(aka: DJANGO THE BASTARD or THE STRANGER WORE A GUN)
Presented by American schlockmeister Herman Cohen, this has an excellent opening title score by Vasco and Mancuso with a woman hissing "Django" and wailing vocals, similar to Edda d'Orso with great orchestration to boot !! I like it !!
According to the press release from VCI, this originally had an X rating (for violence) which might explain why it has a 1974 date on it, even though the film was made in '69. Not sure why that took place since there's nothing in this film to warrant that. It certainly isn't any more violent than a lot of the other films of this genre.
It has some decent gunplay as Django wreaks revenge on those three Confederate officers who betrayed them to the yankees, but there isn't a whole lot of blood compared to say Fulci's FOUR GUNMAN FOR THE APOCALYPSE (1975). Even the Eastwood trilogy has more blood in it than this one.
The flashback to the Civil War scene also looked sloppy and stagy, so don't expect a repeat of the Civil War scenes from THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. Throw up a few tents and have a few extras fall unconvincingly. It had to be filmed quickly, I guess.
Also Anthony Steffan is kinda bland compared to say Franco Nero or John Phillip Law, which puts him in the REALLY bland category. He doesn't look particularly like an anti-hero, instead he looks like one of the bad guys. I guess that since he is a grim-reaper type of character in this film, you wouldn't want him to look the leading man.
Thomas Weisser, author of "Spaghetti Westerns" rates this one pretty high although I'm not as enthused about it as he is. I'll still give it a 7 out of 10, more for what I consider the exceptional score than for the film itself.
Presented by American schlockmeister Herman Cohen, this has an excellent opening title score by Vasco and Mancuso with a woman hissing "Django" and wailing vocals, similar to Edda d'Orso with great orchestration to boot !! I like it !!
According to the press release from VCI, this originally had an X rating (for violence) which might explain why it has a 1974 date on it, even though the film was made in '69. Not sure why that took place since there's nothing in this film to warrant that. It certainly isn't any more violent than a lot of the other films of this genre.
It has some decent gunplay as Django wreaks revenge on those three Confederate officers who betrayed them to the yankees, but there isn't a whole lot of blood compared to say Fulci's FOUR GUNMAN FOR THE APOCALYPSE (1975). Even the Eastwood trilogy has more blood in it than this one.
The flashback to the Civil War scene also looked sloppy and stagy, so don't expect a repeat of the Civil War scenes from THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. Throw up a few tents and have a few extras fall unconvincingly. It had to be filmed quickly, I guess.
Also Anthony Steffan is kinda bland compared to say Franco Nero or John Phillip Law, which puts him in the REALLY bland category. He doesn't look particularly like an anti-hero, instead he looks like one of the bad guys. I guess that since he is a grim-reaper type of character in this film, you wouldn't want him to look the leading man.
Thomas Weisser, author of "Spaghetti Westerns" rates this one pretty high although I'm not as enthused about it as he is. I'll still give it a 7 out of 10, more for what I consider the exceptional score than for the film itself.