This should slaughter a few sacred cows.
"Django" -
Although not as well known to Joe Public as Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" Sergio Corbucci's "Django" is ultimately just as influential on the Spaghetti Western and just as influential on American cinema.
The (still astonishingly cold-blooded) rampant violence, occasional gory bloodshed (machete through the chest scene aside, something missing from "Fistful" and almost non-existent in Leone's other Westerns too), macabre coffin visuals, mud drenched towns death iconography and ridiculous body count (do more people die in "Django" than in every single 50's American Western combined? Perhaps) all helped, along with the striking Franco Nero in the title role, to make "Django" something special then and later.
But if we are going to be honest all these elements don't just help make "Django" the film it became...they also save it. As pretty much everything else is shoddy and just plain bad.
It is an historical cinematic tragedy of the highest order that such an iconic and important Spaghetti Western is saddled with one of the weakest, worst, dub jobs in the entire genre.
The greatest shame of all is that, due to his poor English at the time, Franco Nero is horrendously dubbed over by the blandest voice ever to be put on such a kick-ass, iconic, Spaghetti Western character.
Listen to Nero in "Keoma" and cry bucketfuls of tears at what might have been. It's a real shame that a re-dub with Nero was never done a couple of years later.
And boy, this dubbing sure hurts the film and makes Django seem more at home in a cheapo 70's Kung Fu flick.
But Django is not the only casualty.
There is no one here who is not badly and worst of all blandly dubbed.
The dub track on "Django" is so far from the superlative English dialogue tracks on many a Spaghetti Western in general, and on the other important films in particular like "For a Few Dollars More", "Good the Bad", "The Great Silence", "A Bullet for the General", "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "Face to Face", it makes you almost weep.
Hell, "Django" is by far the worst dubbed Spaghetti Western of any true note.
This is not helped by the piss poor dialogue either.
Whether lost in translation or just plain bad numerous scenes suffer an aural bullet to the head, not least of which are the truly embarrassing conversations between Django and Maria.
Garbage like......
Maria: "It was the first time someone made me feel like a woman"
Django: "I'm glad I made you feel like a woman".
.....have no place in such an iconic film.
And there is just no excuse for the shoddy as hell visual cock-up with Django's, otherwise iconic, belt fed machine gun where the bullet belt is not only filled up with bullets on both sides of the gun (???) but also fails to ever move though the gun while it fires! So where the hell do any of the bullets come from??
And what of the weak plotting?
The utterly throwaway bit about Django having his true love killed by Maj. Jackson is rendered even more pointless by the fact that, even when they have the gold, Django simply shows no interest in killing Jackson even as he hides behind a table right in front of him!
And forget the cleverly crafted plans of "For a Few Dollars More" here.
Django's plan to escape is not only scuppered by the rather farcical fact that Django clumsily knocks over his own rifle and spooks the horse...but seeing as the Mexicans get to Django in less than two minutes, as he tries to rescue the fallen gold, means that Django never had any chance at all in escaping them in his cart anyway!
Worst plan ever? I think so! Django should just stick to shooting people.
And in one of the stupidest moments the friendly bar keeper basically commits suicide for no reason at all by staying behind just to inform the murderous Jackson that Django is waiting in the cemetery. When Django could have simply left a damn note on the bar and saved the poor sod the bullets!
The music is also weak, with no Morricone genius here.
The famous song has an effective instrumental opening and is fun in a cheesy way. But the dreadful singing is more 50's American B Western than anything else and the rest of the score is bland background fodder.
So yes..."Django" is historic, iconic, influential, generally good fun, wonderfully cold-blooded and brutal, has some great iconography, a striking leading man essaying a bad ass as all hell character and a now classic weapon reveal that unfurls one of the biggest body count scenes in the history of the genre.
But it's also mortally wounded by a truly atrocious and criminally bland English dub (actually rare in most Spaghetti Westerns), awful dialogue and terribly weak and careless plotting and basic attention to detail.
Corbucci would improve every single flawed aspect in "Django" later on in his stunning, serious, carefully crafted "The Great Silence".
And Sergio Leone...would (after the actually rather weak "A Fistful of Dollars") leave "Django" looking like a B movie production with his stunning, carefully and majestically staged, movies to come.
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