In 1965, East Germany’s nationalized film studio, DEFA (Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft, currently parked in the archives of the University of Massachusetts) took envious measure of its West German counterparts. West German films didn’t often cross the Atlantic, but their widespread European acceptance earned international recognition for their stars, who did — Curt Jürgens, Maria and Maximillian Schell, Hardy Krüger, Horst Buchholz, Romy Schneider, Gert Fröbe, and others. Their secret was no secret: The West turned out border-crossing entertainment while the East pursued social consciousness, a hard sell with or without a wall.

So DEFA turned to cowboys and Indians. In a sense, it was re-exploring German roots. The American West had long generated an intoxicating sway in Germany. The immense popularity of German novelist Karl May and his heroes — Old Shatterhand and Winnetou — preceded by two decades the writings of Zane Grey and made the Wild West as much a German preoccupation as European royalty was for Hollywood. In the early 1960s, West Germany had co-produced a series of May adaptations that proved extremely lucrative, influencing Italy’s 1964 breakout Western,”A Fistful of Dollars,” which clinched the adaptability of the genre — costumes, settings, manners, and all.

The West, however, made Westerns for Westerners, employing down-on-their-luck American actors (Lex Barker played Shatterhand) and dubbing English-language versions. DEFA, its audience confined to the Soviet bloc, made Westerns for Easterners. Crossing the Atlantic was not an option; DEFA wanted to create stars in its own market. For its first venture into a pop genre, DEFA recruited a Czech director, Joseph Mach, and a little-known Yugoslav athlete-turned-actor who could do his own stunts and sport a wig that, on bad-hair days, might have served Ali McGraw. He became the biggest star in the history of East German cinema — the only major star. If you’ve never heard of Gojko Mitic, you obviously didn’t spend much time on the dark side of Checkpoint Charlie.

“The Sons of Great Bear” (1966) minted money, kicking off a new genre — the Indianerfilme — and establishing a franchise that ultimately produced 12 lucrative movies between 1966 and 1982, all starring Mr. Mitic and shot in widescreen saturated colors on the great plains of Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, and Slovakia. Interiors were shot in East Germany. Not the least remarkable aspect of this series is how obscure it remains outside the Eastern Bloc. First Run now offers three entries separately or in a box as “Westerns With a Twist,” and twisted they are — enough to bait the palate for more.

Indianerfilmes spurned the clichés of Karl May along with those of Hollywood. Loosely interpreting historical events, they present the Indians as heroes, Mexicans as morally compromised bystanders, and whites as greed-addled barbarians, except for the peaceful ones who align themselves with the gallant red man. But that’s hardly a twist; they were made in the era when Hollywood reveled in pro-Indian apologias, including “Cheyenne Autumn,” “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here,” and “Ulzana’s Raid.” Two far more interesting twists are worth considering.

The first is political: There are reds and there are reds, and it is difficult to read “The Sons of Great Bear” as an indictment of the West when the issues suggest presentiments much closer to home. The main villain calls himself Red Fox (he has red hair), and the cavalry for which he scouts could as well be Soviets rounding up apolitical Indian citizens — even if one of the first whites we see drools at the sight of a gold nugget. The film’s style is airless and claustrophobic, suggesting an artificial, closed-in environment even when it races on horseback across open terrain. There’s no weather in this movie, no breezes or baking sun — not even a ripple in the “Missouri River.” Elliptical cutting elides geographical or spatial coherence. If east Germans are meant to identify with the Indians, what are they to make of the cavalry? “I come as lord of the Prairie,” Tokei Ihto (Mr. Mitic) tells a commander, who responds, “You come as a spy, and we hang spies here.”

The second twist is aesthetic. The three films selected by First Run are the first two in the series: “The Sons of Great Bear” and “Chingachgook: The Great Snake” (1967). Both are at once intriguing and unintentionally hilarious; whole sequences suggest an escapade choreographed by a semi-comatose Bob Fosse and directed by a hyperventilating Ed Wood Jr. The third film, and eighth in the series, “Apaches” (1973), is therefore entirely unexpected. Sharply directed by Gottfried Kolditz, who took control of the franchise for several years, it is a sobering and original take on the Ulzana story, albeit set during the 1840s Mexican War. If the earlier films are bizarre Cold War relics, “Apaches” is by any standard a very good Western, perhaps a great one. Even Mr. Mitic, a male model is his first films, delivers a performance.

The Indianerfilmes could never have been shown in the West except as Saturday matinee fare for the same undiscriminating children who ate up “Hercules”and “Rodan.” You can’t watch the first two without giggling. For one thing, everyone speaks German, although Indians are forever raising their hands and solemnly intoning “How,” or “Gut! How.” Action scenes, few and badly staged, unfold with existential disorientation — the massacre that begins about 13 minutes into “Great Bear”has the opponents riding up from every possible angle, with two empty horizon shots thrown in for Lent. The music is wonderfully inappropriate — drums that are more Art Blakey than Sitting Bull, trombone solos, a chorus by saxophones, lots of xylophone.

Some of the white war talk is at once contemporary and historic: discussions of insufficient reinforcements and armaments, demands that the enemy be spoken of only in non-human terms, which is better than lines like, “My brother Wolfchief is quieter than summerparched soil.”The Indian camp is a paradise, full of life and babies and feather pinwheels. The interior of the wigwams — authentic looking from the outside — is as big as the fort and more handsomely appointed, with perpendicular walls and plenty of light.

“Chingachgook” is a pretty faithful adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Deerslayer,” except for two sidesplitting Indian dances. Directed by Richard Groschopp, and with Rolf Romer as a skinny, blond Deerslayer, it loses the character of crazy Hetty and the barge attack that sent Mark Twain into hysterics, but it doesn’t stint in establishing white traders as inventors of scalping as a business.

The film lurches between drama and comedy (Chingachgook does a Three Stooges getaway as rival Indians pile on top of him), as does the score, which offers Dixieland and a snippet of “Empty Saddle” — suitable for lines like,”I’m a bit of a hunk, but if she weds another I’ll kill him.” The Indian chosen to break Chingachgook is called Red Buffalo (he does not have red hair),and the ending sends the heroes in one direction and the British in another, as the cabin representing free homesteading goes up in flames.

“Apaches” is, by contrast, a measured and focused look at betrayal and revenge, with impressive attention to historical detail, including costumes and wickiups. The betrayal is a bloody massacre in which women, children, and men are scalped by military command, an event drawn from the Camp Grant massacre of 1871, though very few of those 100 or so victims were men. The staging of this scene prefigures the massacre of Civil War irregulars in “The Outlaw Josie Wales” (1976). Mr. Mitic is properly stoic as Ulzana, and well supported by Milan Beli as the murderous Johnson and Colea Rautu as an arthritic but wily old Indian, Nana. The film ends with Ulzana’s temporary victory, in full knowledge that Captain Crook’s cavalry will soon arrive. History wasn’t kind but the 1973 sequel, “Ulzana,”may have a different take. It remains for First Run to unveil.

The prints of these films are in good shape, though the running times are several minutes shorter than advertised on the DVD boxes and the framing is tight, sacrificing information on the right side. Still, colors are bright, audio is effective, and the movies fill in a Western gap few of us knew existed.

Mr. Giddins’s latest book, “Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books,” is available from Oxford University Press.