|
Spaghetti Westerns don’t tend to dip into the surreal. Usually violent, the genre is soaked with cold-blooded killers, heathens, and thieves. Django Kill (…If You Live, Shoot) adds a bit of psychedelic spice to its spaghetti sauce and, as a result, is a memorable feast for the senses. It doesn’t feature Fanco Nero (star of the original Django) and is associated with the original series by title alone, but that doesn’t make this wild film any less of a classic serving of Western ala Spaghetti.
Gold bullets pulled from a living man’s chest by a greedy (and somewhat deranged) town, homosexual encounters by rhinestoned desperados dressed all in black, the living dead, a youth held for ransom, and a villain covered in hot (and flesh-searing) liquid gold. Django Kill has it all. Written by Franco Arcalli and Giulio Questi, the movie finds its footing with an introspective look at the soul-crushing consequence of revenge as an unnamed gunslinger (Tomas Milian), long thought dead by the posse who gunned his Mexican band of robbers down, searches for stolen gold among the citizens of an unnamed desert town.
Director Giulio Questi compounds the stranger’s situation with citizen freaks from the town as deplorable as the thieves who ride into it from time to time. It turns out that this is the last stop for most criminals as the town prides themselves in their hangings. The latest round of killings have the whole town talking about gold. Power-hungry barkeep (Milo Quesada) and girlfriend (Marilù Tolo) plot their way toward the gold with the stranger’s presence in their hotel and, upon its discovery, a sick and twisted battle between a greedy preacher (Francisco Sanz), his maybe not-so crazy wife (Patrizia Valturri), and Mr. Sorrow (Roberto Camardiel), a wealthy landowner.
Django Kill keeps the spirit of the 30 other Django movies but ups the ante with its use of on-screen violence. An audience-offending move that got it banned in Italy until 22 minutes of gratuitous violence were removed. Other countries – including England – followed suit and removed thirty minutes of blood-soaked pulp. The year was 1967 and the red paint used is almost laughable to us now, but the shock value is still there. There’s an on-screen scalping and, as mentioned early, a fairly graphic scene – effects reminiscent of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast – where greedy townsfolk, when they learn a man was shot with a gold bullet, actually dig into his stomach for more gold.
Throughout it, the weirdness of the script and its trippy-esque editing – composed by editor Tonino Delli Colli (Life is Beautiful) – push the momentum forward and, with few lagging moments that usually curse the genre, manages to keep its audience engaged through pure confusion. Of course, everything – well, mostly everything – is explained or made clear by the gold-soaked finale.
Wait, you mean you have to actually watch the film in order to figure out what’s happening, Hays? Yes. You do. You absolutely have to, people.
Django says so and we do not disappoint Django.
MPAA Rating: This title has not been rated by the MPAA.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
