No Room to Die

This film begins on the banks of the Rio Grande, where a vicious outlaw named "Manuel Santana" (Emilio Messina) learns of an approaching cavalry unit intending to arrest him and his gang for smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States. To avoid being caught red-handed, Santana decides to kill all the illegal immigrants he has hiding in his wagons and ride off. Needless to say, activities like this have already drawn the attention of the United States government. Since the U. S. Cavalry cannot go into Mexico to apprehend these men, a bounty is soon issued to help in that regard. That being said, within no time, a highly efficient bounty hunter named "Johnny Brandon" (Anthony Steffen) arrives on the scene to capitalize on the situation. Yet even though he swiftly ends Santana's operation, he soon realizes that there is a much bigger smuggling operation in that area and, to that effect, he turns to another skillful bounty hunter named "Everett 'Bible' Murdock" (William Berger) to help him out. What he fails to take into consideration, however, is that his primary target is a man named "Mr. Fargo" (Riccardo Garrone) who is much more resourceful than Santana could ever be. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was one of those Spaghetti Westerns that had all of the right ingredients but never really attained what potential might have been there. One case in particular had to do with the casting of Nicoletta Machiavelli (as "Maya"), who was poorly utilized throughout the course of the film. Additionally, some of the alternate titles, like "A Noose for Django," are extremely misleading, as there is nobody named Django in this film at all. Be that as it may, while this film wasn't a complete waste of time, I was still left somewhat disappointed, and I have rated this movie accordingly.

This film was made in the same year as 'Django the Bastard', with the same director and the same actor in the title role. A Noose for Django feels a lot like an afterthought, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that is the case. This film doesn't benefit from as good a storyline as the aforementioned Spaghetti western, and it feels more like a film that has had the name 'Django' slapped on it to help it's selling prospects, as the title character feels very much like he's just been dropped into the plot. The plot highlights the antagonism between Mexicans and Americans in a story about smuggling illegal immigrants into an American township. Towards the start, we see a smuggler ditch his cargo in callous fashion. From there, we learn that there's a bounty on the heads of all illegal smugglers, and this attracts the bounty hunter Django to the fray in order to bring the men to justice. However, Django isn't the only hunter on their trail as he faces competition from other gunslingers. Well, I think this is the basic plot line; the muddled screenplay doesn't exactly make it easy to decipher exact plot details.

A Noose for Django is one of the more difficult to find entries in the Django series, and that seems pretty apt it really isn't all that good. Naturally, the film features a plethora of violent gun fights and a handful of gritty characters; but nothing is really explained or done in any great detail, which really leaves the film feeling rather flat. Anthony Steffen gives a performance that is, in my opinion, better than the one he gave in Django the Bastard (albeit slightly); but it's spoiled by the fact that he's eclipsed by his rival bounty hunter and his very cool seven barrelled shotgun! Said gun represents what is probably the only real memorable thing about this film; which really says a lot for it. However, in typical Italian fashion; A Noose for Django compensates for its muddled and rather boring story with style. The atmosphere is dark and gritty and the locations, while obviously cheap, do help the film with regards to the atmosphere as it presents a very minimalist western style. Overall, I can't say that I liked this film very much and don't recommend tracking it down; although there may be something here for Spaghetti western fan.

I love this movie. It is a masterpiece of the genre. It has it's flaws no doubt. The acting is good in places and wooden in others. Overall though it is a very cool film. If you like the Italina westerns, then don't hesitate to check this one out. The cinematography is top-notch, the music and sound effects are great! I especially love the way it starts! Bom bom BOM!!!!!!

Anthony Steffen is not the best actor in the genre but he does a satisfactory job here. William Berger is great as always! It contains more of the Django style multi-barrel guns and surreal sequences and moving camera shots with cool angles and experimental shots. The movie does contain some violence towards animals (there is a cockfight sequence).

Experience taught me that, in case of spaghetti-westerns, it's always useful and interesting to Google-translate the original Italian titles. For some reason, the international titles in English are either irrelevant (most titles refer to in one way or another to the character of "Django" because that was the biggest commercial success) or nearly not exciting enough. Please disregard the English titles "A Noose for Django" and "No Room to Die" as the original title literally translates as "A Long Line of Crosses", which is – in my humble opinion as a western fanatic at least – a much more exhilarating and meaningful title. That being said, "A Long Line of Crosses" isn't the prototypic kind of spaghetti western that I would recommend in case you're fairly new to the genre. The film contains a number of fantastic elements, including a massively high body count and a terrific use of filming location and camera angles, but writer/director Sergio Garrone's script is too often confusing, incoherent and (unnecessarily) complex. Admittedly I often couldn't quite figure out why certain things happened, why some of the characters kept on double-crossing each other, or why the enemies didn't kill each other much earlier. The poor English dubbing obviously didn't help, neither. I'm relatively sure that the main plot focuses on the rich and supremely evil Mr. Fargo (depicted by the director's brother) who runs the highly immoral but profitable business of illegally smuggling poor Mexicans across the Texan border. Once he cashed the little amounts of money these people own, he sadistically dumps them into a ravine. The large list of notorious outlaws that he works with lures two different bounty hunters to town. Johnny Brandon and Everett "Preacherman" Murdock have two completely different personalities, but their pistols are equally fast and deadly. They close a pact to hunt down all the wanted criminals together, but Brandon is a defender of human rights whereas Preacherman is simply interested in the rewards. I honestly wouldn't ponder too much about the plot and merely enjoy the grotesque violence and delightful spaghetti western trademarks. "A Long Line of Crosses" bathes in that typical raw and filthy atmosphere, with lots of nasty-looking gunmen sweating and stinking in the burning sun, and the number of thugs falling dead from the cliffs or to the ground is practically countless. Anthony Steffen and particularly William Berger give away adequate performances, but – as usual – I personally liked the bad guy the most. Garrone is definitely the least brilliant Sergio of his generation of Italian western directors (defeated easily by Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Sollima) but I still appreciate his movies very much.

Bounty hunter Anthony Steffen teams up with shifty, bible-toting rival William Berger, who dresses like a preacher and carries a shotgun with seven barrels, in order to take on a ruthless gang of human smugglers working the Mexican border.

An entertaining, though somewhat standard-issue Italian western, this is well-made and fairly atmospheric, with a neat final gun-down. Steffen and especially Berger are pretty cool too, as is big Mario Brega (of Leone's Dollars trilogy among other films) finally getting to play one of the good guys!

One interesting aspect of the film is the depiction of illegal immigration, the "coyotes", and their primarily well-to-do white enablers as a public nuisances that help in keeping poor Mexicans down. This is a point of view you'll never see in the scared, hypocritical film world of today.