Review of Django (1966) by Rob L — 16 Oct 2011

Monday, September 12, 2011.

(1966) Django.

DUBBED.

SPAGHETTI WESTERN.

Low budget Westerner which has it's moments centers on unknown gunfighter dragging a coffin through a desert, viewers know absoultely nothing about the coffin or what's inside except that he's a master gunfighter who can shoot many people similtaneously before anybody were to draw on him first, this scene looks fake, but hooray for Django. After this is over, he comes across into somewhat a desolate town with only a saloon full of hostesses, woman who're heavier than the leading lady that he saved earlier, and a overweight bar keep! The film is plotless, but stylistically made with alot of similarities to 1964 "A Fistful Of Dollars" than Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", where Django enters to a small ghost town inhabited or overrunned by two sides on opposite sides, between the Caucasions/ white soldiers and people who wear red cones on their heads and Mexican bandit revoultionaries and of course Django whose on the middle!

Directed by Sergio Corbucci who seems to be Leone's carbon copy on this particular feature, despite it's very low budget- it does consist of things never-saw-before, watch it and you'll know. The dubbed VHS copy I own says 1968 but that is perhaps when a dubbed version was finally available to the US! This film gets points on spontaneous originalitylike Django's complicated situations and for it's realistic setting, such as the very muddy landscape town which may have been Eastwood's influence on "High Plains Drifter" and "Pale Rider" to name two! And anybody who're wondering about director Quentin Tarantino's influence of 'the cutting of the ear scene' in his breakthrough film "Reservoir Dogs" originally derived from this one. As for Corbucci's idea approach as a confident gutsy gunslinger character resembles closely to Leone's "Fistful of Dollars" than to Kurosawa's "Yojimbo"! What hurts this film, however is his budget which leads to plot inconsistencies and very unrealistic setups, such as fist fighting brawls commonly used in Spaghetti Westerns, if you were to watch enough of them that is!

2.5 out of 4.