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

Spaghetti Westerns 🎬
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Well for someone with a nick as El Topo is no surprised this happens to be one of my favourite spags. One of the first one I saw in the digital age, and for a while in my Top twenty.
This second viewing is a bit more critic, I can now understand the reason why it left my TOP 20, as I start seeing more and more SW.
There are a few long reviews in this one so we all know the score, and how strange the film looks.
One of the things I notice this time is that Questi made the film like if it was a Theatre play, at least from the point where the action starts to take place in the town, the town set its used like a big stage, and the narative build in several stages till the final climax.

Everyone seemed to notice the homosexual gang and their more than explicit behavier, but somehow unnotice is the important part the two female leads have in the story, specially Tolo (both get killed by the way).

Millian is perfect for the job, as a more passive Yojimbo, that after the revenge stuff is over and done, becames someone that is trying more to understand what really is going one, than one who’s taking part of the action.

The all acting is very good in the film, Sanz got one of his best parts in a Spag, from the many he was in, he’s character is the best one in the film for me, also the girls, even the more unknow one (Patrizia Valturri) are OK.

Questi really deceive us starting the film as usual revenge one, but in a fast way changing the story to some sort of moral tale, showing that no one worth trusting in this society we live in, all the characters are bad and mean bad ones there’s not a single ray of hope coming from this tragedy, and the connection betwwen gold and death via bullets ins priceless

The things I didn’t like this time, was the gore stuff, unnecessary in my view, if Questi had follow the surreal path a bit more, the film would have been even more interesting, also the Indian cahracters are underused in my view, but Questi wasn’t motivated by themystical stuff not conected with death, was Millian really resurected ?? not to save us that’s for sure

So in conclusion, the main achievement in Django Kill, is that with a reasoneble list of strange SW (from Matalo to Requiescent), this one still mange to be quite an unique effort, a real product of his time like many but more strange, when directors uses films to put to screen thier life experiences of war and political social fighting, something we all agree impossible to have today

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Wow, this was an interesting experience indeed. It almost seemed like Giulio Questi tried to mix many different styles and put those into one spaghetti western. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. There are some surreal scenes and on the other hand we have humorous scenes too and some of those are very brutal at the same time (taking golden bullets out of dead man’s body for example, I thought that scene was hilarious but quite brutal too). I liked the main town of the movie because it seems to be full of people who nobody can trust, there’s always somebody fooling somebody and I liked this environment which worked very well for the movie. Thomas Milian does great job and I also liked Marilù Tolo’s role too, she looked quite beautiful and kind of mysterious at the same time, good role from her all in all.

Django Kill… does have it’s weak points but I can see why this movie has such big “cult status” and it was enjoyable experience to finally see this a bit confusing SW. 8)

3,5 / 5 stars from me.

(and btw, this was my 30th spaghetti western that I watched, there’s still many more to see :slight_smile: )

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Well, this movie seems more interesting when you read the reviews than when you actually watch it. I guess it is supposed to be allegory about fascism and Italy, but the ‘message’ is left unclear so all the allegory becomes the allegory for allegory’s sake and appears to be randomly tossed around. People seem to like it because it is weird, but it is too easy, for me it has to be more than that. For couple of really awkward moments that live up to film’s reputation there is a whole lot of dullness with ‘gold this, gold that’ talk. Liked the music until it became irritatingly repetitive. Liquid gold stuff saves a day a little at the end, but this one I won’t count into favorites…

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I got the blu-ray of this this morning, so I watched it today (again). It really is THE spaghetti western in many ways, despite being quite unlike anything else. Like a crack addict looking to replicate that first hit, Django Kill represents - for me - the high that I’ve been chasing through the entire spag sub-genre since I first saw it in June of this year (on the day I signed up to the SWDb in fact). The dub veers from creepy to (unintentionally) downright funny, the plot barely makes a lick of sense and at several points swandives off of the deep end of reality altogether, and Milian’s character is nought but a spectator throughout the proceedings. Is it the first ever/only film where the events that unfold within are almost entirely unaffected by the main protagonist? Possibly. Gay uniformed cowboys? Bowler-hatted Native Americans? Talking birds (not a mimicking parrot either, but a bird capable of holding a conversation)? Jail-cell crucifictions? Obvious stock footage of some bats? Upside-down photography? You bet! This film’s got it all! And that’s before even mentioning the re-inserted gory bits, leaving everybody ominously switching briefly to Italian, or the fantastic first sweep by Oaks and his men into “The Unhappy Place”, a scene so eerie and primally upsetting that the whole movie could’ve easily become a Lovecraftian horror at that point; I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if Shub Niggurath herself had exploded out of the ground and began picking up Oaks’s men in her many tentacles and started squeezing them until they burst, raining blood all about and around. But all of those points, very probable MINUS points under other circumstances, serve to make this one of the most mesmerising, grotesquely beautiful, disturbing and, yes, BEST westerns I’ve ever seen. Not to mention one of the best theme tunes of the lot.

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...the fantastic first sweep by Oaks and his men into "The Unhappy Place", a scene so eerie and primally upsetting that the whole movie could've easily become a Lovecraftian horror at that point; I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if Shub Niggurath herself had exploded out of the ground and began picking up Oaks's men in her many tentacles and started squeezing them until they burst, raining blood all about and around.

Hmm. That’s interesting. I’ve never quite viewed the film that way before. But I really like your description. I think it’ll help loft my “meh” verdict of this movie to a higher place.

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Watch out, the BluRay is english friendly !!!

672×960 76.5 KB

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Anyone have any insight as to how this blu stacks up to the Blue Underground release? Still haven’t purchased that one yet and may get this one instead if its worth it

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As far as I can remember filmArt mentioned on their Facebook page (months ago) that their disc (meaning this German one) will be better than the BU disc. Or maybe they said more film like. Or something. But they did mention more grain.

I don’t like the BU disc. :stuck_out_tongue: But at a quick glance I feel like there is something wrong with the shots provided by Bluntwolf from the German disc. Better than the BU and very likely good enough for most but… I’m just not convinced. :wink: Maybe it is the same master BU used except with slightly less filtering? (Or in the case of filmArt maybe not filtered by them at all but that is how it came out of a shitty scanner :wink: )

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thanks Sundance. I can actually get some matching screens from the BU disc so. I will post up a comparison soon

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Here’s some screenshot comparisons…

Blue Underground (Top) vs DE filmArt (bottom)

image album:
http://imgur.com/a/FODYu

(posting link to photo album because the images are very large)

This German filmArt release does appear to look a bit better than the Blue Underground. Not insanely better, but a noticeable improvement. Colors are more vibrant & less faded, picture is clearer.

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Thanks autophex and thank you Bluntwolf for the review (mostly for the screenshots though because I can’t understand German :wink: ).

Same master, BU is just filtered a bit and thus the German disc wins (as far as I’m concerned). But something bothers me still. :wink: I think I’ll buy the German disc though if it is still available once I finally decide to click the checkout button.

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Same here… since its limited it may not be available by the time I’m ready to purchase, a bit pricy at 26.91 EUR + shipping to US

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I’ve organized a screening of Django kill, if you live… shoot!in a cinema in Zurich (http://gokino.ch/de/programs/168066?) and I’m asking myself if we should show it in English, Italian or German. Has anyone compared the three language versions? What me really distracts in the German version is that at least two characters have the voice of Wolfgang Hess, the German Bud Spencer voice-over artist. ;D So I would tend to the English or Italian version with Subtitles. What would you suggest?

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I have watched the English, Italian & French language version of this movie, but not really compared them.
I could select a scene, for instance the first five minutes, and watch them in the three different languages if nobody comes up with specific info on this subject

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Which version do you prefer?

Thanks for your offer. If there is no other opinion I’ll check it and decide by myself. At the BBC 2 film introduction of Alex Cox on youtube there is the English scene shown where we see a woman behind a window and she’s harassed by someone. She says “No, don’t! I’ll bite you! I’ll bite you!”. In the Spanish version (full movie is on youtube) the same scene (14.36-14.40) is dubbed with “Bastardo! Bastardo!” ;D

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I don’t know what to say about this movie that hasn’t already been said. The creativity is genius.my review/comment and I wanted to touch how creative I thought this film was. The basis of the story is the stranger avenging his friends who were double-crossed and killed. While searching for them, he ends up in a town called “The Unhappy Place.” After that we see homosexuality, golden bullets, a brutal hanging scene, men tearing open a bandit on an operating table thinking he’s full of gold (how bizarre, am I watching a western or a Giallo,) a kidnapping, a few romantic scenes were our stranger falls in love with elizabeth who is supposedly mad, scenes involving a drunk parrot, graverobbing, and the stranger surrounded by weird animals in a cell, all coming to a great ending, where our main anatongists either get blown up, or die in a fire! ( This scene everyone must see, it truly could have been shot by Bava, Fulci, Argento, Martino, or any other great Giallo film maker for that matter) Not sure wheather this would make my top 20 list, but I will rewatch in the near future.

1 Like
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I can see how “bite you” could match the lip movements of “bastardo” pretty well.

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The more I watch this film the more I love it.

And the more I notice how much one of the Indians sounds exactly like Stan Laurel in the English dub.

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I watched this one ages ago and hated it, but funnily enough I was thinking of giving it a re-watch last week. Might see it differently after all the time it’s been.

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I didn’t like it when I first saw it, then I felt compelled to watch it again and again. I really don’t think I was prepared for how different it was upon my first viewing.