini (A LONG RIDE FROM HELL), Frank Braña (RETURN OF THE BLIND DEAD), Antonio Casas (THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY) are on hand as members of the Wild Gang. Stuntman Godofredo Unger (BLOOD AND BLACK LACE) also pops up as a smirking gunman. John Karlsen (SLAUGHTER HOTEL) turns up in the prologue, Lidia Alfonsi (who played one of the earliest heroines terrorized by a telephone stalker in Mario Bava's BLACK SABBATH) plays a tart Southern belle, and Carole André (DEATH IN VENICE) plays a tomboy who has a crush on Bennet.