Fans of the Western genre will get a kick out of a series of Eastern bloc films, now out on DVD. The “Red Westerns” were films set in America, but like the Spaghetti Westerns, told a different variation on American history (and were shot in Europe). During the ’60s, communist East Germany’s DEFA studios produced a number of these films, including Apaches, The Sons of Great Bear and Chingachgook: The Great Snake, all included in the Westerns With a Twist box.

Here’s the great thing about these movies: in each one, the natives are the heroes, downtrodden, shot en masse and devastated by white settlers, who are greedy and wretched. Despite their clear propagandistic intent (they were more about trashing American values than celebrating natives), there is something truly surreal about watching a Western in which the racial tables are so completely turned, as all three films depict natives getting revenge on whiteys for their colonial crimes. —Matthew Hays