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DJANGO, PREPARE A COFFIN – The Blu Review – We Are Movie Geeks

Blu-Ray Review

DJANGO, PREPARE A COFFIN – The Blu Review

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Review by Roger Carpenter

The spaghetti western subgenre is littered with series-headlining characters like Sabata, Sartana, and Ringo.  But for sheer popularity as well as film volume, no one beats Django.

Director Sergio Corbucci introduced Django to an international audience in 1966.  Starring Franco Nero as the titular character, the film was so immensely popular across the globe that it spawned at least 60 unofficial sequels with titles like Django the Bastard, Viva! Django, Django Kill…If You Live Shoot!, Django Kills Softly, and literally dozens of others.  There was even a comedy western entitled Nude Django.  The name continues to live on with Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), which not only sports the original “Django” theme song but also a small part for Django himself, Franco Nero, as a bettor during a Mandingo fight.


The Italians are famous for jumping onto any cinematic bandwagon, and they were quick to do just that when the original Django was released to huge box office.  Many Django films began as standalone westerns with nothing to do with Django and were simply retitled to cash in on the name.  Indeed, there is no guarantee that viewers will even encounter a character named Django in a Django film.  In this particular case, writer/director Ferdinando Baldi at least guarantees that not only will the character of Django feature in this film, but his machine-gun coffin does as well.  This time out actor Terence Hill (AKA Mario Girotti) stars as Django, and was reportedly hired because he had a passing resemblance to Franco Nero.

Hill stars as Django, a traveling hangman happy to do the law’s dirty work for 25 pieces of gold, never mind that many of the condemned are obviously innocent.  The beginning of the film sets up Django as a villain, which certainly is different than the usual heroic aura the character has.  However, Django has a trick up his sleeve.  It seems he harbors a hatred for outlaw David Barry (Horst Frank), who killed Django’s wife and left Django for dead in an ill-conceived robbery.  Django is faking the executions and sending the “dead” to a secret camp to await further instructions, with an eye towards vengeance against David Barry.  But will Django be able to put his plan in place, or will the temptation of the hidden gold be too much for his band of cutthroats?

While perhaps not as well-known as some of the more prestigious spaghetti westerns, Django, Prepare a Coffin is still a solid film.  Director Ferdinando  Baldi had a long, if not quite distinguished, career as a director.  Texas, Adios, another spaghetti western, is probably his best-known film.  He proves here he is a good technical director.  Terence Hill, who starred in a ton of these kinds of films, is a very good copy of the original Django character, complete with razor stubble, piercing blue eyes, and dressed all in black.  Hill would go on to star in another very popular spaghetti western series as Trinity, along with other classics like My Name is Nobody.  Horst Frank, as David Barry, is simply terrific as the bad guy.  He, too, has piercing eyes and, since he’s also German, draws a fair amount of comparison to fellow German actor and spaghetti western baddie, Klaus Kinski.  Kinski typically played his villains as barely contained pure evil.  Frank isn’t quite that crazed, but certainly is steely-eyed, vicious, and cruel.  Frank had a long and varied career and worked with Jess Franco (The Marquis De Sade’s Justine), Umberto Lenzi (So Sweet…So Perverse), Dario Argento (The Cat O’ Nine Tails), and also appeared in the genuine spaghetti western classic, The Grand Duel.  Eurosleaze star George Eastman (the Anthropophagous himself) plays a supporting role as the evil puppet master pulling the strings of Horst Frank’s character. This is a bit of a turn for Eastman, whose real name is Luigi Montefiori, as he can typically be found playing innocuous characters in plenty of spaghetti westerns throughout the sixties.  It’s a shame his more prurient films of the 70’s and 80’s, typically made with sleaze director Joe D’Amato, seem to have encouraged many to dismiss him as a hack, as he is generally very good.  Unfortunately, his character in this film, a crooked politician, really serves no purpose but to tie the characters together during an opening scene which takes places at a political rally. Horst Frank’s character of David Barry is evil enough and actually gets a bit watered down due to his slavish behavior towards Eastman’s character.  It all seems a bit contrived and unnecessary and the story could have been better-served with David Barry simply going it alone as the evil robber baron.


Of course, it wouldn’t be a spaghetti western without plenty of standoffs, gunfights, and betrayal between the primary characters, and this film is no different.  Django is captured and beaten only to escape to wreak havoc on the bad guys, all of which sets up the finale that sees Django digging up his coffin and machine gun just in time for a standoff with dozens of David Barry’s cronies.

Arrow Video has released Django, Prepare a Coffin in a special, 2-disc edition that comes with a Blu-Ray as well as a standard DVD presentation.  The film looks great on HD.  There is the option of Italian and English language tracks, along with subtitles for the Italian track or English SDH for the English language version.  Atypical of the majority of Arrow’s releases, this particular set is light on the special features, including only the original trailer as well as a short explanation of the Django phenomenon of retitling movies hosted by spaghetti western expert and author Kevin Grant.  It’s an interesting little feature for those not well-versed in the peculiarities of Italian genre cinema.  An illustrated collector’s booklet is included for the first pressing only.

You can order the film through Amazon or directly from Arrow at http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/category/usa/