What did they cut in The Great Silence? When I watched some of it, the sex scene was intact. I was puzzled why it wasn’t edited since they were showing it around 11am.
Never mind. I read the other comments. 
Really liked this one. Much better than Vari‘s POS Shoot the Living & Pray for the Dead. Looking forward to getting the Koch DVD so I can see this in Italian.
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Smart dialogue, well acted, but I didn’t get a feel for much of the countryside. Plus the beginning seemed disjointed from the rest of the film. I’d have the outlaws harassing ‘an old man with a harmonica’, so it could aesthetically tie-in with Django’s retirement-muse about revisiting the old man with the harmonica from his youth… as Ramon waxes philosophical about both ‘narratives’. Ghidra’s performance makes it a 7-out-of-10.
Were you guys here really comparing this little movie to the Day of Anger? 
I think the themes of the both movies are not even the same. Yes there are similarities as there are similarities between almost any other two spaghetti westerns. There is a mentor who shares his experience with his student. Well that is about it. The theme of the Day of Anger is raising from the lowest possible position to the highest by means that are not exactly morally acceptable. But was there another way? It also delivers a message that well respected rich people might be and many indeed are rotten to the core. This makes the movie timeless. (Should have watched this movie b4 op.). Becoming a gunfighter is a mean to tell the story while in the Last Killer it is the story itself. The Last Killer is a revenge movie while in the Day of Anger revenge is just a plot point to finish the story. The main motive for the Gemma character’s actions during the movie is to be respected, it is not a revenge.
If you want it in points The Last Killer gets ass kicked.
Day of Anger vs Last Killer
- iconic musical score vs annoying musical score
- iconic actors vs ok actors (prob. Eastman’s best role though)
- excellent production and locations vs average production and locations
- big budget vs low budget
- hero rides a mule vs hero rides a mule TIE!
- pretended animal cruelty (Gemma pretending beating a mule) vs real animal cruelty (Eastman riding a mule)
- timeless movie’s theme vs generic revenge story
- silly and funny gun lessons vs more realistic approach + some added cheese
- energetic storytelling vs tiresome storytelling
Is there really any competition? The only thing that I’d say is better about The Last Killer is it is not as choppy/episodic as Day of Anger in the middle of the movie. It has more coherent storytelling but at the same time it is also more tiring.
Well, it’s all subjective, isn’t it? I mean FWIW I agree with your comparisons and I think Day of Anger is the superior movie by far (and our own SWDB official poll to establish a community top 20 would suggest that that’s the consensus opinion too, with Day of Anger occupying 14th spot and The Last Killer in 97th), but The Last Killer certainly has sufficient quality for at least some to hold it in similar esteem.
That always bothered me too … felt like shouting at the TV, saying, “Get off that poor little donkey, you big clumsy bastard!” 
Sure, the movie is perfectly ok. What bothered me the most was the music. There are just few tracks and I did not like them. Music is often a key factor for my liking. I’m very sensitive about that. I tend to sort movies by several factors. How I personally enjoy them, how well the movie is made, what it tries to tell, how well it manages to tell it, etc. For instance I don’t like zappata westerns too much but I could not say Duck you sucker or A Bullet for a general are inferior to my fav. movies that are more enjoyable for me but don’t have such a good qualities like camera, music, etc. I mean you can see these two movies are incredibly well and professionally made. I can’t say really a one bad word about them. The more the two compared movies are different in a quality the more you can see it. If you had a movie with just one location (bar for instance) and camera would be completely static I doubt anyone could say “Look, this movie is better than GBU!”. I know it is balancing somewhere between the subjective and objective view since it is never such an extreme case. I never say a movie sucks just because it is not my cup of tea. I like revenge movies and I gave this one several chances even because it is one of Stanton’s fav movies and I really appreciate his views (even though I often split with him in rating) and so I tried to find the goods here. I never found them.
For me too, But I just listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_SRf_7s6Dw
…and after just one listening I found at least a substantial part of possibly good hispanic traditional trumpets and harmonica, but mixed with some unconventional music for SW.
This thread points to that I would probably rank Django The Last Killer as a 6 or 7/10, but since my requirement is 7/10 I should watch it at Youtube before considering to buy a DVD.
The discussed Day Of Anger has a 7/10 rating by me, so the competion is obvious in a matter of speaking since very different opions exist in this thread.
The image quality of this YouTube version might be discouraging though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS5FReM7zJQ
Agreed! From about 1:36 it’s wistful, melancholic and beautiful. I recognize it from one of my SW music collection CDs and was impressed from first hearing.
There’s certainly something to that. I don’t want to move too far from the thread subject of The Last Killer for too long but if you gentlemen will indulge me for a second, with apologies: I can’t get along at all with A Stranger in Town (Vanzi, 1966) - a sparse, violent western I should love - purely because of that mind-bending off-key theme played over and over and over (and over). You know: Doo-DOO-doo-dooo. Also (and I’m in a tiny minority here), I’m not especially keen on Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968) solely because of its massive overuse of character-specific themes for all of the principals (away from the spaghettis, High Noon is another really decent western damaged for me by its incessant theme).
On the other hand, I love Keoma (Castellari, 1976) and Mannaja (Martino, 1977) despite two of the most cock-smackingly bad soundtracks ever recorded. 
I can’t honestly say that I can specifically recall the music from The Last Killer; I’ll need to give the movie another look soon anyway, don’t think I’ve seen it in awhile.
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What key is it supposed to be in?
I think the concept of character themes is cheesy, but I like the way Ennio executed it.
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F*ck knows, but it surely can’t be intentional the way it is, can it? It’s as flat as a pancake! Hurts my teeth every time it plays. Doo-DOO-doo-dooo! Even writing that out makes me feel anxious. Reminds me of Chief Wiggum deliberately singing off-key to his attack dogs, to rile them up:
I like Harmonica’s theme but it’s way overplayed, until it grates (plus I’m not keen on the way his theme kicks off every time he puts the harmonica to his lips, rather than hearing Bronson actually play the theme). Cheyenne’s Steptoe-like dirge just grates from the off.
(with apologies once more for the further off-topic. Last one from me, gentlemen)
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LOL - excellent! 
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It is in a-minor key and the guitar sounds indeed flat. 1/4 or so. It might even be intentional to make it sound disturbing and tense. Even the choice of the notes is sick. In that case they obviously succeeded cause my teeth also start to hurt when I hear it.
Now I have watched Django The Last Killer on Youtube. The teacher-pupil theme is as I recall maybe even more emphasized here than in Day Of Anger.
The film is a bit slow for example in the “teaching phase”.
The acting is OK but Lee Van Cleef is the big advantage in Day Of Anger which I rank 7/10. To see that film in my Bluray disc is clearly entertaining, but maybe Django The Last Killer could benefit enough with a decent DVD for it to also be ranked 7/10 by me ?
About the music I actually found the 8 minute Youtube compilation slightly better or more diversified. The main slow guitar or harmonica (or trumpet at least in the compilation) theme is very good but very short and repeated very very often during in lack of variation. That is a little weakness.
Anyhow I think it might be more fair to rank this a 6/10 together with .Long Days Of Vengeance , A Pistol For Ringo, Mannaja, Face To Face, Death Walks In Laredo, Light The Fuse…Sartana Is Coming, and I like these films (but all except for Mannaja and Face To Face are a bit too lighthearted) .
But maybe I order a DVD with Django The Last Killer to be sure
For me 7/10, the same as Day of Anger, and in my top fifty.
Incredible bargain.
Shocking … positively shocking! 
