Django et Sartana

ONE DAMNED DAY AT DAWN...DJANGO MEETS SARTANA! would have you believe it chronicles a meeting between those two icons of spaghetti western cinema, yet, as with so many others, the title is a misnomer and the names seem to have been added in post-production. That's particularly true in the case of Sartana (Fabio Testi), a rather weak and weedy sheriff who finds himself at the mercy of a criminal gang in this movie. At least Django is clad in black and thus looks the part...

This middling western involves the usual clichéd gang of criminals wreaking havoc in a western town and bumping off anybody who gets in their way. When Sartana arrives in town to clean things up he finds himself with his hands full, so the silent and brooding Django steps in to help out. ONE DAMNED DAY AT DAWN... is full of action, but none of it is particularly impressive, with non-existent choreography and a whole lot of familiarity in the events that play out. The storyline is straightforward at best.

Jack Betts (under the pseudonym Hunt Powers) successfully conveys Django's brooding persona, but Fabio Testi is a disappointment in this. His character is irritating and he only comes into his own at the climax. None of the others in the cast stand out. Director Demofilo Fidani made a career in cut-rate westerns but I suspect most of them are of second-rate quality, like this. Only a few scenes, like the bit with the arm wrestling and the candles, are memorable.

Django and Sartana team up to fight back against two gangs of outlaws who are terrorising a lawless town.

The unique angle of this Italian western is in combining both the Django and Sartana characters together, both of whom had their own series of spaghetti westerns. Although it does have to be said that this distinctive aspect has to be set against the fact that both protagonists only resemble these characters in name and act decidedly differently than usual. Truthfully, it seems obvious that these names were only applied to the characters as an after-thought. Quite honestly, this is a very clichéd and derivative affair with stock characters such as an enigmatic bounty hunter and amoral villains aplenty. But despite all this, I found it overall to be slightly better than average for this kind of thing. It didn't descend into tedium too often and its sparse running time seemed like good manners on the part of the film-makers. So, while any seasoned fan of this kind of thing is highly unlikely to find anything new here, I still think it entertains more effectively than many others in the sub-genre.

The idea of a spaghetti western uniting the genre icons of Django and Sartana could have been really great, but this movie screws it up in every way you can think of. While there is a character named "Django" in the movie, the other lead character is not named "Sartana". Needless to say, this Django does not carry a machine gun, and the other character does not have a box of tricks with him. I was prepared to still enjoy the western despite this deception, but boy, did I find it a long and hard slog. It's really boring, with scenes going by at a slow and endless pace. Even the sporadic action (gunfights, fisticuffs) doesn't manage to liven things up. In fairness, the movie is directed with a little atmosphere and a little grit, but this doesn't manage to make this worth watching, even if you are a spaghetti western fan.

This kind of western are too much accepted in Brazil, mainly because around the late sixties had a invasion from this Italian productions in ours theatres over the cheapest price allowed for fits in Brazilian pockets, another important thing to ad is about a strong violence available in those pictures a bit more than american productions, in this one a usual movie about endless Django against contless Sartana, nothing new just the same on bad image of course!!

Resume:

First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 4

As with most of the follow-ups to DJANGO this bears all the signs of having been tampered with in post-production in order to accommodate the most tenuous of links to that successful series. In this case, however, the makers have decided to double their money, or hedge their bets, depending on which way you look at it, by attempting to cash in on not one but two series. Not having seen any Sartana movies I cannot comment on how well this has been accomplished but in the case of Django I have to say it bears little resemblance to Fulci's DJANGO THE RUNNER let alone Corbucci's original. I spent most of the film under the impression that the man in black would turn out to be Sartana but in fact he was Django and the most spurious of reasons was given for making Sheriff Ronson that Sartana character.

That aside what was the film like in itself? Well there was almost nothing about it to mark it in any way unusual. All the customary genre cliches were in place, with a few added touches to put it down as a shoddy spaghetti western: leering close ups, sweaty villains, sporadic violence, rudimentary characterisation, and so on. Unfortunately there was none of the sub-genre's visual flair to take your mind off the banality of the plot.