Django (1966) (Ws Clam)

Leone's films (though certainly masterful) have a tendency to be too drawn out, too self-satisfied. They are brilliant, but they lack the raw, kinetic power of DJango.

If you want to see a brutal western, the great grandfather of all Tarantino films (Tarantino even used the ear slicing from Django for Resevoir Dogs) check this out.

Django is chock-full of startling, eye-grabbing imagry, wild camera works, and wall-to-wall brutality.

The main character is an ex-civil war soldier who fought for the North who comes into a little border town dragging a coffin behind him (what an opening! ). It's kind of a remake of Yojimbo (as was fistfull of dollars) with Django getting tangled up with some local baddies.

This is a great film. Everything about it is first rate. Be warned, however, it was banned in many countries for its sheer violence, and it is still hard to watch. But if you can stomach it, check out Django! Best spaghetti western ever!


Django lives   March 31, 2002
Andrew Fellner (BELLEVILLE, IL United States)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful

I'd heard lots about this film over the years but was unable to see it until a few years ago. It has the usual flaws of a spaghetti western (poor dubbing, choppy editting and almost silly lyrics for the title song), which are to be expected,and after having seen so many, are even endearing, but its quirkiness more than makes up for it. (Any film with the main character constantly dragging a coffin behind him in the mud has a certain deviant appeal.) Excepting the Leone westerns (which are so far above the ordinary Italian western that they are literally in a class by themselves), this is one of the best.


Just doesn't rate with Leone Classics   July 29, 2005
L. Tyler (Cleveland, Ohio USA)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful

Sorry to write this, but Sergio Corbucci's Django is neither as great or as bad as noted by some of these reviewers. I'd have to rank it just a notch below Leone's "A Fist Full of Dollars" and nowhere close to Leone's other masterpieces (For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and Once Upon A Time in the West). This is mostly because it lacks the timeless qualities that the Leone classics have maintained over the decades..an atmospheric grittiness and realism that few films, western of otherwise have been able to achieve.
Django is purhaps a slightly better than a average film. What has probably made it a cult classic is the violence in it that was shocking to film goers in the mid 1960's.
The first time I viewed Django, I was a little disappointed. But I the next time I viewed it, I made a point to look at it by transporting myself to a 1960's mindset.
Looking at the film this way made me see why this movie has been such a cult favorite. But it lacks the appeal to go beyond that.
If it did, it would most certainly be right up there with the Leone epics. but it falls far short...at least for me.
The detractors of Django are most likely looking at it with at least from a present day view point. From this view point the film may look like a jumbled unrealistic mess. You would be a lot less likely to get the same opinions from any of the Leone films.
One reviewer claimed Django mows down 100 or so bad guys with a machine gun that is neither cooled or reloaded, then he complains that they should have attacked at all directions. First Django only himself kills a few dozen or so with this weapon. And since neither guerilla not terrorist tactics were not perfected in those days, why would a few dozen men feel the need to sneak up a a lone gunman who they believe they out number.
The scene itself is realistic enough considering the exploits of Stallone's Rambo and Swarzenegger's antics.
Django is entertaining. But it doesn't quite hold up as a timeless masterpiece.


disapointing spaghetti western   November 28, 2005
Robert W. Grandcolas (Eatontown, NJ United States)
5 out of 14 found this review helpful

Other then "The Great Silence" - Most Corbucci films are inept, sloppy, and cartoonish. Speed Racer can be less cartoonsish. (just check out Navajo Joe or Campaneros). Django is not the worst but it is also no exception.

Two clever ideas in the film - a laconic anti-hero drags around a coffin with a machine gun inside and a showdown in a graveyard with an interesting use of a cross.That's it.Otherwise -Silly unconvincing action scenes - Django holds off dozens of incredibly stupid bad guys by sitting behind a log in the middle of a street. No one thinks to come up from the sides and behind?

Bad guys come off like Snidely Whiplash. And this may be insulting to poor Snidely.

The editing is uninspired. Continuity errors (for some inexplicable reason a unconsious woman keeps changing positions on bridge - this is actually funny)

The violence and action are unrealistic and stupid. Just because Tarantino may have borrowed the infamous ear-eating scene does not make the movie any better. Incidentally the ear looks like a fig, and the scene is even sillier with the inane acting and dubbing involved.

Franco Nero's understated anti-hero style acting is completely ruined be hokey dialogue and a dubbed voice that sounds like Casper Milquetoast.

Worst of all - there is no film-making-style, especially for a spaghetti western.

Anchor Bay's version looks and sounds only OK but I doubt the film ever looked or sounded very good.

Quality spaghetti westerns can be very engaging but its hard to understand why this one was so popular Maybe it comes off better dubbed into German - for some reason it was very popular in Germany.

I gave this film two stars but not for its merits but for its place in history as being the predecessor of many other far superior spaghetti westerns. Had the sound, picture, dialgue and dubbing quality been better I may have squeezed out three stars.


Django is djust dreadful   November 23, 2001
Steven Billups (his lonely domicile)
4 out of 20 found this review helpful

I head a lot of good things about this -- comparisons to Leone's films and that it was so popular it spawned a horde of sequals. I had contemplated buying the Anchor Bay DVD, and upon viewing, I'm so glad I didn't. Franco Nero is absolutely dreadful -- i'm not sure if he or the dubbing is to blame but the delivery and dialogue are some of the worst I've ever witnessed. The character is such a goody goody with lines like, "You shouldn't treat women like that" and "That's not right." To compare this to Leone is to reduce Leone's interesting characters and cinematography into cardboard gunfights. I didn't even finish the film.