DVDs in Review

Cult Spaghetti Westerns Set

Title: Cult Spaghetti Westerns Set - Django (1966), Keoma (1976) and A Bullet For The General (1966)

Release date: June 21 2010

Certificate: 15

Format: DVD

RRP: £24.99

Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

While most people’s idea of a ‘Spaghetti Western’ DVD collection will be Sergio Leone’s ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, ‘For a Few Dollars More’ and ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’ starring Clint Eastwood, there are other essentials in the budget Italian cowboy genre, namely ‘Django’, the first film in this set.

‘Django’ is arguably one of cinema’s greatest westerns. Dirt cheap, dog ugly and splattered in violence, it stars Franco Nero as the antihero gunslinger of the title. He’s introduced seen dragging a coffin through the mud – an iconic image that presents an intriguing religious symbol of the man carrying his kills with him wherever he goes, given all the more literal power when we discover what’s actually in the box.

Naturally the plot is far from subtle – corrupt man of power overruns a struggling town, killing innocents, claiming land and so on until the lone hero enters and teams up with some revolutionaries to take him down and restore the balance of power. It’s been done before (for better and worse), but the lack of complex substance is made up with director Sergio Corbucci’s inventiveness behind the camera.

Stirring music and visual style mixed with his direction to his actors to play fully up to their archetypical characters’ traits makes for a rousing experience that is all at once easy to watch and hard to stomach.

The other selections in Argent Films’ box are slightly lesser examples of the shoestring Italian genre, but they’re cult classics nevertheless. ‘Keoma’ is actually a sequel of sorts to ‘Django’ and in some territories is actually called ‘Django Rides Again’ – it tells a similar tale of Franco Nero’s character’s homecoming (this time as a war veteran) to find that his town has gone awry under oppressive leadership.

There’s a dodgy folk soundtrack (inevitably inspired by Robert Altman’s flawless use of Leonard Cohen tracks for his western ‘McCabe and Mrs Miller’ in 1971), some Pekinpah style slow motion and even less subtle religious imagery than last time – there’s a crucifixion scene. But the point of these films isn’t to fly under the radar. This is glossy, shallow filmmaking but at its most professionally assured.

‘A Bullet for the General’ benefits by snagging wild-eyed international film star Klaus Kinski in second billing but he’s not in the film all that much.  There are some thrilling sequences on a train as well as some more imaginative filmmaking techniques on display such as having a pivotal explosion go off in the background while a champagne cork is popped in the foreground, which perfectly sums up the kind of celebration that these films provoke from their own joyous use of violence. They’re a blast.