Uccidi Django... uccidi per primo!!!

This farce is 80 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Watching paint dry might have been equally as entertaining. First of all, there's no "Django" in the cast, and this movie has nothing to do with any "Django". It's just another low-budget potboiler that never managed to get to a lukewarm simmer. Giacomo Rossi Stuart, in the lead role as "Johnny" is too much a pretty boy to be credible in a Spaghetti western. Aldo Sambrell, as the arch-villain "Burton" (recognizable from "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"), the only real talent in the cast, doesn't do much other than stand around all dressed up sipping whisky and smoking cigars. There are a lot of characters, but no character development. The same can be said of the plot, such as it is. It's like the writers started out with an idea, but then forgot what it was somewhere along the way to the set. Characters we know nothing about appear from nowhere and then disappear and reappear randomly through the film. Some of the music by Elsio Mancuso has been recycled from "No Room to Die" (Una lunga fila di croci)(1969), further adding to the cheezy feeling. One star out of ten, only because IMDb won't allow ratings of ZERO stars.

As you might expect from this so-called "Django" movie, there isn't a character in the movie with the name of Django. The movie was probably given the Django name because the producers realized the movie itself was pretty forgettable. There are a number of dull stretches, and the basic story will seem pretty familiar to most viewers.

Still, the movie has its moments. There's a pretty good fistfight at one point, there are a couple more okay action sequences, the musical score is pretty nice to hear, and there is some unintentional amusement with one of the characters resembling makeup guru Tom Savini. But even with that stuff, I can only recommend this movie to die hard fans of spaghetti westerns.

I think this is more usually known in English as DJANGO, KILL, or DJANGO KILL (no comma). Known for completely over the top wild violence and rivers of red blood. Some see a very hidden homo-erotic perversity to it, but there is so much general perversity all around in it, who can say if one more flavor matters? It is kind of fun (if that is the word) to see it if you put it in the context of all the other Italian Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s. Watch the documentary "Spaghetti West" to see how this one fits into the overall trend. Coming to it cold with no background, it may just seem crazy. As, indeed, I think it is somewhat.

Santana (Aldo Sambrell) and his bandits steal a handful of gold, and Santana kills all his men in the following night while they are sleeping, so he can keep the whole gold for himself. But that was just the start for him. Years later, he lives in the disguise of the respectable businessman Burton and commits crimes on a much bigger scale: getting his hands on all the gold-mines in the area. Some owners of promising mines find an unexpected death. The old miner Thomas (Silvio Bagolini) gets a stranger (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) and a bounty hunter (Mario Novelli) to fight for him and the other miners against Burton.

'Uccidi Django... uccidi per primo" is a shoddy piece of work from Sergio Garrone who normally shot better westerns. Occasionally, some skills show through, for example the dark, mysterious scene when Burton and the psychopathic killer Lupe (George Wang) are meeting in a cave. But there are many poorly executed scenes. See for example the scene after 5 minutes where the bandits are riding through the gate. The bag with gold is dropped by Aldo Sambrell, but he keeps riding on. Obviously, they did not want to make a second take, so the first take with this silly mistake stayed in the movie. Otherwise, it's a great role for Sambrell though who dominates the picture, whereas he often played only supporting roles in other westerns.

Saloon owner/goldmine thief Aldo Sambrell hires gunmen and a weird cave- dwelling mental case to make it easier to take over other people's claims. It's up to stranger Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and his bounty hunter friend to stop him.

This movie is a mess. Everything about it is pretty dull, the story, performances, direction, photography, and even the score. A love- triangle between sexy showgirl Diana Lorys, Sambrell, and the stranger's virginal girlfriend fails to generate any sparks either. A compact running time of less than eighty-minutes doesn't even help.

The best thing about this is watching the bounty hunter single-handedly inventing ballistic testing!

Finally, the print I watched conveniently left out the credit sequence. Apparently, even they thought this is best forgotten!