Cult Spaghetti Western Boxset: Django, Keoma, Bullet for the General

Django

Directed by: Sergio Corbucci

Starring: Franco Nero, José Bódalo, Loredana Nusciak

Synopsis:

A lone man dragging a coffin behind him enters a rough, dirty town in the middle of a local war between two factions.

The Akira Kuwosawa movie “Yojimbo” had a lot to answer for. Two similar minded Italian directors, Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone watched the Japanese movie in Rome. Both directors were profoundly inspired by the movie and sought to direct a Western equivalent. Leone got there first and that is not the story I will tell in this review. Our focus is on Django. However, the two films are somewhat similar and yet stylishly different.

Franco Nero charismatically plays the lead role of Django. As he walks towards a town, dragging a coffin behind him, he cuts a mysterious figure. The symbolism is very explicit; wherever Django goes, death follows.

The movie is hampered by some truly awful dubbing and Nero gets the worst; a vapid Clint Eastwood clone that does the actor no favours. It’s a great shame that Nero never got the opportunity to re-dub his lines in the same way he did in “Keoma”. The dialogue, either through a bad translation or just a plain bad script, helped to ensure that Django never rose above its predecessor; “A Fistful of Dollars”. There are also some horrendous blunders in the movie, such as the scenes in which Django employs his trusty machine gun, stored in his coffin. It is clear that no mechanism in the gun works as the ammunition belt never moves!

The one major frustration with this release was the lack of an Italian audio track. Why wasn’t the Italian audio/English subtitles feature available on this disc? A Blue Underground Region One release had it? I can only assume that the language tracks and the Blue Underground extras weren't available for this release, which is a great shame and stops it from being the definitive release of the movie.

The music grates a little but is typical of the genre and is nowhere near as bad as the soundtrack of Keoma. It's a pity that Morricone couldn't score all of these movies as he did score many of them.

Despite the issues noted above, the movie is entertaining and rightly deserves its status as one of the most famous of its genre. The mis-en-scene powers the atmosphere of the movie using a horrible muddy set. The town appears to be some kind of living hell, or at least a purgatory.

Django influenced many films after it with its approach to sadistic violence against innocents and the protagonist. In his introduction to the movie, Alex Cox praises Django as the movie that brought this kind of sadism to the Spaghetti Western but I think it was already there as evident in A Fistful of Dollars where “Joe” gets a horrific beating at the hands of Ramon. Django just explodes the violence outwards, as if Leone had repressed it and Corbucci let it rip on screen. Nine men get killed in the first sequence alone, and if the US censors had trouble with the shooting of the Baxter family exiting the burning building in Fistfull of Dollars, who knows what they made of the machine gun attack in Django. The film was rejected in the UK until 1993. That decision makes no sense at all. If you remove the scene that inspired a scene in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (the removal of an ear) and perhaps the whipping at the beginning, then it would be PG-13 violent all the way, now. There are moments of visual genius in the direction, an example being the shooting of the target where the camera is watching from behind and the bullet holes reveal Django shooting it.

I first saw Django on a historic BBC-2 presentation in the Alex Cox presents Moviedrome season. I recall the print looking quite ropey and this new release is far superior, and purports to be uncut. It looks like it to me.

Keoma

Directed by: Enzo G Castellari

Starring: Franco Nero, Woody Strode, William Berger, Olga Karlatos

Synopsis:

Half-Native American Keoma returns to his border hometown after serving in the Civil War and finds it under the control of Caldwell, an ex-Confederate raider, and his vicious gang. To make things worse for him, Keoma's three half-brothers have joined forces with Caldwell , and make it painfully clear that his return is an unwelcome one. Determined to remove Caldwell from his seat of power, Keoma teams up with his father's former ranch hand to carry out a violent revenge.

Review:

At the moment, discounting Sergio Leone, Castellari is undeniably one of the most famous Italian directors of low budget movies thanks to Quentin Tarantino. Unlike many of his pictures this one is quite pretentious and this ultimately lets it down, albeit in some minor ways. There’s a depth to this picture but it’s not easy to pin down.

Thankfully, the dubbing on this release is fairly good, with Franco Nero having dubbed his own lines. Nero’s appearance in this movie makes Django look quite clean cut. He’s a six foot tower of hair parted to reveal piercing blue eyes, that alone you’d think would stop the enemy in its tracks. Clearly, it was decided that this unkempt appearance would highlight his Native American roots. It’s a far cry from the average Western anti-hero image. Casteralli openly references the end of The Wild Bunch in his slo-mo deaths.

Caldwell is unlike the bad guys in Hollywood Westerns in that he annexes the plague ridden members of the town into a kind of concentration camp where the victims are forced to mine. They are denied all medication, which strangely would have made them better miners had they been cured!

One of the things that sets this movie apart from others is the clever and effect way in which Casteralli presents the flashbacks. Keoma is physically seen as part of the flashback as it is shown. The viewer then feels more a part of his past. It adds to the dreamy, almost trippy, atmosphere of the movie.

Sadly, this is another movie with a dire soundtrack: Untrained voices warble parts of the story as it progresses and the effect is quite distracting. The whole effect is that of a 60s flower power vibe that doesn’t marry well with the story. Nero even sings himself.

Mistakenly called Django Rides Again in some places, this movie shares a similar atmosphere. The town is almost as dirty and muddy as the town in Django and the people populating both are similar. The end of the movie is a surprise because rather than celebrate, with Keoma, the end of Caldwell ’s reign of terror, the collection of remaining townsfolk treat him like a Pariah.

Woody Strode turns in a good performance, even though he sometimes appears to show confusion as to what film he is in. Some of you will recognise Olga Karlatos as the woman who received the horrible eyeball piercing in Zombi 2.

Summary:

An effective thriller marred by the wrong choice in background (or foreground in some cases) score. The print of the movie is very good. A great title in this collection.

A Bullet For The General aka Quien Sabe?

Directed By: Damiano Damiani

Starring: Gian Maria Volonté, Klaus Kinski, Martine Beswick

Synopsis:

El Chuncho's bandits rob arms from a train, intending to sell the weapons to Elias' revolutionaries. They are helped by one of the passengers, Bill Tate, and allow him to join them, unware he is an assassin working for the Mexican government.

Review

This is not so much a Spaghetti Western as a Zampata movie, a sub genre; set during the Mexican Revolution. In an odd move the antagonist is the clean cut American whilst the Mexican is the protagonist, especially as Volonte was the villain in two of Leone’s Dollars movies. Like Leone’s Gui La Testa, this film is a miasma of politics, action and character and works on all levels. It is also far more complex than the other two movies in this box set. It stands out considerably. The art direction and attention to detail is far superior.

Unlike other films in this sub-genre, the acting isn’t quite as exaggerated, adding to the movie’s more serious tone. However, the enthusiastic dubbing of Volonte gives the character of El Chuncho a punchier conviction and passion. Klaus Kinski puts in a good performance as the unbalanced El Santo.

The transfer, like the other movies, is of top quality and brings out the colours in the film without that DNR look creeping into “remastered” movies at the moment.

Summary

If you’re a fan of the Zapata movies this is well worth your time and investment.

7/10 (Wayfarer)

Extras: Each disc has a small number of extras including an Alex Cox presentation, similar to his Moviedrome introductions.

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