Rating: 3.5/5
<a href=”“https://boxd.it/q7ygw/detail#item-3644184130”>Cult Movie Challenge 2016 | 11/52 | Spaghetti Western</a>
Dressed in a Union uniform, Django drags a casket along the rain-soaked mud.
Atop the horizon, he sees some Banditos tying a woman to the support beams of a rickety bridge. They rip open the back of her dress and whip her, punishing her for trying to run away. The other men smile as the red lashes bloom on her back.
A single gunshot, or what sounds like one, cracks in the valley. The Banditos fall. Five men in red scarves put down their guns, untie the woman, and create a makeshift cross on which to burn her.
Django comes down the hill, the casket behind him, his steely blue eyes meeting the men.
Django apologizes to the men before drawing his six-shooter and shooting them before they can register what is happening.
He lends an outstretched hand to the woman named Maria.
My name is Django. No one will hurt you anymore as long as you’re with me.
One man is still alive. He crawls to his gun. Django, without moving his eyes from Maria, finishes the job and shoots the man. The man’s body slides down the ridge and into the quicksand below. His red scarf is the last piece to sink before he disappears completely.
This is our stellar intro to Django. It’s only the start of his troubles with the men in red. We’ll learn soon that these are the men of ex-Confederate officer Major Jackson.
Jackson gets pleasure out of killing Mexican peons. He rounds them up, lets them loose one at a time, and shoots them like skeet targets.
The film falls into the classic Spaghetti Western theme — no good guys, only worse bad guys. Django eliminating Major Jackson’s men only invites the Mexican bandits. And Django’s code of ethics isn’t exactly conventional.
It’s still a Western, and I’m not a massive fan of them. The gunfights may be silly, but this is a well-constructed movie.
** Stray Thoughts / Spoilers **
- The Django theme is so fucking good. When he hits those high notes in the outro, I get chills.
- The machine gun in the casket is outrageous. No wonder Django isn’t afraid of anyone.
- We just had to have the “sex workers wrestling in the mud” scene, huh?
- They cut off his ear and made him eat it — bleh!
- Why the hell does Django shoot up Nathaniel’s bar??
- Django fumbles the gold so hard — I don’t blame the bandits for fucking him up.
- I don’t understand what he did with his gun at the end.