Freshman director Giulio Questi's imaginative but contrived horse opera "Django, Kill!" qualifies as one of the most bizarre Spaghetti westerns. Questi filters the abrasive, morally-irresponsible action through the perspective of a wrongly accused half-breed (dressed like Han Solo) rather than a traditional western Anglo-Saxon individual. This eccentric, occasionally savage western delivers so many surprises that--by virtue of its unpredictable plot--it looms above others in the genre for sheer ingenuity. Like most Spaghetti westerns, "Django, Kill" concerns the fanatical quest for monetary wealth. Similarly, the fearless protagonist who sets out to exact vengeance on the Americans for double-crossing him propels the plot forward. The torture scene where vampire bats and other scary critters creep out of the darkness to encourage our abused hero to reveal the whereabouts of the gold doesn't belong in a western. Remember, "Django, Kill" boasts lots of surprises. Something changes every twenty minutes or so. The performances are often better than the dubbing. Piero Lulli makes a great villain while he is on screen. This western contains the most interesting wholesale example of vigilante justice since "The Ox-Bow Incident.""Django, Kill" opens as if it were a supernatural saga with a standard issue close-up of a man's hand crawling out of a grave after dark. Two Native Americans discover the protagonist and nurse him back to health. They take the gold that our hero has and melts it down into bullets. They assure him that gold bullets are the best. Initially, the Indians refer to the hero as an entity from another world. A loquacious American rancher named Mr. Sorrow, who wears a mostly white outfit, maintains an army of black-clad, Stetson-topped, cowboys at his disposal. A suspicious gay subtext runs through the scenes involving these gents. As any Spaghetti western aficionado can tell you, "Django, Kill" has nothing to do with the Sergio Corbucci original "Django" with Franco Nero. Apparently, the producers borrowed the name of Corbucci's western to parlay a fortune for themselves. Although it isn't a masterpiece, "Django, Kill" emerges as unforgettable, despite its sketchy characters.Lead actor Tomas Milian of "The Big Gundown" plays another Mexican, but he relies on a six-gun instead of a knife. He has about five fellow Mexicans with him and they are a part of the outlaw gang that surprises an Army gold shipment while the troops are skinny dipping. When the Stranger (Milian) demands his share of the gold from the robbery from outlaw chieftain Oaks (Piero Lulli), the Americans turn on the Mexicans. They disarm them and force them to dig a mass grave for themselves. One Mexican escapes and whittles away at their horses with a machete. He manages to kill enough horses between Oaks' gunslingers bring him down. Oaks and his men execute the Mexicans. Miraculously, the Stranger survives the ordeal and two Native Americans nurse him back to health. The outlaws trudge into a town that the Native Americans know as 'the Unhappy Place." Oaks and his sidekicks enter the bar and inquire about purchasing nine horses. The bartender discovers that they are outlaws, and the town lynches all of them, except Oaks who takes refuge in an abandoned building. The Native Americans bring the Stranger into town, and he puts four slugs into the treacherous outlaw chieftain. The bartender, Bill Templer (Milo Quesada), gives him $500, but our hero is intent only in sleeping in a room upstairs in the hotel.Few Spaghetti westerns are as visually surreal as "Django, Kill." The death of one of the villains when the gold that he has stashes melts and falls onto his face is definitely different. Nobody ever finds the gold.

"Django Kill! If You Live, Shoot!" (1967) directed by Giulio Questi and starring Tomas Milian, is probably one the most bizarre and strangest Spaghetti Westerns ever made. Yet the screenplay, by Franco Arcalli and Franco Arcalli, at first glance, seems to travel the same well trodden path of many other Spaghetti Westerns: Milian (who is simply called the Stranger) is double crossed by Oaks (Piero Lulli) when his gang raids a Wells Fargo stagecoach guarded by the US army; shot, buried and left for dead; he climbs out his grave with the help of two Indians and seeks revenge on his fellow thieves. They are to be found in a nameless town run by a black clad bandit and his men, who battle against the murderous inhabitants, who kill Oaks, to claim the gold for themselves.It begins very strangely: a hand sticking out of the ground as Milian seeks to free himself from his shallow burial; a flashback soon kicks in, and apart from some brilliant, razor sharp editing courtesy of Franco Arcalli, it appears we are in normal territory for the genre. However, as soon as Oaks and his bandits enter the town, we are in a world very much the home of the surrealists. We see a drunk with his foot on a little girl; through a window, a man threatens a woman, who bites him; a naked boy stands next to the street, playing with his penis. No wonder one of Oaks's henchmen keeps on saying he doesn't like it there. The Stranger too, has a feeling not everything is as it should be; he stays a night with the three major "families" and his suspicions are confirmed. The first night, he sleeps in the Saloon, home to the devious Tembler (Milo Quesada), his mistress, Flory (Marilu Tolo) and the mentally disturbed Evan (Raymond Lovelock); the second, he stays with Zorro/Sorro/Sorrow (in the English dub, his name is pronounced so that it could be either one; for clarity, I will refer to him as Sorrow, as it is such a great name for a villain) after they have kidnapped Evan, so as to try and extort the gold Tembler got from the murdered Oaks, and his black clad, probably gay, cowboys, where after a banquet, they possibly rape Evan. The Stranger does nothing. The last night, he goes to Alderman Ackerman's (Paco Sanz) and his mad wife, Elizabeth (Patrizia Valturri), where, after releasing Elizabeth from her locked room to seduce the Stranger, Ackerman steals the Stranger's gun and shoots Tembler with it for the gold. Recounting these events does not truly convey the weirdness of the film; it's as far from John Ford's "Stagecoach" (1938) as is possible to be in the same genre. The photography, editing, lighting (at times it is lit like a horror movie) and directing all work beautifully together to give the feeling of something very off-kilter. The scene where Sorrow tortures the Stranger by placing him Christ-like on a crucifix (not the only piece of religious symbolism in the film) and releasing vampire bats, moles, iguanas and other animals, is peculiar to say the least. Perhaps it's the censor's scissors fault, but the viewer is never sure as to why the Stranger is so terrified of these animals moving around. Maybe in the uncut version, they are shown to be feeding on him. In fact, the present version in which you can watch the film is still missing around five minutes; it is down from two hours to one hundred and fifteen minutes; if these precious scenes were to be restored, we would be able to find out if the rumours that uncut, cannibalism and animal butchery are present.The acting is hard to judge; Milian is certainly very good in a role that is essentially passive for most of the film, his character looking blankly on at greed and cruelty. The actor in later interviews felt ambiguous about his performance, but I find it hard to imagine another person in the role. The rest of the cast act in a somewhat "coarse", highly stylised way that actually suits the material, however, only the splendid Roberto Camardiel as Sorrow seems to be enjoying himself. A great villain, he has a wonderful talking parrot who appears too little and amuses himself by playing with toy soldiers and having gluttonous feasts with his men. Questi has said that his experiences as an anti-Fascist partisan during World War II in the mountains in Italy, so Sorrow's black clad bandits, I suppose, are suppose to represent Mussolini's soldiers and, a large guess this, the townsfolk are standing in for the middle classes of Italy who complacently let a dictator seize power and then did nothing about it. But if the film is a Western "version" of his two years as a rebel, who do the Stranger or Oaks and his men represent? An intriguing question that only adds another layer of mystery on to this film.Its aforementioned censor ship problems arouse from the violence in the movie. I can understand why, as it certainly is one of the most bloodiest of all Spaghetti Westerns (but it is not without competition; in the later "The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe" (1973), a kung-fu Western that is surprisingly good, you see eyes gorged out, arms chopped off and a person falling into a spiked pit, all with luridly red blood). A man's body is ripped apart by crazed townspeople when they learn he was shot by gold bullets, two people are killed by having molten gold fall on them and there are more hangings and shootings than virtually any other Spaghetti. These goings on are underlined by a fine music score by Ivan Vandor, although he repeats the same rift too many times; this is probably the only flaw in the motion picture."Django Kill!" is one of the very best Spaghetti Westerns for its surreal atmosphere and fantastic directing, editing and photography.

This one certainly lives up to its reputation as the most peculiar Spaghetti Western there is, a quality which makes it unique but not exactly entertaining (the pace is slow and the film somewhat protracted, if never less than fascinating)! It features an atypical performance from lead Tomas Milian: usually the brash man of action with a humorous streak, here he's the cynical and mostly passive observer who even arrives late for the climax! Apart from the star, Marilu' Tolo and Ray Lovelock, the international cast - including several non-professionals - is unfamiliar but, as director Questi said in the exclusive Audio Commentary, their indelible faces were just what he needed for the film! By the way, in spite of the film's English title, it's not related to the 1966 DJANGO - and, in fact, Milian's character remains unnamed throughout - that spawned innumerable variations but only one direct sequel (made more than 20 years after the original)! Here, we also find several elements of Gothic horror (Milian 'rising' from the dead, the 'mad woman' character borrowed from "Jane Eyre", the weird prison torture scene involving vampire bats and iguanas, the fiery climax in which the villain's face is covered with melted gold, etc.); besides, Tolo is made-up to look like Barbara Steele and the greedy townsfolk's gory groping into the body of a dying bandit riddled with golden bullets curiously anticipates the zombie films of George Romero! Actually, the film's graphic depiction of violence gave it a certain notoriety which further fueled its cult status; in fact, the bullet sequence and the scalping of an Indian were censored at the time but, curiously, got reinstated for the shortened 1975 re-issue under the name of ORO HONDO (which had been the film's working title)! There's even a scene in which a horse is saddled with a charge of dynamite and let loose among the villains (whereupon we see shots of its intestines and the body parts of the various victims strewn about!) - though, in all fairness, in A PROFESSIONAL GUN (1968) a man was also nonchalantly killed by a grenade in the mouth!! Other unexpected elements in the film are its religious overtones (apart from Milian's crucifixion, the Indians who help him are mystics while the villainous Hagerman also serves pretty much as a bible-thumping preacher to the community) and the presence of black-clad gay cowboys as prototype Fascists (thankfully, we're spared their gang-rape of Lovelock - here in his film debut! - whose immediate reaction, naturally, is to shoot himself) led by a Spaniard (all dressed in white!) that goes by the name of Mr. Zorro(?!), and who shares a love-hate relationship throughout with a spirited parrot!! The film also features a good score by Ivan Vandor and Techniscope photography by Franco Delli Colli (though the outdoor night scenes are way too dark!), and the locations - Questi was especially proud of his uncharacteristic white desert - are notable too. Franco Arcalli, an unusual combination of screenwriter and film editor, devises some 'trippy' montages throughout - which, therefore, adds psychedelia to an already eclectic mix of cinematic styles that distinguish this Spaghetti Western! I opted to purchase the Italian DVD over Blue Underground's R1 edition due to the inclusion here of the afore-mentioned highly informative, full-length Audio Commentary featuring director Questi (who is very modest and actually attributes many of the film's bizarre touches to logical progressions of the narrative - which, needless to say, doesn't entirely convince the trio of moderators who accompany him throughout this engaging discussion!). However, with respect to the otherwise commendable Alan Young Pictures disc, one has to contend with a distracting layer change (in mid-sentence!), at least one other instance of audio drop-out and a baffling reversal, for one line of dialogue, to the English soundtrack (for the record, I watched the Italian-language version with the audio set in its original mono rendition; I tend to scoff at re-mixes of classic films)!!

Kill, if you live shoot! (1967) is a crazy western. I've never seen such a weird film (besides El Topo). Tomas Milian plays a double crossed man who is saved by two indians. They make him gold bullets so he can avenge his dead friends and punish those that did him wrong. That's just the beginning! I heard stories about this film but I never believed them until after I saw the movie. I was surprised by the authenticity in some of the situations that the characters were put through, but others were so out of placed. This is a strange hybrid of action, horror, comedy and drama. I loved this movie, It'll grow on you after repeat viewings. I strongly recommend this film.A+P.S.Unlike Django, the English and Italian soundtracks are nearly identical, no loss in the translation.