Django

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Django
Directed by	Sergio Corbucci
Produced by	Sergio Corbucci Manolo Bolognini
Written by	Sergio Corbucci Piero Vivarelli Bruno Corbucci José Gutiérrez Maesso Franco Rossetti
Starring	Franco Nero José Bódalo Loredana Nusciak
Music by	Luis Enriquez Bacalov Franco Migliacci (theme song lyrics)
Distributed by	Blue Underground Anchor Bay Entertainment (USA)
Release date(s)	April 6, 1966 (Italy) September 21, 1967 (Spain)
Running time	90 minutes.
Language	Italian English Spanish

Django is a 1966 Italian spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Franco Nero in the title role. Nero went on to play a similar antihero in many subsequent Westerns. The film earned a reputation of being one of the most violent films ever made up to that point.

Production

The film's look and setting in a murky, muddy, isolated western town was the work of production designer Carlo Simi, who had created costumes and sets for Corbucci's earlier film Minnesota Clay, and who worked frequently with the signature spaghetti-Western director, Sergio Leone.

Plot

Django (Franco Nero) is a gun runner who drags around a coffin that conceals a machine gun. He rescues a young woman, María (Loredana Nusciak), from being murdered by bandits led by Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo), a man whom Django is seeking revenge on for the murder of his wife.

Django and Nathaniele burying Jackson's men

After killing most of Jackson's men, Django makes a deal with a Mexican general, Hugo Rodriguez (José Bódalo), who is in conflict with Jackson, and the two steal a large quantity of gold. When the General is slow in paying for his supplies, Django steals the gold. Unfortunately, the gold falls into quicksand. When Rodriguez catches up to them, María is shot (though she survives) and Django's hands are crushed. Rodríguez and his men are massacred by Jackson, who then goes looking for Django in a cemetery. However, Django, who has bitten the trigger-guard off his pistol, kills Jackson and his five surviving men.

Reception

Django received an 18-certificate in Italy due to its then-extreme violence. Bolognini says Corbucci "forgot" to cut out the ear-severing scene when the censors requested he remove it and in Sweden it was banned outright.^{[citation needed]} There are rumored to be over 100 unofficial sequels, though only 31 have been counted. Four were made the same year, in 1966.^{[citation needed]} Most of these films have nothing to do with Corbucci's original, but copy the look and attitude of the central character.

Cultural references

• The ear-severing scene in Reservoir Dogs, directed by Quentin Tarantino has said to have been inspired by the similar scene in Django.
• Django is the film being watched by the theater audience in The Harder They Come, which is about a Jamaican outlaw styled after Ivan Rhygin.
• Lee Perry's second album is titled Return of Django, and he has released tracks called "Django (Ol' Man River)" and "Django shoots first".
• An episode of Cowboy Bebop features a character dragging a coffin.
• The video game and anime series Gungrave features the main character carrying a coffin full of weapons.
• In Tenchi Universe, the character Nagi enters the climatic battle while dragging a coffin to a Western-looking city on Venus.
• Mr. Black, a boss in the video game Red Dead Revolver, carries a coffin with a Gatling gun inside.
• The coffin-dragging main character in the Boktai video game series is named Django; characters named Ringo and Sabata also appear.
• The punk band Rancid has a song inspired by the movie, titled "Django", on its album Indestructible.
• One-man metal band Thrones covers the theme song to Django on the album Sperm Whale.
• In the Rob Zombie song "Feel So Numb", the opening lyrics to the third verse are "Django drag a coffin nail across your back".
• The Danzig music video for "Crawl Across Your Killing Floor" features Glenn Danzig dragging a coffin.
• Filipino billiards champion Francisco "Django" Bustamante earned his nickname after having been called "Django" by his friends; he eventually adopted it as his professional name.^[1]
• "Don't Tango with Django" is the name of a track on the 'b' side of Joe Strummer's Gangsterville single, released in 1989.
• The character Jango Fett from the Star Wars universe is a reference to Django. [1]
• The movie Sukiyaki Western Django is the prequel to Django. It stars Quentin Tarantino. At the end of the movie, the audience is told, "A few years later, the kid, HEIHACHI, made his way to Italy and was known as a man called DJANGO." The movie involves a Gatling gun in a coffin and procedes over a fight for treasure (gold).

References

External links

• Django at the Internet Movie Database
• Mondo-Digital Info on Django
• Cult Movies: Django

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