A Few Dollars for Django

And what's the difference?

Bounty hunter Anthony Steffan is sent to Montana to investigate a bank robbery. It's supposed to have been done by a man who has been dead for some time. However, his brother, Frank Woolf, is farming in the area with his dead brother's daughter, Gloria Osuna. On the way, Steffan finds a dead man with a sheriff's badge and papers. He pockets them and heads to town, where he is acclaimed as the sheriff. Unfortunately for him, the ranchers are fighting with the homesteaders.

Clearly it's meant to be the Johnson County War, except that it's about fifteen years early. Ignoring that, it's a nicely told story, with some beautiful wide-screen cinematography by DP Aldo Pinelli -- he knows how to recompose the frame with miscellaneous items -- and a very nice, swaggering performance by Wolff. The title of the movie and the opening sequence may make you think you're in another Man With No Name ripoff. However, everyone seems to have at least two names. While the body count is impressively high, it's a nice little spaghetti western.

This Italo-Spanish movie has all the classic ingredients of a good spaghetti.

Just to set the scene, a bandit along with a bounty killer found themselves against powerful ranch owners, but will these two be able to bring a little law and order to Mile city, where violence and villainy are considered to be a virtue.

What an impressive camera work, especially in the opening scene, where you can see the bounty killer on the back of a donkey through the arched hands of the two competitors.

I rented the DVD of this movie from LASER(specialist DVD libraries in Dublin), my main criticism of the movie is that the lips are not harmonized with the words, but that shouldn't be a matter of concern as the roses have thorns too.

A good combination of Antonio De Teffe and Frank Wolf, both icons of Spaghetti Western.

The score adapted for the movie is pleasant to hear. Note, the song "there will come a morning" by Carlo Savina.

it is movie I would recommend to a friend, and a foe for a change!

This bravura, bullet-blasted B-Western's Euro-cult credentials are impeccable, co-directed by Argentinian Horror master León Klimovsky, and Euro-crime tzar Enzo G. Castellari, with a darkly charismatic performance by urbane Giallo gent Anthony Steffen as the enigmatic outlaw Django turned hardline Sheriff! Plus a Bobby Dazzler of a score by maestro Carlo Savina! The quick-draw savagery in 'Few Dollars For Django' is served up hotter than spaghetti all'assassina! When this tall, cheroot chewing coffin filler rides into town, beware the distracting gleam of sheriff Regan's Golden Star which is no less dazzling than this iconic gunslinger's deadly facility with a six-shooter!

Steffen's stoical Django is a swarthy, skull-perforating Pistolero of few words, but his fast-talkin' Colt proves to be a most eloquent companion! So, you better PRAY you never meet this bloodthirsty bounty killer on the business end of his lightning-fast pistol, as a duel with Django is a date with your own death!!!! In the misbegotten, deeply corrupted town of Mile City Django is the new law, and with a lawman like that who needs enemies!!! This rewardingly rumbustious Spanish-Italian co-production makes good use of the dynamically versatile character actor Frank Wolff who is on epic, twin-fisted form as burly, sharp-shooting farmer big Jim Norton, with his beautiful daughter enticingly played by dusky Spanish beauty Gloria Osuna. With long-fulminating tensions rising to fever pitch between murderous Amos Brownsberg (Alfonso Rojas), Jim Norton, and sheriff Regan, 'A Few Dollars For Django' delivers a barnstorming barrage of ballistic mayhem, climaxing energetically in an enjoyably explosive six-gun showdown!

Although this one is not a real Django entry - Steffen plays a gunfighter named Reagan here - it's a typical Italian western of the sixties with all the touches that gives a special and cult atmosphere for this genre nowdays. A good fun for nostalgic addicts of western spaghetti but not a great movie.

I give this a 6 (six) because I'm a nostalgic guy too.

This is said to be Enzo Castellari's debut film and it's for that reason I tracked it down. Sadly, it doesn't quite become a great film, but does have it's saving graces.

There's a town in Montana where ranchers and farmers are having a land dispute which about to become all out war, and while on his way there bounty hunter Regan (Antony Steffen) happens across the murdered body of the town's sheriff. Adopting his persona, Steffen breezes into a town that has got a whole heap of warring factions going on...and he's caught right in the middle.

On one side are the farmers, reluctantly led by Frank Wolff, who believes he can settle the business peacefully. Frank's problems are plentiful - his daughter is getting harrassed in town by ranchers, his land is being threatened by ranchers, the farmers want to go to war and there's the slight problem that Frank may well be a hunted criminal with a bounty on his head who is impersonating his own twin brother. That's what Steffen thinks is going on, but then he's impersonating a sheriff so it's a case of pot calling the kettle black.

The head of the ranchers just wants to wipe the farmers off the face of the Earth and get on with, so he brings in some outlaws who reckon that the fake Frank might be the real Frank too, and after a lot of talky bits, we do get an all out gun battle at the end, but is it too little too late?

Possibly. The film is almost devoid of Enzo's patented crazy camera angles, so the dramatic scenes (where Steffen falls in love with Frank's daughter, and there's a lot of talk about taking land, people threatening each other, that sort of thing) drag on a bit, but then there's a good chemistry between Steffen and Wolff, because you're not quite sure if Frank is impersonating his own brother, or if he is, whether or not he's a reformed character or still a violent outlaw.

Things do kick into gear when the action arrives. Maybe it just took a film or two to realise where his strengths lay.

Enzo himself turns up as a gunman who gets a cap popped in his ass. I wouldn't put this anywhere near the top of a 'must-see' list.