Soz, distracted!
Well, Django's character has already been milked and stolen to death within the SW industry, so as soon as the first Sartana films were hits that character was pounced upon too!
I have never seen Pasquale Squitieri's
Django Defies Sartana, but in it Django thinks Sartana has killed his brother and hunts him down only to find he's innocent and they team up to get the real killers. I believe it's a cheap and cheerful SW, but it must have made money because within a couple of months of its release another Django and Sartana film was released...
...there is a "legendary" director called Demofilo Fedani who is often lovingly called "The Ed Wood Of The Spaghettis" (
) who did very cheap films as "Miles Deem". He was the man behind
One Damned Day At Dawn...Django Meets Sartana! and
Django and Sartana Are Coming...It's The End! which are both really cheaply made but imbued with a clearly detectable enthusiasm which is infectious to the viewer. Hunt Powers (Jack Betts) was never as charismatic as Eastwood or Nero, but he was obviously affordable and he appeared in both.
Originally
One Damned Day At Dawn... was just another Django rip-off, but it seems that but the sheriff hero was hastily renamed "Sartana" after Squitieri's film was released. And this in turn must have made money as Fedani followed it up very quickly with
Django And Sartana Are Coming... in which Django agrees to help Sartana rescue a kidnapped woman who is in the clutches of "Black Burt" (
) who is played hysterically by Gordon Mitchell at his most manic and deranged. This film seems to have been intended as a Django and Sartana vehicle from the start.
If you realise that Squitieri's film was released in April 1970 and Fedani's second film was released in November 1970 you begin to appreciate the speed with which the low budget SW industry churned out these things!