Django Shoots First

Rereleased 2009

Spaghetti Western

Dorado Films

R1 DVD

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

Django Shoots first aka Django Spara per Primo is presented in overdubbed Italian.

In 1966 Sergio Corbucci released Django and started a trend that just about every Italian filmmaker wanted a part of. The film may have been based a heavily on the Japanese revenge film Yojimbo but Corbucci made Django his own film with excessive violence and a general over-the-top feel that was to characterise so many spaghetti Westerns in the future. More than a hundred Django films were released. Franco Nero starred in Corbucci’s films. In others, sometimes there wasn’t even a character named Django – the name just had to be in the title. An example is Leon Klimovsky’s Dollars For Django. Many films were shot under one name then quickly retitled to cash in on the Django name.

In Django Shoots First we are looking at one of the 1966 copies that was hurried out. I have selected this film for a number of reasons. It includes just about every cliché ever used in a Western. It continues the theme of the lone gunslinger bent on revenge. Finally in this film you can see a strong resemblance to the later My Name Is Trinity series. The Trinity characters have more than a passing resemblance to the characters in this film and the light touches of humour carried on to the later film as well.

Django (actually his son) is played here by Roel Bos (stage name Glen Saxson). He is befriended by the usual lovable town drunk and rogue played by Fernando Sancho (playing a goodie for a change).

Django is riding in to the town of Silver Springs when he meets a bounty hunter carrying the body of his father. He finds that his father had a five thousand dollar reward on him. Someone hated him pretty badly. He shoots the bounty hunter then tales the body into town to cash in on the bounty, figuring that his father left him nothing else. In town he is told that his father really owned a half share in the bank, the saloon and a number of local ranches. He meets Clusker, the crooked local banker, and the trouble begins.

There are the compulsory barroom brawls, main street gunfights, double crosses, posses riding hither and yon, fistfights, and all the other clichés. There is also the girl who runs the saloon and who falls in love with Django.

The whole film is quite well done and beautifully filmed. Bruno Nicolai’s background music track, while not as memorable as some, does credit to the film. The restoration of the original Technicolor and CinemaScope film is a good quality transfer and even the voice overdubbing, often laughable in Italian films, is done well.

The film is a fine example of the genre with a tight, active plot, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not great cinema but it is great fun.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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