Pretty Good

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Admirable film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Surreal western dealing with various people trying to get their hands on a bunch of gold.The plot has The Stranger some how surviving being shot down by his compatriots after a gold robbery. Rescued by a couple of Indians who want to know what its like on the other side of life, he trails the men who tried to kill him to a town where only one of them remains alive. At this point the film becomes a game as various people try to get their hands on the gold. (For give me for being vague- and only covering the first half hour of plot, but this movie is so unique one should see it on ones own.) Off beat to say the least, this movie has a cruel streak a mile wide. No one is nice, everyone is evil to some degree. And yes there are lots of gay cowboys. Its an unpleasant time in an unpleasant town. This is a one of a kind film that is not for all tastes. At times it plays more like a horror western rather than as a spaghetti western (the end of one person is out of a horror movie.I'm not sure what I think of it. Certainly its well made but it is rather unpleasant. I can't see wanting to see it a second time. The pacing isn't to my tastes and its two hour running time felt even longer. Was it worth seeing? Yes, its a good if nasty film. I don't know what I would have made of the film had I stumbled on to it unaware of what it contained. Certainly I don't know how much more out there you can go with out a film ceasing to be a western.Spaghetti western fans and those who like off beat films are invited to take a look. The rest are advised to proceed with caution.6 out of 10 for the unpleasantness and the uncertainty of a second viewing.

Giulio Questi's "Se Sei Vivo Spara" aka. "Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!" of 1967 is a great and very violent Spaghetti Western, and easily one of the genre's most twisted films.After The Stranger (played by the great Tomas Milian) is double crossed by his fellow bandits, he seeks revenge, and comes to a little town inhabited by folks who are anything but hospitable towards strangers. But not only are the towns inhabitants slightly psychopathic leisure time vigilantes with a strong fondness for lynchings and ultra violence, the area is also tyrannized by a sleazy fat landowner and his gang of gay cowboys.Rightly a cult flick, "Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!" is a great mixture of Horror Exploitation and Spaghetti Western, coming along with a great theme song by Ivan Vandor. The violence in this film is very graphical - lynchings, torture, mutilation, and a scalping, "Django Kill" got it all. And the movie is pretty surreal. Right in the beginning of the movie, Tomas Milian is crawling out of a mass grave, and saved by two Indians who make him bullets out of gold. Furthermore the movie has some other very bizarre elements, like a guy who rests his feet on a child, or a talking parrot for example.The acting is very good, especially Tomas Milian's performance is great (as always), the supporting cast includes Piero Lulli, and I also thought that Roberto Carmadiel, who plays the villainous landowner Mr. Sorrow did a great job. The cinematography and the locations are great, and so is the theme song, which I can't get out of my head.Like many other movies with Django in their title, "Django Kill, If You Live, Shoot!" has little to nothing to do with Sergio Corbucci's 1966 masterpiece "Django", however it is one of the best of these movies. Furthermore, this is not actually a Django movie, since it doesn't originally have the name Django in its title. "Se Sei Vivo Spara" was just given its Django-name in German and English, due to the success of Corbucci's masterpiece. If I counted this as a Django movie, however, I would have to say that this is my second favorite after the original.A great, gory and surreal film, "Se Sei Vivo Spara" is a must-see for us fans of Spaghetti Westerns and Tomas Milian. 9/10

This one certainly lives up to its reputation as the most peculiar Spaghetti Western there is, a quality which makes it unique but not exactly entertaining (the pace is slow and the film somewhat protracted, if never less than fascinating)! It features an atypical performance from lead Tomas Milian: usually the brash man of action with a humorous streak, here he's the cynical and mostly passive observer who even arrives late for the climax! Apart from the star, Marilu' Tolo and Ray Lovelock, the international cast - including several non-professionals - is unfamiliar but, as director Questi said in the exclusive Audio Commentary, their indelible faces were just what he needed for the film! By the way, in spite of the film's English title, it's not related to the 1966 DJANGO - and, in fact, Milian's character remains unnamed throughout - that spawned innumerable variations but only one direct sequel (made more than 20 years after the original)! Here, we also find several elements of Gothic horror (Milian 'rising' from the dead, the 'mad woman' character borrowed from "Jane Eyre", the weird prison torture scene involving vampire bats and iguanas, the fiery climax in which the villain's face is covered with melted gold, etc.); besides, Tolo is made-up to look like Barbara Steele and the greedy townsfolk's gory groping into the body of a dying bandit riddled with golden bullets curiously anticipates the zombie films of George Romero! Actually, the film's graphic depiction of violence gave it a certain notoriety which further fueled its cult status; in fact, the bullet sequence and the scalping of an Indian were censored at the time but, curiously, got reinstated for the shortened 1975 re-issue under the name of ORO HONDO (which had been the film's working title)! There's even a scene in which a horse is saddled with a charge of dynamite and let loose among the villains (whereupon we see shots of its intestines and the body parts of the various victims strewn about!) - though, in all fairness, in A PROFESSIONAL GUN (1968) a man was also nonchalantly killed by a grenade in the mouth!! Other unexpected elements in the film are its religious overtones (apart from Milian's crucifixion, the Indians who help him are mystics while the villainous Hagerman also serves pretty much as a bible-thumping preacher to the community) and the presence of black-clad gay cowboys as prototype Fascists (thankfully, we're spared their gang-rape of Lovelock - here in his film debut! - whose immediate reaction, naturally, is to shoot himself) led by a Spaniard (all dressed in white!) that goes by the name of Mr. Zorro(?!), and who shares a love-hate relationship throughout with a spirited parrot!! The film also features a good score by Ivan Vandor and Techniscope photography by Franco Delli Colli (though the outdoor night scenes are way too dark!), and the locations - Questi was especially proud of his uncharacteristic white desert - are notable too. Franco Arcalli, an unusual combination of screenwriter and film editor, devises some 'trippy' montages throughout - which, therefore, adds psychedelia to an already eclectic mix of cinematic styles that distinguish this Spaghetti Western! I opted to purchase the Italian DVD over Blue Underground's R1 edition due to the inclusion here of the afore-mentioned highly informative, full-length Audio Commentary featuring director Questi (who is very modest and actually attributes many of the film's bizarre touches to logical progressions of the narrative - which, needless to say, doesn't entirely convince the trio of moderators who accompany him throughout this engaging discussion!). However, with respect to the otherwise commendable Alan Young Pictures disc, one has to contend with a distracting layer change (in mid-sentence!), at least one other instance of audio drop-out and a baffling reversal, for one line of dialogue, to the English soundtrack (for the record, I watched the Italian-language version with the audio set in its original mono rendition; I tend to scoff at re-mixes of classic films)!!

The problem with "Django, Kill..." is it doesn't know when to quit. It is too loose to be compelling. Though it follows the fortunes of "The Stranger" (Tomas Milan) after he is left for dead by ruthless bandits, it is plotted all over the place and loses its way investigating every possible subplot on offer. It ignores the Milan story while doing so, but maybe that's because Milan's character is not very compelling. What Milan finally does could have been covered in a half hour short. Despite these gripes, the film is still an entertaining and bizarre one, and there's a vein of very black humor running through. The scene in which greedy human varmints tear open a body to search for gold bullets is very funny, as are director Giulio Questi's introductory shots of the film's featured town. It's like the writers are saying "No town could be this vile, except this one." There is a fairly bloody but not realistic scalping, the surgery scene, and some decent hanging shots. The shoot-outs are standard, not stylish, not dull. The score by Ivan Vandor is catchy and eccentric enough to sound like Morricone at times. Certainly worth seeing, but, script-wise, the very opposite of taut.