Sergio Corbucci's "Django", as well as his "The Great Silence" are two massively underrated spaghetti-westerns that co-founded the genre, along with Sergio Leone's Dollars-trilogy. Okay, this no "Once Upon a Time in the West" when it comes to atmosphere or plotting, but it is a magnificently mounted action ride with an utterly cool lead hero and an enormous body count. "Django" remained banned in several countries for a long time because of its explicit, comic-book like violence, and you'll see that this wasn't without reason, as the bad guys get slaughtered by the dozen in a good old-fashioned gunslinger way. The movie opens terrifically, with a sleazy title song and vicious images of a lonely cowboy wandering through the Southern wastelands with a coffin in tow. The man is Django and his coffin contains whatever he requires to fulfill his difficult goal: single-handedly finishing the war between the racist Major Jackson and Mexican bandidos by annihilating them all. Corbucci implements a straightforward, no-nonsense filming style with some great visuals and very creative camera angles. There are some ingenious aspects (Django's act of vengeance with molested hands) as well as some delicious clichés moments (wrestling prostitutes, extended bar fight sequences...). This film may not be a very intellectual form of entertainment, but it sure is fun and produced with a certain degree of class.

Followed by a numberless amount of sequels, rip-offs and wannabes that are hardly worth purchasing. Stick to the original and have a blast!

"Django" is a very stylish western, though the script occasionally falls apart due to serious brain lapses by the writers--really serious brain lapses--but more about them in a moment.

The film starts with a group of Mexican sadists capturing and whipping a woman in what appears to be the American Southwest desert (though I assume this was really filmed in either Spain or Italy like the rest of the films of this genre). Suddenly, a group of non-Mexicans arrive-- killing the sadists. Unfortunately, they, too, are sadists and plan on killing her as well! Just before they can do so, however, the anti-hero, Django, arrives--killing all the baddies.

Once Django and the woman arrive in the muddiest town I have ever seen (seriously, folks--though this begs the question "how is the town so muddy when there's bone-dry desert everywhere?"). Soon there is a confrontation between Django and the big boss-man--and Django kills all the bad boss-man's hired guns--though, inexplicably, Django deliberately lets the boss-man go (this makes no sense at all).

Soon, a group of Mexican bandits now arrive in town. I expected to see Django kill these guys, but apparently they were all friends. There's a gratuitous fist fight and a lot of drinking. During the drinking and partying, Django steals the gold belonging to the bandits and runs out of town with the woman he saved earlier in the film.

Apparently, Django is an idiot, as the gold isn't secured too well on his wagon and the coffin containing it falls into quicksand. Now the fact that there is quicksand twice in this film which is SUPPOSED to be around the bone-dry US-Mexican border makes no sense at all. It simply should NOT be there and it's fortuitous how it just happens to be there at the perfect time! The Mexican bandits arrive and shoot the lady and decide NOT to kill Django--though why bandits would only maul him made no sense at all. I'm no bandit, but I sure would have killed him! No matter, as the big bad boss-man arrives AGAIN with a new group of henchmen and kills the Mexicans. Now, it's up to a horribly mangled Django to face the boss-man--even though his hands have been smashed horribly (actually, it looks like they covered them in raw hamburger). Can Django pull out a miraculous victory or is this it for our very handsome hero?

Aside from some of the dumb story elements I mentioned above (conveniently located quicksand in the desert, Django leaving the bad boss-man alive, the Mexicans leaving Django alive, etc.),there are many other impossible to believe moments--such as when Django somehow has found a machine gun (during an era when only hand-cranked Gatling guns were available) and arranged for it to fire non-stop on its own for an interminably long period (it should have run out of bullets long before it did). Plus, apparently a coffin filled with gold, at least according to this film, looks and weighs the same as gravel. Seeing Django lifting a coffin that SHOULD have weighed a ton or more made me laugh. Heck, even if it had been gravel, he never should have been able to lift it. Clearly, the writers never thought out ANYTHING in the film.

Despite the many, many serious problems with the plot, the film apparently has a HUGE cult following and sparked sequels. I can see why this could be, as Franco Nero was super-handsome and cool. And, the music and direction were excellent as well--making up for a lot of the deficits. Not a brilliant film in any sense, but very watchable.,,and dumb.

A classic spaghetti western yarn which proved to be so popular that it spawned at least two dozen sequels, remakes and rip-offs all of which traded in on the mysterious central figure of Django, a very visual character with a wide-brimmed hat, grey scarf, and long black overcoat, who drags a coffin through the mud behind him. Plotwise, the film is nothing new but another remake of the Japanese classic YOJIMBO, already made once as A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS. The two remakes, although both within the genre, are very different movies. Whereas FISTFUL was a film with strong characterisation, witty and quotable dialogue and good acting, Django has none of that. Most of the characters aren't developed at all, aside from Franco Nero and a couple of the leads, the acting is merely acceptable, the dialogue unmemorable.

Where director Sergio Corbucci comes into his own is with his unique visual style. Instead of employing the same camera tricks as the one and only Sergio Leone, Corbucci instead creates a colourful movie in which the brightly-clothed characters stand out against a grim backdrop of mud, scum and ruin. There are some truly memorable and classic images in this movie, whether it be Django using his machine-gun to mow down dozens of red-hooded religious fanatics (who seem to be an early version of the Ku Klux Klan!),or the standout finale which sees Django - his hands now useless, raw and bleeding - attempting to load and fire his gun at the hit squad which has come to destroy him, all set in a down-trodden cemetery.

Each character has his own unique colours and appearance to distinguish him from the rest making for a very visual movie to watch. While the music is a bit over-the-top and a far cry from Ennio Morricone, the shoot-outs are staged in a no-nonsense manner with plenty of style. Franco Nero - after supporting parts in the likes of THE WILD, WILD, PLANET - gives a tough, impassive and spooky performance in the title role which established him as one of Italy's top actors for years to come. Angel Alvarez shines as the friendly bartender caught up in the mayhem, as does Loredana Nusciak as a prostitute who falls for Django after he saves her from a whipping. Meanwhile, Eduardo Fajardo makes for a truly despicable villain as he shoots Mexicans for sport in the back as they run away.

What makes this film so memorable is the legendary violence - something which caused it to be banned outright in the UK (so what else is new?). The scene every body remembers is where a man gets his ear sliced off in bloody, unflinching detail which easily gives a similar moment in RESERVOIR DOGS a run for it's moment. Other "highlights" include a man being shot in the face, and Nero having both of his hands mercilessly beaten to a pulp. As the film progresses, so does the death toll, and sweeping views of valleys littered with corpses are largely impressive. Most of the cast ends up dead by the time the film ends. DJANGO is a highly watchable movie with plenty of style and visual splendour to recommend it, one of the big boys of the genre.