Clint Eastwood surrogate, Franco Nero stars as the eponymous anti-hero Django in Sergio Corbucci’s classic and hugely nihilist spaghetti Western. The film opens with one of the all-time great sequences, with Django walking through a muddy rain washed desert dragging a coffin behind him as Rocky Roberts sings and the strings swell with the Django theme tune – surely one of the greatest character entrances ever. Following on from this startling opening sequence, Django comes across a group of men beating a woman, Maria (Loredana Nusciak). He rescues Maria and takes her with him to the nearest town, where they hole up at a bar / bordello owned by Nathaniel (Ángel Álvarez) to await Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo) and his men. Jackson runs a red-hooded anti-Mexican KKK outfit and has a major beef with Django for some unspecific reason. Django guns down most of Jackson’s men, before leaving, along with Maria, to join up with General Rodriquez (José Bódalo) and his bandits. Unfortunately Django falls out with Rodriguez over his share of a stash of stolen gold and he has his hands smashed to a bloody pulp. With Jackson and his men closing in Django is trapped in a lonely graveyard, unable to hold a gun.

“Django” like “Per un Pugno di Dollari” (A Fistful of Dollars) is another riff and variation on Akira Kurosawa's masterly “Yojimbo” (1961) with the protagonist once again inserting himself, for his own reasons, between two warring factions. Corbucci directs with a tough, no nonsense, highly functional style, getting his camera virtually “hand-held” in amongst the action and delivering a visceral experience as opposed to Segio Leone’s more cerebral and stylistically intellectual style. That isn’t to say that Corbucci doesn’t bring his own clever and satisfying stylistic flourishes – the town for example is portrayed as a blasted ruined war-zone, with windswept, sodden streets and the gunfight confrontations are masterful bursts of unbridled pyrotechnic violence. The climatic showdown in the graveyard is a standout sequence – a tour-de-force of eerie atmospheric Gothic inventiveness and sustained atmospherics. It is interesting to note that Ruggero Deodato of “Cannibal Holocaust” notoriety was the assistant director on the film. The actors all put in good, if slightly stereotypical, turns. Franco Nero steals the show as Django, however. Dressed in a black trench coat and black hat, he plays the role with a tough charismatic cool alongside a deep moral ambiguity. He is a riveting character – dirtier and more cynical than any Western hero up until this point and with his mysterious unexplored background, dragging his strange coffin behind him, he at times, comes across as a quasi-mystical or even religious figure. The score is by Luis Bacalov and is very good, but it is topped by the excellent Django theme tune with lyrics by Franco Migliacci and performed by Rocky Roberts in some weirdly wonderful cod-Elvis style. In summary all the strange elements that make up the film come together in a hugely pleasing manner, ensuring that everything about “Django” is excellent – the film is a true cult classic and one of the all-time great spaghetti Westerns. ( )