Django Kill … If You Live, Shoot! / Se sei vivo spara (Giulio Questi, 1967)

Mrs. Sartana Django Ballads, and look how that turned out!

OUCH! :o

I was wondering: Is this film as violant as alot of people say?

It’s not THAT violent. You get some bullet wounds, one guy getting bullet digged out of his body [not in a close-up and it’s visible only for a moment], a scalping [you see only some blood on the forehead as they begin and then one guy holds a bloodied scalp in his hand] and horse gets blown up by a dynamite [you can see aftermath for a few seconds]. That’s about it. Cut throats 9, Fighting fists of shanghai Joe and Fasthand is still my name are more violent in my opinion.

It’s pretty violent at times (the bullet digging scene is very zombie movie-esque) but just not as good as people say. Not a bad flick, but the most over-rated sw that I’ve seen yet. I’ll revisit it again soon & see if my opinion varies.

Not really violent by todays standards.

…but yet still some scenes I found disturbing such as the scalpings, murdering of the outlaw band and digging in the chest cavity.

Technically I’ve seen much worse but in the context of this movie I found it violent. Can’t imagine what I would have thought back in the day!

[quote=“Pacificador, post:87, topic:299”]…but yet still some scenes I found disturbing such as the scalpings, murdering of the outlaw band and digging in the chest cavity.

Technically I’ve seen much worse but in the context of this movie I found it violent. Can’t imagine what I would have thought back in the day![/quote]
You probably would have had a drink. ;D

The odds are good. :slight_smile:

For me the violence in Django Kill is still disturbing, and even shocking by today’s standards, which has produced much worser images.

For me it’s also still the most violent SW. Cut Throat’s Nine and to a lesser extent Shanghai Joe are also extreme, but more in a childish way. Their violence is absolutely dated, while Questi’s and sometimes Corbucci’s films are still nasty.

Shanghai Joe is just fun over-the-top gore, at least when viewed today

I’ve always thought Fistful of Dollars and Django were among the really violent SWs, they have some strong scenes even by todays standards

I also think the relatively few SWs that had truly graphic violence gave the whole genre a reputation of being violent in the 60s, even if most SWs weren’t so bad after all

I think I need to see this movie a second time to rate it properly. It derails from time to time (like with the Indian characters appearing and disappering conveniently) and might have used some cut, maybe. But it had very interesting visuals - I can see why Alex Cox, being a director himself and all, might be particularly fond of it. There is this constant feeling of uneasyness throughout the whole movie… it’s not a horror, but IMO it’s shot like it were one. It reminded me vaguely of Pupi Avati’s La casa dalle finestre che ridono with the “what’s wrong with this town?!?” feeling, and, interestingly, of the Babylon episodes in the series Carnivàle.

On the other hand, Milian’s character does act like he’s a ghost with “unfinished business”… What this business was is open to interpretation though :slight_smile: My - purely speculative - guess is that the gold is “cursed” and has to be destroyed… of course you can’t destroy gold, but I find it interesting that Milian apparently has to shoot all of his golden bullets (why?), and that eventually Tembler got killed by the melted gold. It’s as if it needed to be washed in blood, and only then Milian could be free. At least, that’s how I explained it to myself. I mean, I found an explanation for Lynch’s Lost highway only to read reviews that said that trying to make sense of the plot wasn’t important because there was no plot to begin with! All that work for nothing, lol.

Also, unusual sexual overtones there. We have Ray Lovelock’s character basically subverting a trope that is usually reserved to female characters [url]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IHaveYouNowMyPretty[/url] ::), and then, did I get it wrong or did Milian and Tembler’s wife have sex while knowing he was behind the door? And the same Tembler who locked her up out of jealousy (and religious fanaticism) was kind of okay with that? We might expect the hero to get the girl, but there’s a weird relationship going on there.

I guess one of the biggest merits of this film would be that it uses recognizable SW tropes but twists them enough to make you feel slightly uncomfortable about it. For instance the final shot, with Milian riding away - it could have been your classic Western “happy ending”, but then it cuts to the children playing with thread and making mock angry faces at each other… it isn’t unsettling in itself, but after all you’ve seen in the movie it casts some sort of ominous shadow.

[quote=“Lindberg, post:91, topic:299”]Shanghai Joe is just fun over-the-top gore, at least when viewed today

I’ve always thought Fistful of Dollars and Django were among the really violent SWs, they have some strong scenes even by todays standards

I also think the relatively few SWs that had truly graphic violence gave the whole genre a reputation of being violent in the 60s, even if most SWs weren’t so bad after all[/quote]
Especially Django IMO. It’s not just violent, it’s also a cruel film.

I remember watching it for the first time when I was eleven, and I always thourght that it should have got a “12” rating rather than a “15”. A lot of people say that the killing of the Baxter family is really violent, but I never found it violant.

Fistful is quite violent, at least in the completely uncut version… apart from the massacre of the Baxter family there’s also the beating up of Joe… and Ramon coughing up blood in the final duel, and some other stuff too

Don’t understand how you could find it not violent ?

[quote=“Lindberg, post:95, topic:299”]Fistful is quite violent, at least in the completely uncut version… apart from the massacre of the Baxter family there’s also the beating up of Joe… and Ramon coughing up blood in the final duel, and some other stuff too

Don’t understand how you could find it not violent ?[/quote]
The beating up of Joe is pretty violant, probably the most violant part of the film. My version of the film is about 96 minutes. Is there a longer version?

I think all DVD versions are uncut, but there were older VHS and theatrical versions which were trimmed

I saw Fistful for the first time about a year ago and I found it violent but it didn’t shock me. I’d say it’s rather SW standard since most SW’s are violent. And Fistful has, even if it is downbeat, a more upbeat atmosphere than for example Django or Black Jack, not to mention The Great Silence…

And my version is also 96 minutes.

No Fistful is not standard, it’s more violent than most other SWs

It must have shocked audiences in 1964 I believe

Django is more cruel, but it was on the other hand totally banned in some countries

I think also that we should diferentiate between bloody and violent. Blood is graphic while violent is gruesome but is more physcological I think. The Baxter killing is not bloody as it is gruesome and grotesque which is part of the physcological violence. The shere cold bloodedness of the villains and the terror of the Baxters.

The Joe beating is more bloody type violence. But on a whole, Leone’s violence is more based on cynicism I think. And the complete lack of emotion.