Dead Souls, directed by and starring Alex Cox, is a surreal, lean, meditative, low-budget Spaghetti Western adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's classic novel, transposed to the 19th-century American West, that feels both literary and rebellious. The film follows Strindler (Alex Cox), a conniving preacher buying up names of deceased Mexicans, blending political satire on greed and corruption with meta-humor, stop-motion, and musical numbers. The story mirrors Gogol's original novel, set in a dusty, morally bankrupt frontier town where Strindler travels, collecting the names of 'dead souls' to gain power and money.