Django Kill

Piece. Of. Shit.

Take one of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns — say, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Subtract from it everything that’s artful, exciting, impressive, and intelligent. What are you left with?

Well, for starters, a film that’s still 39 times better than Django Kill.

I approached this film with an open mind, although in retrospect I should have been forewarned by the fact that the director's only listed credit was for a film called Death Laid an Egg. Still, I've always loved Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns. And on the DVD's dustjacket, Alex Cox, director of Repoman and of Sid & Nancy, gives Django Kill a ringing endorsement: 'So extreme in every way – it is one of the handful of great Italian westerns'. There were other good omens too. Django Kill's co-writer, Franco Arcalli, co-wrote Leone's Once Upon a Time in America and Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. That's impressive – although given Arcalli's efforts on Django Kill, I suspect he only added apostrophes to those scripts.

Anyway, my point is that, prima facie, there was cause for optimism.

Django Kill’s ‘story’ begins with a gang of Americans and Mexicans brutally ambushing a contingent of US cavalry who are transporting a consignment of gold. The Americans then kill the Mexicans and make off with the gold themselves. One 'half-caste' Mexican (Tomas Milian) survives the massacre and pursues his betrayers. His pursuit leads him to a town only identified as ‘Unhappy Place’. When our ‘hero’ arrives in town, the townsfolk have already hanged the robbers, ostensibly because they’re bandits, but in reality so that the town's saloon owner and alderman can get their hot, sweaty hands on the gold.

Everything starts to go pear-shaped when a rich local landowner finds out about the gold and demands that the saloon owner and alderman give it to him. The landowner has a small army of heavies who all wear tight black pants and black shirts with a girly silver design on them (generally worn open to the waist). These dudes are meant to be menacing, but come across as a troupe of gay strippers. Which admittedly starts to make more sense when... But I won’t spoil the film for you. (I’ll leave that to the cast and crew.)

Apart from everything else, the script is insultingly uninterested in giving the actions of its characters even the thinnest veneer of plausibility. There are so many things that are inexplicable about this film. Like how the hero goes from near death to fighting fit in the blink of an eye. Or how, after murdering a contingent of cavalry, he suddenly becomes the story’s moral centre. Or why Tomas Milian was cast as the frontier's biggest badass, when clearly he's an oversolariumed, headband-wearing male model who, at some stage in 1967, wandered off the catwalk and blundered onto a film set.

You can sort of see what the film is aspiring to be. By today's standards, Leone's Westerns are fairly tame, but back when they were released, their amoral characters and depiction of violence turned the genre on its ear. Django Kill is an attempt to up the ante. It wants to be an even darker and more violent variation on A Fistful of Dollars. It wants to be a gothic Western in the same vein as Johnny Guitar (which wasn’t very good either). It wants to be a disturbing morality play that exposes the depravity that lurks just beneath the surface of normal people, a bit like High Plains Drifter. Unfortunately, the unremitting incompetence of everyone associated with the film sabotages these grand plans. The film doesn't work on any level, not even as a half-arsed homage. Really, if it’s A-grade writing, acting, or directing that you’re after, you’re more likely to find it in Gang Bang Sluts 4 (so I’m told).

There are two reasons Django Kill is being released in DVD form now. The first is the enduring popularity of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. The second is because of the scenes that were cut from the film at the time of its release – a scalping and some rather primitive surgery. If nothing else, these scenes have ensured the film notoriety, though, in keeping with the rest of the film, they're too fake to be disturbing. If you want true horror, you need look no further than Django Kill’s acting, script, and direction.

People who enjoy watching films just so they can laugh at how bad they are will get a hoot out of Django Kill. As for the other 99.99% of the film-watching population, don’t taint your retinas with this abomination. Should you encounter Django Kill while reconnoitering your local video store, run–like–hell. Or better yet, return with a flamethrower so you can incinerate the fucker.

In summary, you could buy this DVD. (It’s true, I’ve consulted the legal department.) Of course, you could also give yourself a Brazilian with a cheesegrater – but I don’t advise that either.

-- Hans Fruck