Bill il taciturno

"Bill Il Taciturno" aka. "Django Kills Softly" of 1967 is a cheap, extremely unoriginal and cheesy film, and yet there are some reasons for my fellow Spaghetti Western fans to watch it. This is one of many films that were given a "Django"-title in order to cash in on the success of Sergio Crobucci's 1966 masterpiece "Django" starring Franco Nero. What makes this one somewhat worthwhile for my fellow fans of Italian genre-cinema is the casting of George Eastman in the lead. Eastman, who started his career with roles in Westerns like "Viva Django" or this one, is mainly known for his later roles in mean-spirited and ultra-violent Exploitation highlights of the 70s and 80s, most memorably as a sadistic thug in Mario Bava's "Rabid Dogs" (1974) and as an ogreish flesh-hungry fiend in Joe D'Amato's "Antropophagus" (1980). It is fun to see a young Eastman in his 20s who had not yet specialized in playing the psychos and monsters we love to see him play.

The storyline resembles that of the original "Django", only without the imagination and style, and with a lot less cynicism. A drifter (Eastman) comes to a small western town in an area which is controlled by two hostile gangs which are hostile towards each other. He decides to take both of them on... Apart from the typical 'clever drifter vs. two hostile gangs' story the film also includes a thin romantic subplot. Eastman is quite good in his role, even though Westerns are certainly not the genre that fits him best and I will always prefer him in Horror/Exploitation cinema. The supporting cast includes Spartaco Conversi, who is best known for his role in Corbucci's masterpiece "The Great Silence", the ugly Luciano Rossi, who often played ugly villains and thugs in Italian cinema, and Frederico Buido ("Faccia A Faccia"). Lina Orfei makes a nice female lead. Furthermore, there is one pretty hot Mexican woman in the film (I don't know which actress), but Django turns her down for no apparent reason. Overall, "Bill Il Taciturno" is a pretty boring, predictable and unoriginal film, but it is still an acceptable time-waster. My fellow Spaghetti Western buffs can give it a try.

Once again we have the taciturn stranger who comes into an isolated frontier town and quickly becomes involved in various feuds which, apparently, can only be resolved through violence. There's a villain, of course -- actually several villains -- and then there's a pretty girl with whom the stranger dallies. There's nothing wrong with these ingredients but this "Django" movie strings them together so routinely and with so little regard for logical plot progression that the result can best be summarized as "forgettable." George Eastman, one of the better "spaghetti western" stars, makes an adequate leading man and though, as you might expect, he has two scenes in which he's subjected to savage beatings, he has no scene in which he takes off his shirt. (Eastman's bare-chested torture scene in "Belle Starr" is a classic!) The English-dubbed tape which is the basis for this review ran about 94 minutes but some jerky editing and a few gaps in the plot indicate that the original work may have been longer.

"Django Kills Silently" (a.k.a. "Django Kills Softly") is overall a serviceable spaghetti western for people who have an interest in the genre. Some of its positive attributes include a good musical score, some good action sequences, and a pretty good performance by George Eastman, a hulking actor who you might think is better suited for bad guy roles. Also, the plot of the movie is not standard or predictable - it keeps jumping from place to place and to new characters on a regular schedule. Although one problem of this is you may be wondering just when the movie is going to settle on some key elements! Another problem is that the movie doesn't explore the lead character's motivations or character that deeply. If his name is indeed "Django", we learn this from the title, since his name is never mentioned once in the movie! Still, apart from a few quibbles like those, the movie passes the time adequately enough.

Sergio Corbucci's original classic spaghetti western Django (1966) sure has a lot to answer for. In fairness, it's hardly Corbucci's movie's fault that countless Italian westerns that followed in its wake decided to simply name the lead loner/drifter after the main man and pretend that it was somehow a sort of follow-up. I've seen a few of them now and the one thing I have noticed is that there is nothing that sets them apart from other spaghetti westerns whatsoever! For what it's worth, this one went out under the name Django Kills Softly, which aside from being a somewhat strange name, seems to have been an English language title – in the original the lead character seems to have been called Bill. So it appears that Italian producers must have quickly noticed that if they stuck 'Django' or 'Sartana' in their film's title then they would increase admissions by a few percentage points.

Needless to say, this is another very pedestrian and not memorable at all Italian western. In it Django's seeks vengeance after his friend is murdered by a bandit leader who controls a town through violence. To be honest, with a lot of these ultra-generic spaghetti westerns, you almost feel the writers simply randomly selected staple elements from a special 'spaghetti-western-generator' (a cardboard box with a hole in the side full of bits of paper with Italian western clichés written on them) and wrote bits of exposition to join the pieces together. Even the titles sound like they have been randomly created by this high-tech machine! Whatever the case, this particular example of the genre is deeply unremarkable, yet professional enough to never fall below the level of mediocre. The one thing that does set it apart from others is in it having Django played by George Eastman (aka Luigi Montefiori), who is an actor who became known for playing very threatening villains in later 70's and 80's crime films, horrors and exploitation fare in general. He was quite well suited to these types of movie roles, so it was strange seeing him playing a western hero when he was a young guy. It's not really that much of a distinctive angle for this film to boast in fairness but it is at least something.

The director of Terror Creatures From The Grave gives us a Western…but kind of forgets to inject it with much to differentiate this from seven hundred other films that involve a lone stranger (quite a few of them called Django) getting themselves all up in to warring faction's faces.

  Or in this case I should say getting all down in their faces, as Django this time is played by Six foot, nine inch tall George Eastman. Eastman is great when playing half-ape men that ruin mankind's future or huge cannibal zombies that eat the entire populations of Greek islands  or the leader of a homosexual post-apocalyptic death-cult tribe, but here he just kind of grins a lot and shoots things.  

Django starts off by witnessing local Mexican thug El Santo wasting a travelling caravan (including a kid of course!) and then stops a showgirl who has escaped the local white tyrant from being raped. She of course falls in love with him but Django puts that to the side in order to play everyone off each other. I nearly forgot to mention that there's a third gang to get shot at too in the shape of gunrunners who make the mistake (as they all do) of giving Django a kicking instead of just shooting him in the head for Christ's Sake!  

The white tyrant is played by Italian bad guy Luciano Rossi (seemingly doing an impression of Richard Nixon?) Luciano loves his hooker and his guns and pays El Santo to do his dirty work, but now wants El Santo out of the way. Once Django shoots one of Luciano's men, he offers Django a job! Just shoot Django man! Or get one of your men to do it!  Rather than do that, they set fire to a house while Django is inside fighting a gun runner he left alive. What's wrong with you people?.  

It's an average Western, but an average one is still a good one. There's the odd bit that stands out, like Django's discovery that his mate and his entire family have been killed, or the musical number a hooker belts out in Italian because the dubbing crew couldn't  be bothered translating that bit I guess.