Django Kill. . .If You Live, Shoot!

1967 spaghetti western

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy who might not even be named Django and his peeps steal some bags of gold dust and are immediately double-crossed and left for dead. With the help of two of the fakest-looking Injuns in the history of world cinema, the guy survives and heads to a nearby town where the double-crossers have already been executed. He sticks around to retrieve his gold.

This oddly-titled spaghetti western has nothing to do with any other Django movie, including this one. This isn't quite the great movie I've waited patiently to see since writing its title on my "Movies I'm Waiting Patiently to See" list, but it's weird enough to at least be interesting for the duration. It's also not as graphically violent as I had been led to believe which makes me wonder if I watched some kind of watered-down edited version. Wikipedia quotes some writers who claim it's "the most brutally violent spaghetti western ever made" and it's got "truly horrendous scenes." There's some bloody weirdness that might have been a shock in the late-60's. There's the extraction of some golden bullets, a scalping, the demise of a guy named either Mr. Zorro or Mr. Sorrow. Then, there's just some general weirdness--a great entrance into a town that "sure don't look like heaven" with weird singing troll children, a crippled rat, a flash of a dress; gay bodyguards in matching black outfits; that aforementioned non-convincing Indian who kind of looks like Dudley Moore in a bad wig; a whiskey-drinking parrot; the use of vampire bats and lizards in an attempt to off our anti-hero instead of just shooting him, almost like they're villains from the old Batman t.v. show or something. Speaking of our hero, a guy who isn't even named Django, he's played by Tomas Milian who is probably good here just because he kind of looks like Franco Nero. A solid score compliments the odd, convoluted, and incoherent meanderings typical of a lot of your Italian westerns. This isn't top shelf stuff exactly and not worth being all that excited about, but it's a nifty enough little oddity.