Django, Kill... If You Live, Shoot!

Italy / 1967 Directed by Guilio Questi Starring Tomas Milian Roberto Camardiel Piero Lulli Color / 117 Minutes / Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Blue Underground

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As he relates in the DVD's supplementary featurette, during his youth Italian director Guilio Questi was an anti-fascist resistance fighter in World War II. The guerilla war in the mountains of Italy was a 'dirty' one, as all such conflicts are. Obviously, Questi's experiences of that time greatly inform the shocking imagery and grueling set-pieces of his 1967 film Django, Kill... If You Live, Shoot! It's the most brutally violent — not to mention bizarre — spaghetti western I've seen to date.     It's also one of the more than 40 European westerns to use "Django" in the title although it has no relationship whatsoever to the popular 1966 film starring Franco Nero. The main character, played by Tomas Milian (Run, Man, Run), is never called anything but "Stranger" in the movie. He's part Indian, a "half-breed" outlaw and member of a multiracial bandit gang. Apart from himself and a black man, the rest of the gang are either white Americans or Mexican peasants. After Stranger and his cohorts successfully rob a Federal gold dust shipment, the gang's leader, Oaks (Piero Lulli), stages a dirty double cross. He and the other whites pull guns on the rest of the gang when it comes time to divide up the spoils. Stranger, the Mexicans, and the black guy are forced to dig a mass grave for themselves, then are mercilessly shot down firing squad-style. The traitorous white men cover over the corpses and head off into the desert. But Stranger, miraculously, isn't dead. That night he's discovered by two shamanistic Indians, who spot him clawing his way out of the grave. While tending his wounds they tell Stranger that, to them, he's a spiritual being — as one who's crossed from the Land of the Living to that of the Dead and back again, the gods hold him in special favor. For some obscure reason the Indians then melt down a small quantity of the gold dust left behind by Oaks and Co. (who lost many of their horses when the Mexicans tried to resist), fashioning solid gold $30 bullets with which Stranger can kill his enemies.     Meanwhile, Oaks and his criminal comrades continue their trek through the desert. They arrive in an unnamed town on the desert's edge, a community referred to only as "The Unhappy Place" by Stranger's Indian pals later in the film. Seeking to buy horses, Oaks goes to the town saloon to make inquiries. The saloon owner, Templer (Milo Quesada), agrees to help him but gets other ideas once he spots the sacks of gold dust. In a startlingly brutal sequence, Templer leads the men of the town on a vigilante wilding that will leave viewers agog if not downright revolted. The saloonkeeper and the townsmen descend on the outlaws like a pack of voracious wolves, laughing and whooping it up as one by one they mercilessly kill them by various means. Some are shot down like dogs, others are unceremoniously lynched. (One outlaw cringes like a frightened child as a citizen nonchalantly shoots him pointblank in the head, the pistol dry-clicking on an empty chamber before firing a live round.) It's a stunning, horrifying set-piece, one which director Questi orchestrates in documentary, cinema verité style to powerful effect. It's a testament to just how brutal the scene is that, even though the outlaws are vicious killers and fully deserve their fate, the viewer is left gasping at such an obscene corruption of justice — even feeling sympathy for the criminals as they die.     But all aren't dead yet. The leader, Oaks, barricades himself in the general store, keeping the vigilantes at bay with his pistol. Then Stranger and his Native American friends arrive in town. He accepts Templer's offer of $500 to the man who brings Oaks down. Armed with his golden bullets, Stranger enters the store and shoots Oaks a number of times without killing him. The wounded Oaks is taken to the saloon, where the town doctor discovers the unusual quality of the bullets lodged in his patient's body. In yet another shocking scene the men begin slicing Oaks open to get at the golden bullets, their fingers plunging greedily into the screaming man's bloody flesh. Oaks doesn't survive.     As to be expected, Stranger hangs around "The Unhappy Place" to search for the stolen gold dust he feels belongs to him. This puts him in conflict with saloonkeeper Templer and the outwardly pious store owner, Alderman, who've hidden the treasure after dividing it between themselves. But a powerful local landowner, Mr. Sorrow (as he's referred to in the disc's English subtitles; the film's IMDB page lists the character as "Mr. Zorro"), has also gotten wind of the gold. His private army of black-shirted bodyguards puts pressure on Templer and Alderman to turn it over to him. They also make the mistake of crossing the Stranger...     At this point Django, Kill just keeps getting weirder and weirder, and I'm not just referring to Questi's unusual directorial style or the occasionally rapid fire, quick-cut editing techniques of Franco Arcalli (which are 25 years ahead of their time). This western exists in a Bizarro World of its own. Questi, a Marxist, doesn't try to hammer home any statements about the plight of the struggling proletariat. Instead he uses the film to slam the concept of vigilantism as justice and comment on the ultimate societal corrupter, greed. The 'hero', presented as a sort of Christ-like figure, is himself a criminal. (Who, by the way, never wears a cowboy hat.) None of the violence, even that committed by Stranger, is ever presented in a noble or heroic light. It's just ugly and brutal. Mr. Sorrow and his cologne-ad-handsome muchachos, clearly representing the forces of fascism here, are all homosexuals. An innocent teenage boy (Ray Lovelock), photographed so beatifically as to be angelic, is gang-raped by the Blackshirts (off-camera) and thus driven to suicide. Stranger becomes the lover of an insane woman who's kept imprisoned in her own house. A third 'shock' scene features a bloody scalping so graphic you'd expect to see it in an Italian zombie movie made 15 years later, not in a '60s spaghetti western. One of the main villains gets a most unusual death at film's climax, a demise literally dripping with a perverse sense of irony.     So if anything, at the least the film is different. It certainly can't be branded as clichéd. It's got cool theme music, too. Nevertheless, Django, Kill manages to kick itself in the 'nads at times — really hard — to the overall detriment of the picture. Magically, six-shooters have a tendency to never run out of ammo. (In his standoff with the vigilantes, Oaks fires some 30 or 40 shots without ever reloading!) Templer's saloon singer girlfriend (Marilù Tolo) croons a smoky lounge number that sounds straight out of the 1940s, not the Old West. (She's so badly dubbed, even in the Italian version, that it's painfully obvious entirely different music was played on the set for her to lip sync to.) Stranger, when captured by Sorrow's men, is tortured by locking him in a jail cell with iguanas and bloodsucking vampire bats. (???) His two Indian companions definitely aren't believable as Native Americans — more like Sicilian cab drivers in love beads and hippy wigs. And Sorrow's gang of gay roughnecks sometimes come off as a Eurotrash version of the Village People, one featuring only multiple versions of the cowboy character.     Regardless of whether the 'problems' outlined above were intentional on Questi's part or not, they dragged me out of the film. But I know I'll never forget that first 40 minutes.

Expect the same high quality treatment accorded the other titles in the Spaghetti Western Collection which have been reviewed here. The A/V quality of the (anamorphic) 2.35:1 widescreen transfer is quite good. (A few short nighttime scenes are really dark looking, though.) Both English and Italian language tracks are provided, with optional, easy-to-read English subs. The Italian track doesn't sound as clean as the English one, however, so its best to go with the latter despite the often goofy dubbing. Extras include the crudely animated theatrical trailer, talent bios, a poster/still gallery, and a liner notes essay, Digging Out The Bullets, by William Connelly. A 21-minute documentary, Django, Tell!, weaves recent interviews of director Questi and stars Milian and Lovelock with cleverly edited clips from the movie. It definitely helps put this bizarre film in some kind of context. (Note: Look for two easter eggs on the menu screens.) Django, Kill is slated for release on 7 January 2003, available as part of Blue Underground's Spaghetti Western Collection 4-disc box set (which also contains Mannaja, Run, Man, Run, and the original Django starring Franco Nero). The Django, Kill DVD will be sold separately as well. 1/07/03

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