Spaghetti westerns can be confusing—primarily because almost the entire genre was built on one big rip-off. That’s to say every film was pretty much a rip-off of some other film, and sometimes a single film might be a rip-off of a rip-off. Films would often have multiple titles, and many had names like Django, Sartana, or Trinity added to the title, to make it seem like it was part of an already established series. In reality, there weren’t that many series, just a bunch of titles ripping off other titles, creating the illusion of a series—as is the case with the Django films. As I’ve already explained, Sergio Corbucci’s Django spawned thirty sequels—and that’s not including recent films like Django Unchained, or non-westerns like Django and the Sharks. Almost none of the westerns with the name Django in the title were actual sequels, and very few even had characters named Django. But this meant very little to the working class Italian audiences that flocked to see the movies, talking and smoking throughout the film, and often leaving before the final reel had played. As long as there was gunplay, it was good enough for much of the target audience.
If you were to watch ten movies in the “Django” series—not including the first one—you can rest assured that you’d be seeing some terrible movies. I’m no mathematician, so I can’t give you the actual stats, but since there are only one or two other Django films that don’t totally suck, I’d say you’d be playing against the odds if you just start watching crap like Django Kills Silently. Instead, take it from me, and just sit down and watch Django the Bastard, maybe Django Strikes Again, and skip the other twenty or thirty movies.
Released under the titles Django the Bastard and The Stranger’s Gundown, this film has the distinction of being marketed as a sequel to two different films—Corbucci’s original Django, and director Luigi Vanzi’s A Stranger in Town. Anthony Steffen stars as Django, or the Stranger, depending on which version you see. Hell, for all I know there could be a version where he’s called Fred Flintstone, which knowing how some Italian producers operate isn’t that implausible. Anyway, this time around our hero may or may not be some type of angel of vengeance (or perhaps a ghost) seeking revenge against a group of former Confederate soldiers, responsible for the murder of their own men. He drifts into town—as the anti-heroes of so many spaghetti westerns are apt to do—and before he leaves there’s an impressive pile of bodies riddled with bullets.
More than just your standard MSSVF (Mysterious Stranger Seeking Vengeance Film), Django the Bastard is a well-crafted film that rises head and shoulders above the vast majority of the genre. This is a great example of the genre done properly; with director Sergio Garrone putting together an atmospheric western that has elements of a gothic horror movie interwoven into the cinematic fabric. Garrone directed several other unexceptional westerns that can’t even come close to comparing to this one. Part of the credit for the film’s success has to go to cinematographer Gino Santini, who, like Garrone worked on his fair share of westerns, none of which have the same quality as Django the Bastard. Santini lights and shoots the film as if it were a horror movie, giving Django the Bastard a visual aesthetic that would be copied by other films, including Today It is Me, Tomorrow You.
Anthony Steffen had already appeared in quite a few westerns—including other Django rip-offs—and was an established actor when he starred in Django the Bastard, which he also co-wrote. Steffen lacks the charisma of Franco Nero (pretty much everyone lacks Nero’s charisma), but he manages to channel enough of the requisite Clint Eastwood-wannabe gravitas to make the movie work. And speaking of Eastwood, the mysterious gunslinger in this movie bares a striking resemblance to Eastwood’s avenger in High Plains Drifter, a film that appears to have been heavily influenced by Django the Bastard.