Surely there isn’t another franchise that exists that carries as much unnecessary baggage as Django, the 1966 gothic spaghetti western that spawned over thirty (count ’em: thirty!) unofficial sequels, spin-offs and cash ins that never once included the original actor who played the coffin dragging anti-hero. To push your way through the notoriously tangled Django-verse hoping to find any sort of through-line at all is like trying to catch butterflies with a lasso and you just kind of have to accept what you get; sometimes you might be pleasantly surprised with an entry that stands on its own as a fine example of the gritty, Italian flavour of western that was huge all the way up to 1970 – and sometimes you’ll get some unwatchable trash.
However in 1987, Django finally got to officially return in a belated sequel that not only tried to restore the bleak tone of the original but rightfully put the legendary Franco Nero back behind the machine gun after around twenty years of piercing eyed pretenders. However, was the wait actually worth it?
After years of plying his trade as a gunfighter with a nice line in gothic iconography, we find that Django has renounced violence and bloodshed and has become a monk, living a life of simple contemplation, beating John Rambo to the same conclusion a fair few years before Rambo III. However, his dedication to his new life is shaken when an old flame with a terminal illness arrives at the monastery to tell him he has a daughter that he needs to look after once she’s gone, but before he can take responsibility for this sudden addition to his stark family tree, she’s promptly kidnapped by a rogue, Hungarian nobleman humbly known as “El Diablo” who’s metaphorical Tinder profile would probably list his likes as sadism, slavery, an obsessive love of butterfly collecting and riding around on a gigantic, monolithic, smoke belching barge.
Before instantly snapping back into remorseless killer mode like someone’s flicked a switch on him, Django tries to scout out one of Diablo’s mining operations only to find himself captured and slaving away alongside the grizzled Ben Gunn, a Scottish butterfly expert bought in to help his captor locate the one (possibly mythical) butterfly he needs to complete his collection – but after engaging in the most unlikely escape I’ve seen in quite a while, Django finally embraces his violent past, returns to his own grave and digs up his coffin full of life shortening weaponry.
Teaming up with a young native who wants to avenge a father whose decomposed head currently is mounted on the front of El Diablo’s steam boat, Django gets back to the business of dispensing pain and death like he’s getting paid for it, but the only currency he gives a damn about as he cuts down waves of enemies with a machine gun is the life of his daughter.
The first thing you have to remember about the original Django is that it was the cool, scrappy, vicious alternative to the likes of Sergio Leone’s benchmark Man With No Name Trilogy that took all the usual tropes and tics of the genre and then added a sense of brutal nihilism that gave it more edge than the sight of Edge the wrestler and The Edge from U2 watching the Alec Baldwin/Anthony Hopkins thriller, The Edge, while sitting on the edge of their seats. However anyone hoping that Django’s only official sequel was going to replicate Sergio Corbucci’s fatalistic masterpiece might be fairly perplexed at what director Nello Rossati ultimately delivered. You see, instead of delivering a 80s fueled return to the glory days of the spaghetti western, Django Strikes Again instead plays more like the one man army action movies that all the rage in the 80s and so instead of feeling like the Man With No Name, Django now has more of a John Rambo vibe has he sets out to right wrongs and wipe an entire army off the face of the earth with nothing more than an iron will and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of machine gun ammo.
It’s a strange leap to make as the result almost seems like the kind of IQ optional action flick that was tumbling out of the production offices of Cannon Films at the time. All the tropes are there: a megalomaniacal villain with an Allo Allo level accent (complete with sinister lisp) and Hitler levels of distain for basic human rights; a plucky young sidekick who aids our impossibly grizzled hero; acres of goons who all run at our lead in easily to shoot clumps despite the fact that he’s lugging around a machine gun perfect for such occasions – there’s even the token character actor drafted in for a bit of awkward comic relief in the form of Donald Pleasance’s dusty Scot who, when he isn’t delivering the necessary exposition, is accidently dropping sticks of lit dynamite down his trousers during action scenes.
On the plus side, some of the scenes featuring Franco Nero dispatching various goons with his steely cool gaze fully intact is, at times, greatly satisfying even if some of his Schwarzenegger type attemps at one liners feel a little out of place, but at least the movie tries to recreate a similar gothiky vibes to the original by dropping random, death-related motifs in Django’s work to link the movies a little bit more. Upgrading from lugging a weapon-filled coffin around by simply dragging it with a rope, Django now rides around on a funeral carriage that contains his deadly arsenal in a battle ready state that feels oddly A-Team in its construction and later on, our hero hides in a crypt behind a skeletal image of the grim reaper itself and even borrows its scythe in order to perform a nifty triple-decapitation to really bring the while death metaphor home. Also, there’s a great cold opening that sees two over-the-hill gunfighters teaming take on El Diablo only to fall instantly to cannon fire and reminisce about the good old days as they die.
However, as fun as some of the action is, Django Strikes Back ultimately disappoints two-fold as it technically isn’t really a western anymore and whenever Nero isn’t slaughtering anyone, Rossati’s direction proves to be pretty flat and basic, missing the unforgettable flair that the original had in spades. Also, while there’s the odd memorable image lodged in there (the black, whip wielding slave girl dressed like she just stepped out of 300 is certainly a noticable hench-woman), a lot of the side plots go nowhere fast. Maybe the whole bit with El Diablo gradually seducing a Countess over to his evil ways might have been included to give Christopher Connelly’s villain more of a seductive nature to up that euro-erotica that the Italians love to flaunt, but on top of the whole butterfly collecting thing, the steam barge and his need to constantly be in a crisp, white uniform, it feels like the antagonist is just a collection of standard, ironic tropes attached to a sardonic sneer to be taken seriously.
Is it great to see Franco Nero back in his legendary role while nonchalantly chewing cigars and blowing away scumbags with a minimum of emotion? Of course it fucking is; but there’s something ultimately disappointing about the only true Django sequel choosing to ignore the original’s iconic roots and just blow things up because it’s cool.
Or in other words – Django’s djungle djaunt djust djoesn’t djo djustice…
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