Western Week: Django

Howdy all!  Welcome back for Day 2 of Western Week and boy you know how I seem predicated to the more obscure movies.  Well an Italian director fella by the name of Sergio Corbucci (Castle of Blood, Navajo Joe, The Great Silence and Companeros) puts us in a wonder with this film with a gunslinger caught in the eye of the storm.  So mosey on out in the street, clear the women and children and get ready to slap leather.  This is Django.

Eastwood? bah this is Django baybee.

Yella belled spoiler!  Draw!

Our opening scene of this Spaghetti Western;  we see a lone man with tattered union blues walking through the desert with a saddle strapped to his back and dragging…a coffin behind him?  That’s right folks; he has a pine box behind him as he moves through the scene.  Django (Franco Nero of  The War of the Planets, Force 10 from Navarone, Goodbye Texas, Camelot, Mafia, Die Hard 2, Django Unchained) comes over a hill to see a woman lashed to a few poles and then whipped by this filth and mud ridden Mexican bandits.  Next thing you know they are all blown away by five men each wearing red scarves, Django is just about to move on when he sees the woman’s saviors are playing to host a barbeque in the lady’s honor…as she will be the charcoal.  What the hell??  Oh these good ole boys aren’t so good after all. 

Maybelline: for all your saloon girl needs.

After a rather brief chat with these fine southern gentlemen, Django drops all five of them.  Top that Eastwood!  Oh I said it.   The lady in question, Maria (Loredana Nusciak of Gladiators 7, Seven from Thebes, 10,000 Dollars for a Massacre, God Will Forgive My Pistol and Now Way Out) who has been spun from Banditos to KKK to a Yankee of all things reluctantly trusts in Django and follows him to town with a great exterior shot via dolly track we see the town is not looking so good.  One would dare say it has been pillaged and plundered me mateys!!  Arrrgghh!!!   Um yeah, sorry about that.  I was watching Pirates the other day.  

Okay where were we?   Ah yes the town holds an acrid scent and blackened buildings with no signs of life to be found. If this was a one horse town, well brother he skedaddled on out.  The saloon is about all that is standing I am thinking, “Wow, not the second place after the bank was hit?”    As Django and Maria take up residence at the saloon/ motel the owner and the saloon girls call this town neutral territory between the Mexican rebels and the remaining Confederates under the command of one Major Jackson leading his boys in the timed honored tradition of the KKK as they feud over one another they can always take shelter from the chaos here at a pretty penny.  

All the comforts of home during a bloody siege so what could anyone ask for.    The Mexicans are simply trying to rebuild after the Civil War but the South isn’t taking kind to it and both sides are composed of some of the more disturbing desperadoes putting our Yankee protagonist right smack in the middle of it all.  What can one man possibly hope to accomplish against two forces of so many driven men?  What indeed.   At 91 minutes a lot unfolds for the viewing pleasure.  Alas lady readers there are the slapping around of women, the thuggish mentality of man and in general the saloon owner is a spineless coward that will not lift a finger against so many men.  Just felt you deserved the heads up.

Have Coffin, Will Travel.

Yes I am going to give a few technical tidbits about the film now.  B.R.C. Produzione S.r.l. is a rival of Dino de Laurentiis Productions nabbed the rights first.  Sorry Dino.  The film stock is 35mm but shot via Eastman spherical lens scope giving the view less wide but almost as encompassing as Panavision with its anamorphic lens.  The difference is the foreground is better defined than anamorphic.  Personally if I were shooting a film I would love a nice hybrid of both.    My copy sadly was English dubbed and had a limited number of voice actors but telle est la vie…  Luis Bacalov (Composer of A Bullet for the General, We Still Kill the Old Way, Halleuja for Django, The Protagonists, and Assassination Tango) and countless of his pieces lifted from Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Django Unchained including the English translated opening song.   Sheesh Tarantino swipes much?     Seriously though, I want to download this soundtrack to my cell just to play as I enter a room, convenience store or restaurant because it is catchy to many levels.   This is no Fistful of Dollars but honestly I am rather glad it is not.  It is separate and on its own.  Not unlike our hero or should I say anti-hero? For you fast draw nuts, you will completely dig this flick for the awesome that is Django.