Hanging For Django releases on Blu-ray from Raro Video on October 29th.
Hanging For Django is a quality spaghetti western in which, curiously, no one is hanged, and no one is named Django. I know by now, as a lover of Italian genre cinema from the ’70s and ’80s, that all of these spaghetti westerns were designed for international audiences and as such often had half a dozen different titles. [Not to mention that the implied presence of the popular character Django guaranteed a few extra dollars even if it was a blantent misdirect.] IMDB offers something like 12 different titles, most of which are in another language. But a couple of English language variants are Noose For Django and No Room To Die. None of those titles make a lick of sense in context with the movie. Basically, here in the US, we’ve mostly settled on the names we will use to refer to the more popular international titles that reached our shores; and Hanging For Django just isn’t one of those titles… which is one of the main reasons I was excited to review the Blu-ray release from Raro Video.
As a lover of spaghetti westerns, I’ve seen a boat load of entries from “the Three Sergios”: Leone, Corbucci, and Sollima. No, I’ll probably never see them all. But I’ve dug pretty deep into the catalogs of the big names and the big breakout stars of the era. Hanging For Django director Sergio Garrone? That is a name I’d never heard before. And actually, I wasn’t familiar with a single name or face in the cast of this film either. Again, this excited me. There are probably endless rabbit holes down which a spaghetti western fan can fall, and this one was a perfectly acceptable place to start.
While I didn’t recognize stars Anthony Steffan as Brandon (the stoic bounty hunter hero), William Berger as F(the priestly, Bible-toting bounty hunter), or Riccardo Garrone as Mr. Fargo (the villainous company man smuggling Mexicans into Texas and essentially enslaving them); I was very familiar with their archetypes and fell right in to this story. Director Sergio Garrone is apparently more famous for his horror films than his westerns, and before he retired from the business he even went on to make a few Nazi-sploitation films! Garrone collaborated often with star Anthony Steffan, who has over 50 screen credits to his name but isn’t exactly a high profile star here in the States.
Actors and director click quite well here and bring us a stylish (though not Leone-level) and well-shot action thriller. Brandon isn’t exactly the “nameless warrior” archetype like many of Clint Eastwood’s roles. Hanging For Django instead opts for the “team-up” sub-genre, with Brandon and Murdock both establishing their badass cred and teaming up to bring down Mr. Fargo for very different reasons.
How are these different characters all set up? Shoot outs. Like a dozen of them. And they are all awesome. The film starts with Fargo’s minions just massacring a wagon-full of their smuggled Mexican immigrants the second they’re about to get caught by the authorities. It is brutal and sets the mold for the rest of this politically-charged story where the good guys take a stand and defend the under-privileged and the villains treat minorities like cattle. As someone who, you know, hates racism, I’m always up for one of these “rooting for the underdog” types of political westerns.
But I’m getting off track. Gun fights. So many gunfights. Gun fights to establish the evil of the bad guys. Gun fights to establish the badassery of the good guys. Gun fights to prove to “the ladies” how masculine the heroes are. Gun fights to settle any form of dispute. Gun fights just to say hello.
Any bounty hunting western worth its salt has gun fights, though, right? The key here is that these gun fights are fun and well-staged. There isn’t any kind of Leone-esque artistry going on. But with roughly a dozen shoot outs in a single movie, Hanging For Django keeps each fight interesting with either story twists, tricky camera work, gimmicks like Murdock’s steam-punk-ish machine gun rifle, and every other trick up Garrone’s sleeve. Throw in a couple of beautiful women who, yes, do need to be saved by the men… but also have some moments of bravery and heroism of their own; and you’ve just got a good time at the movies.
Hanging For Django will quickly fade from my memory. But I had a great time watching it, and now western audiences have a chance to own it and visit this solid entry in the spaghetti western genre whenever they would like with a beautifully restored high definition home video of the film. If you have any interest at all in delving into some of the rarer or more obscure spaghetti westerns, but don’t want to waste your time with drivel (of which there is a lot), then Hanging For Django is well worth your time!
THE PACKAGE
The only other Raro Video release I’ve had the pleasure of owning or reviewing is the Fernando Di Leo Vol. 2 Box Set from just a few months back. I had a blast with that set and have quickly become a fan of Raro’s work. That set featured informative bonus features, beautiful restorations, and highlighted some great underseen crime films.
This Hanging For Django release is no different. The case and artwork for the release are pretty awesome, and Raro includes a booklet about Garrone as well. Most of the bonus content I’ve seen so far on Raro releases seems to be ported over from previous home video iterations and therefore is not original content or particularly high video/audio quality. But that said, I’ve learned a lot from hearing Italian film scholars wax eloquently about the films of their country that I’ve never even heard of before Raro brought them to my attention. I really appreciate that Raro includes bonus features at all and couldn’t really care less that the video quality isn’t pristine high definition.
For big spaghetti western junkies, Hanging For Django is an excellent release for purchase. Nominal fans of the genre would also do well to seek the movie out, if not necessarily blind buy it, to be introduced to a quality entry in the genre that may not be helmed by one of the three Sergios, but is confidently directed by the fourth one.
And I’m Out.