Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Don Johnson, Dennis Christopher, Walton Goggins, Laura Cayouette, David Steen, Dana Gourrier, Nichole Galicia, James Remar, James Russo, Russ Tamblyn, Amber Tamblyn, Don Stroud, Tom Wopat, Bruce Dern, M.C. Gainey, Cooper Huckabee, Doc Duhame, Jonah Hill, Lee Horsley, Ted Neeley, Zoe Bell, Michael Bowen, Tom Savini, Robert Carradine, Michael Parks, John Jarratt, Quentin Tarantino, and with the friendly participation of Franco Nero. (R, 165 mins)
Perhaps cognizant of the fact that the likelihood of lightning striking twice with another reinvention of cinema along the lines of 1994's PULP FICTION is slim, Quentin Tarantino has spent the last 15 years content with being a mad scientist DJ of sorts, fusing various genres and making each new film an homage to the cult cinema of his past. JACKIE BROWN (1997) was his love letter to Blaxploitation; the two-part KILL BILL (2003/2004) his tribute to martial-arts films; DEATH PROOF (2007) his '70s drive-in/car chase throwback; and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) his spin on WWII movies. DJANGO UNCHAINED is Tarantino's take on spaghetti westerns, namely Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO (1966), but reimagined as a pre-Civil War slavery/revenge saga. Like most Tarantino films after JACKIE BROWN (maybe his most restrained, disciplined film and one that just gets better with each passing year), DJANGO UNCHAINED is guilty of unabashed self-indulgence on the part of its creator, but it's filled with such inspired enthusiasm, crackling dialogue, and a heart-on-its-sleeve love of movies that its appeal--so long as you can get by the splatter and the constant barrage of racial slurs--is positively infectious. Tarantino's films of late aren't perfect and one could argue that there's some regression from the surprising maturity of JACKIE BROWN. But really, if he just kept trying to top PULP FICTION, he'd fail miserably. Films like BASTERDS and DJANGO UNCHAINED may not be reinventing the wheel (though they may try to reinvent history), but there's no denying that they're distinctly Tarantino and couldn't have been made with the same wit, style, and passion by any other director. Flaws and indulgences aside, DJANGO UNCHAINED is a captivatingly unhinged, over-the-top blast.
In 1858 Texas, Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave purchased by German dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Schultz is after the fugitive trio of Brittle brothers, and it's been brought to his attention that Django knows what they look like. So, the doctor offers Django a deal: travel with him as a "valet," and point out the Brittles, and receive a third of the reward money along with his freedom. The two make such a great team that the deal blossoms into a partnership and a friendship, and Schultz offers to help Django find his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), whose whereabouts are unknown after the two were split up by a vengeful plantation owner (Bruce Dern) when they attempted to escape. After doing some research, Schultz discovers that Broomhilda was sold to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the flamboyant owner of the plantation Candieland. Posing as a pair of slavers interested in purchasing slaves for "Mandingo fighting," Schultz and Django arrive at Candieland to rescue Broomhilda, but face an unexpected obstacle in elderly house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).
Tarantino's gift for the verbose is on full display here, and, as in BASTERDS, it's Waltz who benefits the most, even though he's playing a good guy here--probably the moral center of the film--who's capable of shocking violence. Schultz's mentor/student relationship with Django recalls Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood, respectively, in Sergio Leone's FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965). The pair make a memorable team and are given strong support by the villainous turns of DiCaprio and Jackson. Candie is the easily identifiable villain and DiCaprio relishes the chance to play such a pompously sneering scumbag, but Candie is frequently acting under the manipulative machinations of Jackson's Stephen, who arguably emerges as the film's true antagonist. One of the most diabolical representations of the "Uncle Tom" stereotype ever presented, Stephen's self-loathing of his race and his alternately pragmatic, humiliating, and malicious eagerness to constantly be in the good graces of the rich and powerful Candie makes him one of the most complex characters in all of Tarantino's films. It's a difficult role that Jackson essays very well while still dropping "motherfucker"'s as only Samuel L. Jackson can.
The supporting cast is filled with recognizable faces and Tarantino B-movie favorites, some of whom have little more than walk-ons. Original Django Franco Nero has a brief conversation with Foxx's Django ("The D is silent," Foxx says after introducing himself. "I know," Nero replies), and it's great to see guys like Dern, Don Stroud, Russ Tamblyn, Tom Wopat, and Lee Horsley again, however briefly. Going back to John Travolta in PULP FICTION, Robert Forster in JACKIE BROWN, and David Carradine in KILL BILL, Tarantino always seems to give a forgotten actor another shot, and here it's BREAKING AWAY (1979) star Dennis Christopher in a showy supporting role as Candie's weasally lawyer. Jonah Hill turns up as a doofus KKK member for apparently no other reason than Tarantino wanted to put him somewhere. The KKK bit and a later sequence with Tarantino attempting an Australian accent as a slave trading employee with Michael Parks and John Jarratt (two of the director's apparently 10,000 favorite actors) are probably the two most egregious examples of things that should've been cut and could've brought the running time down to something more reasonable than a bloated 165 minutes, especially with Parks/Jarratt/Tarantino sequence coming after a jaw-dropping, splatter-filled shootout (all glorious squibs! No CGI!) that paints the walls of Candieland bright red and would've made Sam Peckinpah hard.
Continuing his trend of anachronistic music cues (like David Bowie's CAT PEOPLE theme turning up in BASTERDS), Tarantino expectedly utilizes vintage Italian western themes by Luis Bacalov, Ennio Morricone, and Riz Ortolani, but also songs by Rick Ross, James Brown & 2Pac, and even Jim Croce, and the effect, while jarring, actually works. DJANGO UNCHAINED is an insane, freewheeling mash-up of cult movie/spaghetti western/exploitation madness that could only be a Quentin Tarantino film. He may not have another game-changer like PULP FICTION in him, but he really doesn't need one. There's nobody who does what Tarantino does with such unbridled glee and on such a grand scale. DJANGO UNCHAINED isn't his best film, but like most of his work (except for that dreadful first half of DEATH PROOF), it will likely prove to be an endlessly rewatchable one, and that'll do just fine.
With the upcoming release of Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited DJANGO UNCHAINED, there's been a renewed interest in the spaghetti westerns that inspired it. Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO (1966) was itself just one of the hundreds of spaghetti westerns made after the incredible success of the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood films A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966), but it managed to create--at least in Italy--a phenomenon of its own. DJANGO, which starred Franco Nero as a mysterious stranger who drags behind him a coffin containing a large machine gun, led to a stampede of assorted sequels, knockoffs, and ripoffs that featured "Django" in the title. The only "official" sequel with Nero came two decades later with Nello Rossati's belated, dismal, RAMBO-inspired DJANGO STRIKES AGAIN (1987), but starting with Giulio Questi's insane DJANGO, KILL! (IF YOU LIVE SHOOT!) (1967) with Tomas Milian and going into the early 1970s, there were no less than 50 so-called DJANGO films, starring a ton of different leading men, not to mention other knockoffs like DJURADO (1966), DRANGO (1966), RINGO (1967), CJAMANGO (1967), GARRINGO (1969), SHANGO (1970), and about 20 different SARTANA films, including several that teamed Sartana with Django. And it gets even more confusing when you consider that future Django Anthony Steffen starred in the practically interchangeable DRANGO, RINGO, GARRINGO, and SHANGO, and that DRANGO was also released as SOME DOLLARS FOR DJANGO. In short, the Italian habit of making unofficial sequels to blockbuster successes wasn't limited to just influential American hits (George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD was released in Italy as ZOMBI, which led to Lucio Fulci's ZOMBI 2, which was released as ZOMBIE in the US; Ridley Scott's ALIEN led to Ciro Ippolito's ALIEN 2: SULLA TERRA; and Michael Cimino's THE DEER HUNTER was released in Italy as IL CACCIATORE, which begat Antonio Margheriti's IL CACCIATORE 2, aka THE LAST HUNTER in the States), but also to their own. The huge Italian success of DJANGO led to an entire "Django" genre. Timeless Media, a division of Shout Factory, has just released two budget-priced double feature sets with four DJANGO obscurities. Each set lists at $6.99, and while they certainly aren't Criterion-level transfers, they look much better than the list price would indicate, all in anamorphic widescreen and looking positively pristine compared to the usual public domain YouTube-level stuff you get on those $9.99 "50 Western Classics" cheapie sets. With only one outright clunker over the course of these two releases, cult movie nerds and spaghetti western completists will definitely want to pick these up.
DJANGO KILLS SILENTLY (Italy - 1967)
DJANGO'S CUT PRICE CORPSES (Italy - 1971)
DJANGO KILLS SILENTLY (aka DJANGO KILLS SOFTLY) stars Eurocult fixture George Eastman (aka Luigi Montefiori) in one of his earliest films. The 6' 9" Eastman, best known to Italian horror fans as the cannibalistic killer who rips the fetus out of a pregnant woman and eats it, and later devours his own disemboweled entrails at the end of Joe D'Amato's THE GRIM REAPER (1981), gets a rare good guy role here as Django, riding into the small town of Santa Anna and getting involved in a turf war between the powerful Thompson (Luciano Rossi, billed as "Edwin G. Ross") and the outlaw El Santo, which, if the performance of Mimmo Maggio is any indication, is Spanish for "Almost Tuco." Django has a score to settle with El Santo, who killed an old friend, and he doesn't care much for Thompson either, so--stop me if you've heard this plot before--he decides to play them against one another. Written by BLACK MAGIC RITES auteur Renato Polselli (as "Leonide Preston"), and directed by Massimo Pupillo (1965's BLOODY PIT OF HORROR) under the pseudonym "Max Hunter," DJANGO KILLS SILENTLY looks and sounds like a spaghetti western, but aside from the Leone-esque opening credits and Berto Pisano's blatantly Morricone-inspired score, it plays a lot like a western from the 1940s or 1950s. Lots of saloon brawls and standard-issue shootouts, and certainly none of the nihilism or political subtext of even the Corbucci or Questi films. Still, it's an enjoyable enough western on its own terms, with Eastman (dubbed by Tony La Penna) a likable Django, and there's a scene-stealing, hilariously twitchy performance by spaghetti western regular Federico Boido (as "Rik Boyd") as The Nervous One, an exceptionally edgy Thompson gunman. 1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen. (Unrated, 94 mins).
DJANGO'S CUT PRICE CORPSES (aka A PISTOL FOR DJANGO) is a bit more in line with the rougher, more violent post-DJANGO spaghetti scene. Directed by veteran sleaze merchant Luigi Batzella (THE DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT, NUDE FOR SATAN, and the vile Nazisploitation "classic" SS HELL CAMP, aka THE BEAST IN HEAT) under the name "Paolo Solvay" (one of several pseudonyms he used), CUT PRICE CORPSES has bounty hunter Django (Jeff Cameron, dubbed by Frank von Kuegelgen) riding into a Mexican town in search of the four nefarious Cortez brothers, led by Ramon (Edilio Kim). Ramon, his brothers, and his gang are on the run after a Silver City bank robbery and the kidnapping of a young woman (Dominique Badou). Also pursuing them is bank investigator and steely card sharp Fulton (Gengher Gatti), who switches alliances as quickly as anyone else in this thing. Django briefly joins forces with outlaw Pedro (future screenwriter Gianfranco Clerici, credited under his acting name "Mark Devis"), who used to run with the Cortez gang, but it goes nowhere when Pedro tries to kill Django maybe ten seconds later and gets shot in the gut for his trouble, making about 12 minutes of screen time utterly pointless (except for the fact that the ruthless Django seduces Pedro's wife to get to him). The very low-budget CUT PRICE CORPSES is pretty average as far as these go--watchable and diverting but cliched and predictable. Almost everything is ripped off from other movies--Django even tells the town undertaker to "get four coffins ready," which is in no way similar to Clint Eastwood's introduction in A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS; Gatti is obviously meant to be a Lee Van Cleef stand-in; and Django's eventual sidekick Pickwick (John Desmont) is the burly sort of which Bud Spencer had been playing for a few years and would continue to in the TRINITY movies and its various knockoffs. And the big, meaningless plot twist--SPOILER--that the fourth Cortez brother is actually a woman (Esmeralda Barros) is obvious from the first moment she's onscreen.
Really? You're not supposed to be able to tell this is a woman?
The fashions are a bit more 1971 than you'd expect, with Django sporting a Peter Fonda-in-EASY RIDER hairstyle, and Pedro's hilarious white-dude afro and bellbottoms. It's silly and inconsquential, the sets are laughably cheap, a lot of it doesn't make sense (why does a confused Pickwick totally lose his shit and attack Django for no reason?) and Cameron isn't the most charismatic Django (he had a very busy few years in spaghetti knockoffs, playing Sartana on a few occasions and starring in other ripoffs like the same year's COFFIN FULL OF DOLLARS before disappearing from movies in 1973) but DJANGO'S CUT PRICE CORPSES is OK enough for spaghetti western die-hards and enjoyably dumb if you're in the right mood. 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen (Unrated, 82 mins)
A MAN CALLED DJANGO! (Italy - 1971)
DJANGO AND SARTANA'S SHOWDOWN IN THE WEST (Italy - 1970)
Anthony Steffen (real name Antonio De Teffe) is best known to American grindhouse fans for the 1971 Italian horror film THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE, but he was enormously popular in his native country for his many spaghetti westerns that came in the wake of DJANGO. Steffen had already played Django twice before 1971's A MAN CALLED DJANGO! (aka W DJANGO!, aka VIVA, DJANGO!) in a pair of Sergio Garrone westerns from 1969: A NOOSE FOR DJANGO and the supernatural western/horror hybrid DJANGO THE BASTARD (aka THE STRANGERS GUNDOWN). Prior to that, as mentioned above, he also had the title roles in the DJANGO ripoffs DRANGO (aka SOME DOLLARS FOR DJANGO), RINGO, A TRAIN FOR DURANGO (1969), and SHANGO. A MAN CALLED DJANGO! was directed by Edoardo Mulargia (as "Edward G. Muller"), who himself was not a stranger to the world of DJANGO ripoffs, having previously directed SHANGO, CJAMANGO, and 1967's DON'T WAIT, DJANGO...SHOOT! The intense Steffen is a terrific Django in this violent, cynical, and downbeat film, obsessively pursuing the men responsible for the murder of his wife. He rescues about-to-be-hanged horse thief Tuco, er...I mean, Carranza (Glauco Onorato, dubbed by Ed Mannix), who used to run with the men responsible but was in jail at the time of the murder, and two form the usual unholy alliance when Django agrees to help Carranza get revenge on his own enemy, the sadistic Jeff (Stelio Candelli), a vicious thug who controls the town. Of course, the various threads intersect and double and triple crosses ensue in somewhat predictable ways, but A MAN CALLED DJANGO! benefits from a legitimately devastating finale--complete with a nicely-done final shot that borrows from Sam Peckinpah--that Steffen plays wonderfully, making him probably the most effective Django after Nero and Milian. This one probably deserves to be better known. 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. (Unrated, 90 mins)
DJANGO AND SARTANA'S SHOWDOWN IN THE WEST stars American actor Jack Betts as Django. Betts, who's still active today in small roles on TV and in movies, was a TV actor in the late 1950s and early 1960s who started going by the name "Hunt Powers" in 1964, and relocated to Europe in 1967, where he became a busy spaghetti western fixture. He played Django in several films, including 1972's marvelously-titled DOWN WITH YOUR HANDS...YOU SCUM! He frequently worked with director Demofilo Fidani, regarded by some as the "Ed Wood of spaghetti westerns." Though there's only a little about SHOWDOWN IN THE WEST that's terrible from a technical standpoint, it's certainly the low point of these double feature sets, even with Fidani hiding behind what might be the greatest fake American-sounding pseudonym ever:
Dull and confusing, DJANGO AND SARTANA'S SHOWDOWN IN THE WEST (aka DJANGO AND SARTANA ARE COMING...IT'S THE END) dithers around and doesn't even bring the two heroes together until an hour in, and even then they don't ever work side by side and don't exchange words until the last scene. Crazed outlaw Black Burt (Gordon Mitchell) kidnaps a young woman and plans to take his gang to Mexico when word gets out that Django and Sartana (Franco Borelli, credited as "Chet Davis") are both separately coming for them. Instead of fleeing, Black Burt sticks around, ranting and raving and playing poker against his reflection in the mirror. Mitchell's insane performance is really the only reason to watch this, and it drags badly when he's not around, feeling about twice as long as its brief 83 minutes. Betts is appropriately stoical as Django, but Borelli's Sartana is barely in it, and the film is so meandering and incoherently edited in the early going that it was a full 40 minutes before I was entirely sure that Betts was Django and Borelli was Sartana (the DVD packaging and IMDb both have it wrong, crediting Betts as Sartana and Borelli as Django). I think the dubbing crew might've even been confused as well on a couple occasions. The film's low budget is apparent during the climax, when Django is shooting a bunch of different members of Black Burt's gang and the shots of Betts firing and the gang members being shot don't even match, with the gunshot outlaws obviously culled from stock footage from other movies. Betts is an alright Django, but DJANGO AND SARTANA'S SHOWDOWN IN THE WEST is pretty bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. 1.85 anamorphic widescreen (Unrated, 83 mins)
Perhaps cognizant of the fact that the likelihood of lightning striking twice with another reinvention of cinema along the lines of 1994's PULP FICTION is slim, Quentin Tarantino has spent the last 15 years content with being a mad scientist DJ of sorts, fusing various genres and making each new film an homage to the cult cinema of his past. JACKIE BROWN (1997) was his love letter to Blaxploitation; the two-part KILL BILL (2003/2004) his tribute to martial-arts films; DEATH PROOF (2007) his '70s drive-in/car chase throwback; and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) his spin on WWII movies. DJANGO UNCHAINED is Tarantino's take on spaghetti westerns, namely Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO (1966), but reimagined as a pre-Civil War slavery/revenge saga. Like most Tarantino films after JACKIE BROWN (maybe his most restrained, disciplined film and one that just gets better with each passing year), DJANGO UNCHAINED is guilty of unabashed self-indulgence on the part of its creator, but it's filled with such inspired enthusiasm, crackling dialogue, and a heart-on-its-sleeve love of movies that its appeal--so long as you can get by the splatter and the constant barrage of racial slurs--is positively infectious. Tarantino's films of late aren't perfect and one could argue that there's some regression from the surprising maturity of JACKIE BROWN. But really, if he just kept trying to top PULP FICTION, he'd fail miserably. Films like BASTERDS and DJANGO UNCHAINED may not be reinventing the wheel (though they may try to reinvent history), but there's no denying that they're distinctly Tarantino and couldn't have been made with the same wit, style, and passion by any other director. Flaws and indulgences aside, DJANGO UNCHAINED is a captivatingly unhinged, over-the-top blast.
