Django is a name that will be very familiar to Spaghetti Western fans and those who recently watched the excellent Tarantino epic Django Unchained. Sergio Corbucci’s original 1996 film starring Franco Nero was the first Django picture and Django Prepare A Coffin works as a prequel to Corbucci’s film and is widely regarded as the best of the unofficial sequels.
Django (Terence Hill) is the wandering gunslinger, hired as executioner to a corrupt local politician who is framing innocent men, sending them to hang in an evil scheme to take hold of their land. But Django has other ideas and, cleverly faking the deaths of the condemned men, he assembles them into a loyal gang who’ll help him take down the boss, a man who had a hand in the death of Django’s wife years before.
For those who have only seen the Sergio Leone / Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns then don’t go into this expecting the same sort of craftsmanship and direction you saw in those films. These are fun exploitation films, made on a low budget. There is plenty of gunfight action and the story is really a pretty average revenge saga, Terence Hill is good as the silent gunfighter type and overall its an enjoyable and well shot if forgettable 88 minutes of western action.
The Blu ray released by Arrow is very good for a film of this vintage. Colours are strong and picture quality is very good especially on close up shots. The restoration done is excellent and fans should be very pleased with the HD transfer on this disc. The sound is English and Italian 2.0 audio tracks, the sound is clear enough, remember both soundtracks were dubbed afterwards, some of the music sounded a little wobbly in places but overall it satisfactory.
The soundtrack itself is very good especially the catchy opening theme (which Gnarls Barkley sampled on the track “Crazy”). Extra’s are limited to a trailer and a short interview with Spaghetti Western expert and author Kevin Grant. If you’re a fan of Spaghetti Westerns then you won’t need any prompting to buy this from me, but others maybe rent it first.
FILM: 5 OUT OF 10
PICTURE: 7 OUT OF 10
SOUND: 6 OUT OF 10
EXTRAS: 2 OUT OF 10
