#1. Liza’s Pioneer Diary (1976)
The story of a gentle, unsure young woman who grows in maturity and self-reliance as she travels across the American plains in 1848 in a wagon train with her young husband and his family.
🤠 Western Movie Guide
Best Western Movies of 1976 Ranked
The greatest Western films released in 1976, ranked by verified IMDb and TMDB community scores.
#2. Run For Blue (1976)
Family film centered around horse racing and going for the Blue Ribbon
#3. The Quest (1976)
Eight years ago, Cheyenne Indians attacked the Baudine Family wagon and captured Morgan, whom they renamed Two Persons. Now Two Persons, raised in the ways of the Indians, has been reunited with his brother Quentin, a doctor and a stranger to frontier ways. Together the brothers set out in search of their sister Patricia, who was also captured and who Two Persons believes is still alive.
#4. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch (1976)
A Western-genre narrative, loosely woven from old clips from B-Western features.
#5. The New Daughters of Joshua Cabe (1976)
Three young women who posed as the daughters of an elderly homesteader find out that he has been falsely accused of murder, convicted, and sentenced to hang. They hatch a plot to smuggle him out of prison.
#6. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
After avenging his family's brutal murder, Wales is pursued by a pack of soldiers. He prefers to travel alone, but ragtag outcasts are drawn to him - and Wales can't bring himself to leave them unprotected.
#7. Juan Armenta El Repatriado (1976)
Juan returns home to Mexico after working in the USA for awhile, and gets caught up in cowboy problems among his townsfolk.
#8. The Shootist (1976)
Afflicted with a terminal illness John Bernard Books, the last of the legendary gunfighters, quietly returns to Carson City for medical attention from his old friend Dr. Hostetler. Aware that his days are numbered, the troubled man seeks solace and peace in a boarding house run by a widow and her son. However, it is not Books' fate to die in peace, as he becomes embroiled in one last valiant battle.
#9. Young Pioneers (1976)
Pilot for TV series of the same name released in 1978. The film told the tale of Molly and David Beaton, two teenage newlyweds, homesteading in the Dakota Territory in the 1870s.
#10. Banjo Hackett: Roamin' Free (1976)
A traveling horse trader and his young nephew travel the west in search of the boy's prize Arabian horse, who has been stolen by a bounty hunter.
#11. The Legend of Jedediah Carver (1976)
A rancher, thrown from his horse, must cross an inhospitable desert and avoid those who live there.
#12. Guardian of the Wilderness (1976)
In 1861, miner Galen Clark learns he has consumption and decides to travel west in his final months. During the journey, he meets naturalist John Muir, who encourages him to live. Along with Native American Teneiya, Galen builds a cabin and settles with his daughter Kathleen. When loggers threaten to destroy their community and the forest, Galen joins forces with Muir and Teneiya to advocate for the area's preservation as Yosemite Park.
#13. Legend of Cougar Canyon (1976)
There are many wonderful and dangerous legends about Cougar Canyon, a sacred Navajo terrain. Two young boys must face the legends and dangers when they go to rescue a lost goat.
#14. The Wind Is Whistling Under Their Feet (1976)
In the 1830s, legendary outlaw Farkos Csapó Gyurka escapes from prison and returns to the Hungarian Great Plain to avenge his betrayal and reclaim his dominance over the puszta. While the local impoverished herdsmen protect him, a determined peace officer relentlessly hunts the bandit to establish modern legal order.
#15. Keoma (1976)
Half-breed Keoma returns to his border hometown after service in the Civil War and finds it under the control of Caldwell, an ex-Confederate raider, and his vicious gang of thugs. To make matters worse, Keoma's three half-brothers have joined forces with Caldwell, and make it painfully clear that his return is an unwelcome one. Determined to break Caldwell and his brothers' grip on the town, Keoma partners with his father's former ranch hand to exact violent revenge.
#16. Baker's Hawk (1976)
When a young boy nurses an injured hawk back to health, he gains newfound courage and confidence on his own.
#17. Dynasty (1976)
The story of a pioneer family in the early 1800s that seeks its fortunes on the Ohio frontier.
#18. The Macahans (1976)
Zeb Macahan, a pioneering westerner, helps move his brother's family to the wild west. They run into several obstacles including the breakout of the Civil War. This sends the father back to fight in the war and leaves the family to move on ahead.
#19. Wanted: The Sundance Woman (1976)
Katharine Ross repeats her portrayal of Etta Place (from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid") in this adventure of the fugitive who, alone and desperate following the deaths of Butch and Sundance, seeks help from Pancho Villa in exchange for guns and ammunition.
#20. The Invasion of Johnson County (1976)
A free-spirited Bostonian recently arrived in the West teams up with a crusty Wyoming cowboy to stop a land baron's attempts to drive out a group of small ranchers and take over their property.
#21. Treasure of Matecumbe (1976)
In post-Civil War Kentucky, young David Burnic becomes the unexpected heir to the family secret, a map leading to buried treasure on the Florida isle of Matecumbe.
#22. The Missouri Breaks (1976)
When vigilante land baron David Braxton hangs one of the best friends of cattle rustler Tom Logan, Logan's gang decides to get even by purchasing a small farm next to Braxton's ranch. From there the rustlers begin stealing horses, using the farm as a front for their operation. Determined to stop the thefts at any cost, Braxton retains the services of eccentric sharpshooter Robert E. Lee Clayton, who begins ruthlessly taking down Logan's gang.
#23. Montana Trap (1976)
Potato Fritz and his friends have moved from Germany to the American Wild West, settling eventually in the Rockies. They are besieged by what appear to them to be hostile Native Americans. Before too long, it becomes clear that the hostiles are in fact a gang of gold thieves. This movie is notable among German-made Westerns for its use of authentic period costumes and firearms.
#24. Across the Great Divide (1976)
Two orphans set out to claim their inheritance - a 400 acre plot of land in Salem Oregon. To Do so they must cross the rugged snow covered Rocky Mountains in the year 1876.
#25. Young Pioneers' Christmas (1976)
A young couple and their neighbors celebrate Christmas in 1874 on the Dakota prairie. Despite tragedy and an ongoing battle with the railway company, Christmas is a homespun and overly sentimental affair.
#26. The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976)
A female hustler is chasing after rich men, but becomes repeatedly mixed up with a suave con man and card shark through a series of misadventures before falling in love with him.
#27. The Last Hard Men (1976)
In 1909 Arizona, retired lawman Sam Burgade's life is thrown upside-down when his old enemy Provo and six other convicts escape a chain-gang in the Yuma Territorial Prison and come gunning for Burgade.
#28. Pony Express Rider (1976)
A young Texas Man who saw his father get killed by a group of bandits, decides years later to go to work for the Pony Express. But he is not just working around the country to deliver mail, he is actually finding the bandits who murdered his father.
#29. The Winds of Autumn (1976)
In 1884, an eleven-year-old Quaker boy sets out on his own to seek revenge against a gang of outlaws who senselessly murdered his family.
#30. From Noon Till Three (1976)
Bank robber Graham Dorsey spends a few hours with beautiful widow Amanda Starbuck, in which time his gang takes part in a disastrous holdup. Learning of his comrades' demise, Dorsey goes on the lam. Believing her short-term lover was killed by the law, Amanda decides to make the most of having had a liaison with the supposedly deceased desperado by writing a book about him. Much to his confusion, the still-living Dorsey watches as his name becomes legendary.
#31. Mad Dog Morgan (1976)
The true story of Irish outlaw Daniel Morgan, who is wanted, dead or alive, in Australia during the 1850s.
#32. Longitud de Guerra (1976)
Based on the novel Tomochic by Heriberto Frías; tells the story of the rebellion of the inhabitants of the village of Tomochi, Chihuahua, against the government of Porfirio Diaz in 1891. Mexico's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1976.
#33. El hombre (1976)
Roving gunslinger visits his estranged wife at her father's farm.
#34. Surrender in Paradise (1976)
Around 1900, bushranger Rusty Swan receives a message that his mother is dying. He sets off with his partner Cecil and girlfriend Valda to see her, chased by a posse led by Sergeant Rutter. They travel through time and wind up in modern-day Surfers Paradise.
#35. The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976)
Lord John Morgan has returned to civilized life in England, but finds he has nothing but disdain for that life. Yearning to embrace the simplicity of the American West, and the Sioux tribe he left behind, Morgan returns to the their land only to discover that they've been decimated by ruthless, government-backed fur traders. Led by Horse, they fight to repossess their land.
#36. El trinquetero (1976)
Card-shark risks getting caught cheating. Safe in his home town, he may turn over a new leaf... but his previous victims are still looking for him.
#37. Trackdown (1976)
When his sister Betsy packs up and leaves the family's Montana cattle ranch to find fame and fortune in Hollywood, her brother Jim decides to follow after her to make sure she doesn't get into trouble.
#38. The Quest: The Longest Drive (1976)
To save an old friend's ranch, the Beaudine brothers round up a gang of misfits to drive a huge herd to market.
#39. Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)
Buffalo Bill plans to put on his own Wild West sideshow, and Chief Sitting Bull has agreed to appear in it. However, Sitting Bull has his own hidden agenda, involving the President and General Custer.
#40. Mustang Country (1976)
A rancher and former rodeo star comes across a runaway boy while he is hunting a wild stallion.
#41. Kid Vengeance (1976)
Tom, a teenager, teams with a black gunfighter named Isaac to avenge his family.
#42. The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976)
Sam Longwood, a frontiersman who has seen better days, spies the gold-mine partner, Jack Colby, who ran off with all the gold from a mine they were prospecting fifteen years earlier. He tells his other partners from that time, Joe Knox and Billy, and they confront Colby demanding not only the thousand dollars he took but an addition fifty-nine thousand for their trouble. After being thwarted in this attempt, they, and a would-be named Thursday, hatch a plan to kidnap Colby's wife, Nancy Sue, who is coincidently Sam's old flame, but find that Nancy Sue is not the sweet girl that Sam remembers.
#43. God's Gun (1976)
Priest turned vigilante Father John hunts down a gang of criminals, led by Sam Clayton, who killed a man in a local bar. On the gang's return to the town, they kill the priest, leaving a young parishioner Johnny behind. He now seeks revenge for the death of the holy man.
#44. The Captive: The Longest Drive 2 (1976)
During a Cavalry massacre at an Indian village, two brothers, searching for their captured sister, rescue a white woman long ago kidnapped by the Cheyenne. They ride for their lives, haunted by the chant of the tribal Death Song.
#45. Viva Zalata (1976)
A comedy western coming from Egypt. The title, "Viva Zalata", clearly reminds to "Viva Zapata!" (1952, directed by Elia Kazan). A bandit of Egyptian origins leads a gang of Mexican outlaws terrorizing a small city at the border between Mexico and the U.S..
#46. Joshua (1976)
A black soldier returns from fighting for the Union in the Civil War only to find out that his mother has been murdered by a gang of white thugs. He becomes a bounty hunter, determined to track down and kill the men who killed his mother.
#47. The Naked Man (1976)
A child grows up to seek revenge on the man that raped and murdered his parents.
#48. Apache Woman (1976)
Tommy is an innocent cavalry officer who falls in love with a beautiful Apache woman after rescuing her from a nasty gun smuggler named Honest Jeremy. When Jeremy and his gang find Tommy, gruesome violence ensues.
#49. The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West (1976)
This comical western chronicles the silly adventures of a bumbling wagonmaster and his clutzy assistant as they attempt to take seven passengers across the prairie. Among the passengers are two wealthy Bostonians, an aspiring showgirl, a teacher, and bachelor. The story is adapted from Dusty's Trail, a television sitcom.
#50. Law of the Land (1976)
A frontier sheriff and his young deputies search for a serial killer who is murdering prostitutes.