In the world of the vast, sprawling, and mostly unofficial, Django-verse, digging up a worthy successor to Sergio Corbucci’s gothic original is often as tough as the joyless worlds our starry-eyed anti-hero often finds himself drifting through – and yet, every so often an entry breezes into town that proves to have what it takes.
A healthy example of this is Ferdinando Baldi’s Django, Prepare A Coffin (aka. Viva Django), a volatile and moody western that manages to invoke the gothic stylings that usually mark out the better sequels in this scattered, grab-bag, “franchise”. All the usual Django hallmarks are present and correct with ominous graveyards, needlessly overcomplicated plots and countless people surviving mortal wounds in order to take revenge from beyond the grave and, best of all, lead actor Terence Hill actually bears a passing resemblance to original Django, Franco Nero. With these aspects alone, Django, Prepare A Coffin immediately has the edge over 90% of all other pretenders to the Spaghetti Western throne.
Django is making a healthy living guarding the transports of gold that trundle from place to place under armed guard, but little does he know that his friend and political hopeful, David Barry, has plans to betray their relationship by stealing the gold in order to fund his ambitions. Before you know it, Django and his fellow guards are writhing under a hail of rifle fire courtesy of Barry’s goons, but what makes David’s betrayal all the more brutal is that Django’s wife is also killed as she rides with her husband.
Despite being riddled with more holes than 50 Cent, Django survives and after a slightly confusing time jump, we find him five years later, all healed up and making a living travelling from town to town as a hangman for hire, but it turns out that there’s a method to his new, ghoulish line of employment. You see, in the years since Django’s “death”, David Barry has been continuing to have his men raid yet more gold transports while framing innocent men for the crime; however, whenever these poor wretches get sent to the gallows, Django’s been faking their hangings and has been smuggling them out of town to wait for his signal.
The endgame? Pretty simple really, Django’s amassed a small army of “dead” men who are all itching for revenge, and when their savior gives the word, they descend upon the men who sold them out and promptly beat the shit out of them to send a sobering message.
However, a wrinkle appears in Django’s plan after he saves Garcia, a man so pitifully poor he forges a counter plan that will see him swipe all the gold for himself and his starving family and when Django has to save Garcia’s wife from the noose, his plan starts to buckle under the strain.
Make no mistake, there are better Django films and there are worse Django films, but Django, Prepare A Coffin manages to acquit itself admirably by managing to find itself somewhere in the upper rankings of the relentless wave of cheapjack sequels that followed the rousing original. For a start, the movie benefits from an appropriately twisty, turny, Sergio Leone type plot that crammed so full of plans, counter and and betrayal, that it’s a fucking miracle that anything managed to get done back in the old West. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that Django, Prepare A Coffin’s plot has a bit too many moving parts for the director can handle and the first half of the movie suffers from some rough and ready storytelling that leaves you a little confused as to how Django can seemingly shrug off multiple bullets holes and get hired as a Hangman mere days after his ordeal when a simple “five years later” title card would have made things all the more clearer.
Also, the concept of Django amassing a gang of disgruntled, “hanged” men is disappointingly skimmed over and any hopes that the movie might take on a grizzled, Dirty Dozen style tone that’s full of eccentric (yet expendable) side characters is somewhat shoved to the side. However, as this twisted adventure picks up speed, we find that Django’s gang is just an excuse to throw more wildcards at our hero’s plan as the desperate Garcia figures out that turing his comrades from “presumed dead” to just plain old “dead” may be the way to go.
However, on top of having a plan that’s about to violently goes tits up, Django also has to contend with Horst Frank’s incredibly smug David Barry and his thick mane of equally smug blonde hair, and his grinning henchman, Lucas, who is played by cult figure George Eastman, who is probably most famous for playing the deranged cannibal who hungrily scoffs his own intestines during the gonzo climax of 1980s video nasty, Antropophagus. The two make thoroughly nasty pieces of work and are utterly worthy of falling foul of Django’s notoriously underhanded tactics, but matters are further bolsted by the fact that lead, Terence Hill, actually looks a fair bit like original Django, Franco Nero. Monosyllabic and doing the majority of speaking with his piercing blue eyes, he’s certainly one of the better incarnations of the hapless gunslinger and he certainly looks good in a dirty, black duster.
Those who are unfamiliar with the plot of tour average Django movie may be unprepared for how quickly and terribly his carefully laid plans fall apart, but if the lead isn’t discovered and brutalized by the black hats, then it technically isn’t much of a Django film, but it’s that perseverance in the face of failure that usually makes the character. Less we forget, Franco Nero’s version had to out shoot his enemies with two, completely shattered hands and even though Hill hasn’t got to contend with anything close to being that vicious, that vague, gothic tone is dutifully adhered to in the final scenes when the villians surround our hero as he digs up his own grave, only to reveal that his coffin contains this trusty and iconic machine gun.
A slow start belies a legitimately exciting second half that’s stuffed with double crosses and gun fights in and around a flaming saloon, but ultimately, the biggest legacy this movie has lies within its typically bold score which was amusingly sampled by Gnarls Barkley in their massive hit, “Crazy”.
While no more a true sequel to Django than Never Say Never Again is to Octopussy, Django, Prepare A Coffin is still an above average successor that manages to stick to a great many of the original tropes set out by the awesomely morbid orginal.
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