The American remake rights to Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai reportedly changed hands for $2,500. Lou Morheim bought them first, Yul Brynner’s company acquired them from him, and Anthony Quinn later sued Brynner after an earlier plan involving Quinn fell apart without anything committed to writing. The finished film stumbled in the United States in 1960 but became a major success overseas and eventually one of the most frequently broadcast movies on American television. Even after Denzel Washington’s 2016 The Magnificent Seven, the 1960 version still casts the longest shadow.

John Sturges’ original barely needs a sales pitch. Seven gunmen led by Chris Adams (Yul Brynner, Westworld) agree to protect a Mexican farming village from Calvera (Eli Wallach, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). Steve McQueen spends the film finding tiny ways to steal focus from Brynner, while Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Robert Vaughn help create one of the strongest action ensembles of the era. Elmer Bernstein’s Oscar-nominated score supplies enough momentum to make riding into certain danger sound like a good idea.

Return of the Seven (1966) brings back only Brynner from the original cast. Burt Kennedy directs Larry Cohen’s script, with Robert Fuller replacing McQueen as Vin and Julián Mateos taking over as Chico when the men of his village are kidnapped. The movie was poorly received, but Bernstein’s newly recorded score earned another Academy Award nomination, and Paul C. Vogel’s photography gives the sequel more visual polish than its reputation might suggest.

By Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969), George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke) has inherited Chris Adams, this time leading a team into Mexico to free a jailed revolutionary. Paul Wendkos, who also directed Cannon for Cordoba, shot the film near Madrid, and former NFL player Bernie Casey made his film debut in the ensemble. It opened in the same summer as Sam Peckinpah’s revisionist western The Wild Bunch, which was never going to make life easier for a more traditional western.

Lee Van Cleef (For a Few Dollars More) becomes the third Chris in The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972), now a marshal recruiting a writer and five convicts for another dangerous mission. Stefanie Powers, Mariette Hartley, and a young Gary Busey join him in the only installment filmed in the United States. The series was running on fumes by then, and the box office agreed. Three actors played Chris Adams, but only Brynner made the name feel permanent.

Taken together, the sequels are less a hidden trilogy of neglected gems than an unusually revealing look at how quickly a hit can turn into a brand. The original remains the reason the box exists. The other three are the footnotes, occasionally lively, sometimes creaky, and finally convenient to have in one place.