Spurs That Jingle, Django, Jingle

Once upon a time in the West (western California, that is), there was an impassioned film fanatic named Quentin Tarantino, who, after dropping out of high school and walking out of acting class, got a job at a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, where he and fellow film buffs would talk loudly about movies at length. The young, impressionable clerk would pay close attention to the types of movies people wanted to rent, later calling upon these experiences to inspire his own filmmaking career.

"When people ask me if I went to film school," he was fond of saying, "I tell them no, I went to films." Culling influences from exploitation grindhouse flicks, martial arts action pictures, cheesy horror movies, and, among others, Italian-made westerns, Tarantino emerged with a stylistic mash-and-match genre of his own for a number of successful, often audacious films, including "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," "Jackie Brown," "Kill Bill," and "Inglourious Basterds."

It is perhaps the Italian western which Tarantino is most fond of, repeatedly and reverently referencing the genre as a filmmaker. (According to some accounts, Tarantino landed his job at the video rental store only after talking incessantly to the owner about Italian western icon Sergio Leone.) Beginning in the early 1960s, the Italian western manifested itself as a viable, bankable movie genre. The nickname "Spaghetti Western" was first used by dismissive American critics in a derogatory sense but eventually became universally accepted for a genre which, in the words of A.V. Club’s Keith Phipps, "threatened to overwhelm European filmmaking for a few years…European-made westerns seemed to be everywhere." Between 1960 and 1980, over 600 European westerns were produced. More often than not, the production of Spaghetti Westerns involved an Italian director, a cast of Italian, Spanish, German and American actors, filmed in southern Spain.

The first superstar to come out of this genre was Clint Eastwood, a 34-year-old actor on a break from the American TV series "Rawhide," in "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), co-written and directed by Sergio Leone. Eastwood’s characterization of a cynical stranger (which he reprised for Leone in "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly") became the blueprint for the Spaghetti Western antihero. At the time, Italy was contending with political and social unrest, and, according to Ferdinando Baldi, a director who occasionally dabbled in Spaghetti Westerns (including 1968’s "Django, Prepare a Coffin," starring Terence Hill), "The good guy who was in the name of the law and restores the law was no longer valid. So a new, ambiguous character was born, a character that played both sides, a person who didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone." Enzo G. Castellari, the director of several Spaghetti Westerns, including "Go Kill and Come Back" and "One Dollar Too Many," noted, "The issue of morality belongs to the American western…There was very little morality because often the protagonist was a bad guy."

The success of "A Fistful of Dollars" opened the floodgates for numerous Italian filmmakers who followed the trend. "Django" (1966) has remained one of the most memorable and influential entries in the genre. Imitating the framework for the script of "A Fistful of Dollars, "Django" depicted the arrival of a mysterious stranger in a town run by two rival factions, in this case a band of red-hooded KKK-types led by a fanatical Southern major on one side and a gang of Mexican bandits on the other. (It’s never explained what either side sees in the control of the mud hole of a ghost town, but more importantly, it’s laughable to note that the film’s budget was too meager to provide enough horses for both gangs, so only one is shown in the town at a time.)

The name Django (the "d" is silent) was undoubtedly a nod to the iconoclastic jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt (1910-1953). Born into a family of gypsies, Reinhardt (above) showed an early virtuosity on the guitar, violin and banjo. When he was 18 he was injured in a fire, suffering first- and second-degree burns over half his body. His right leg was paralyzed, and the third and fourth fingers of his left hand were partially paralyzed. Through rehabilitation and practice, he mastered his craft in a new way, playing guitar solos with only two fingers. In "Django," the lone gunman has to overcome having his hands crushed by horses’ hooves.

The director of "Django," Sergio Corbucci, was a former critic who once worked as assistant director to Roberto Rosselini, a pioneer of Italian neorealist cinema. The most successful director of Spaghetti Westerns after Sergio Leone, Corbucci made westerns noteworthy for their stark nihilism, featuring sadistic antiheroes, high body counts and scenes of mutilation. In "Django," the Mexican chieftain slices a man’s ear off and sticks it in his mouth, a notorious scene ordered to be cut by the censors but conveniently forgotten by the filmmakers.

Labeling his westerns "Zapata-Spaghetti," Corbucci called his work "proletarian fables, where the baddies are on the Right, the goodies on the Left." Fond of parodying visual clichés in a manic manner (the comic-book violence in "Django," often bloodless, accounts for an astounding body count of 140), he enjoyed dark humor, especially, according to him, when depicting bizarre acts of violence, and detested happy endings. "The Great Silence" (1968) closes with the abrupt death of the hero and the massacre of  hostage townspeople. Ironically, offscreen, Corbucci was well-known for his robust sense of humor and fondness for practical jokes, and he ended his career directing lighthearted comedies.

Franco Nero in "Django"

Corbucci once said he was at his best when he worked with Franco Nero, whose breakthrough role was "Django." "John Ford had John Wayne," Corbucci commented, "me, I have Franco Nero." Born Francesco Sparanero in San Prospero, Italy, he was working as a set photographer on Dino De Laurentiis’ production of "The Bible…In the Beginning" (1966) when he was "discovered" by director John Huston, who declared, "That’s the face I want," and cast him as Abel, slain by Richard Harris as Cain.

When Sergio Leone visited the set of "Django," he was impressed with the 23-year-old Nero, who had grown a beard and had wrinkles made up around his eyes to appear older. "This guy is going to be successful," Leone said. He told Corbucci he had a good eye and said, "I think you are on to a winner."

Early in their careers, Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone collaborated on screenplays, including 1959’s "The Last Days of Pompeii," starring Steve Reeves, an American bodybuilder and former "Mr. Universe" who became an international box-office sensation as the star of the Italian-made "Hercules" and "Hercules Unchained." When the original director of "The Last Days of Pompeii" fell ill, Leone and Corbucci shared directing duties. Corbucci later insisted that "Pompeii," which was shot partly in Almeria, a province of Andalusia in southern Spain, sowed the seeds for Spaghetti Westerns. He recalled, "I saw…these extraordinary canyons, this desert landscape which looked a lot like Mexico, Texas, or rather, like we imagined them to be…We often said to each other, ‘Hang on a minute, we could make an amazing western here, couldn’t we?’"

Tabernas Desert in Almeria, Spain

After "A Fistful of Dollars," "Django" was the most influential Italian western (although it was banned outright in England for several years), spawning over 30 films with "Django" in the title. In a country where intellectual property was apparently not a concern, numerous movies were retitled to cash in on the names of various Spaghetti Western heroes, including Sabata, Sartana, and Trinity. The success of "Django" encouraged filmmakers to extend the formula - the hero’s prowess with assorted weapons and cunning manipulation of one side against the other (lifted straight from "A Fistful of Dollars," which, itself, was a reworking of director Akira Kurosawa’s tongue-in-cheek samurai picture "Yojimbo," which was influenced by American westerns and inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s detective novel Red Harvest) - in even more outlandish directions. Django’s gimmick of transporting his "Gatling gun" (a historically anachronistic machine gun) in a coffin inspired a series of elaborate means for secreting firearms, including crutches, a banjo, specially designed clothes, even a church organ.

In 2011, Franco Nero remarked, "I had no idea (‘Django’) would turn out to be so special. It wasn’t just a success. It was a phenomenon. Everywhere I go people shout Django at me…In Japan, they won’t even put my name on movie posters, they put Django." For a number of years in Germany, his films had "Django" in the title; "Mafia" was retitled "Django in the Mafia," "The Shark Hunter" became "Django Django." "There were many, many other Django films following mine, with other actors and directors," Nero said, "but there is only one Django."

Foremost among the other Djangos was Anthony Steffen (above). Born Antonio Luiz de Teffé von Hoonholtz at the Brazilian embassy in Rome to a family with a noble lineage traceable to Prussia, he fought as a teenager alongside the partisans against the Nazis in World War II. Dubbed the "Italian Clint Eastwood," Steffen became the most prolific Spaghetti Western star, appearing in over 25 such films. Fluent in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian, he was an international jet-setter until the early 1980s, when he settled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he remained until his death from cancer in 2004.

Other Django impersonators included Tony Kendall (born Luciano Stella), and George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori). (Above) Ivan Rassimov (Ivan Djrassimovic), was an Italian actor of Serbian origin whose several films included director Mario Bava’s 1965 cult science-fiction thriller "Planet of the Vampires," which visually influenced 1979’s "Alien."

George Hilton (above) was born Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara in Uruguay and was raised in England. His voice was dubbed by another actor in most of his westerns because of his British accent.

After starring in Spaghetti Westerns, American actor Jack Betts (above), who happens to be the great-great grandnephew of President Millard Fillmore, returned to the U.S. and started a new career as a character actor in several movies, including "Batman Forever," "Batman & Robin," "Gods and Monsters" (as Boris Karloff), "Office Space" and "Spider-Man."

Jack Betts as Boris Karloff in "Gods and Monsters"

Inevitably, a sexploitation film, "Brand of Shame," was released in 1971 as "Nude Django," while "Django the Bastard" (1969) played more like a horror movie in its story of ghostly vengeance which some think might have inspired Clint Eastwood’s "High Plains Drifter."

Only a year following the original "Django" came the most infamous incarnation, "Django Kill…If You Live, Shoot!" (1967), in which the hero (Tomas Milian) pits his wits against Mr. Sorrow (or "Mr. Zorro," depending on the subtitles) and his band of "muchachos," a gang of homosexual bandits who dress in black fetish gear and molest young boys, as well as over-the-top puritanical townsfolk and gringo bandits, former allies who left him for dead in a shallow grave. The "Django" formula of the stranger who comes into a town run by two rival factions "becomes the excuse for a surreal, brutal phantasmagoria," according to Christopher Frayling in his 1981 book Spaghetti Westerns.

Phil Hardy, author of The Encyclopedia of Western Movies, noted, "The static plot simply has Milian…overcome bizarre obstacle after bizarre obstacle while around him children are shot, outlaws roasted on a spit, animals disemboweled and a man is suffocated by molten gold," not to mention depictions of a bloody scalping, a body ripped apart by townspeople clawing for gold bullets imbedded in the barely living victim, an unfortunate horse used as an IED, and torture by vampire bats. Hardy deemed the film "the most brutally violent Spaghetti Western ever made." One week after "Django Kill" was released, an Italian court confiscated the film, and it was re-released days later with 22 minutes of footage removed.

"Django Kill" was the sole western directed by Giulio Questi, who wrote short stories and made several documentaries before he became an assistant director and script writer who once worked with Fellini. Questi had been in World War II as part of the rebellious resistance fighting Germans and would defend the atrocities of ""Django Kill" by stating, "I knew about the horrors of war."

33 years after "Django Kill": Tomas Milian with Michael Douglas in "Traffic"

As for Questi’s Django, Tomas Milian was born Tomas Quentin Rodriguez in Havana, the son of a Cuban general who was jailed after Fulgencio Batista took power and later committed suicide. Milian moved to the U.S., studied at New York City’s Actors Studio, and became an American citizen. He subsequently lived in Italy for 25 years, starring in numerous Spaghetti Westerns, and eventually came back to the U.S., where his film work included roles in director Sydney Pollack’s "Havana," Oliver Stone’s "JFK," Steven Spielberg’s "Amistad," and Steven Soderbergh’s "Traffic."

Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, and Richard Harris in "Camelot"

The original Django, Franco Nero, left Italian cinema after starring alongside Richard Harris (his slayer in "The Bible…In the Beginning") and Vanessa Redgrave in "Camelot" in 1967. It was on the set of "Camelot" where Nero’s lengthy romantic involvement with Redgrave began. After a separation of several years, they reunited and were married on December 31, 2006. Nero, then future stepfather of the late Natasha Richardson, gave her away at her 1994 wedding to Liam Neeson.

Nero’s departure from Spaghetti Westerns upset filmmakers who disliked him for, in the words of director Ferdinando Baldi, "interrupting Italian cinema." In response, according to Baldi, "We invented another Franco Nero." Italian actor Mario Girotti, dressed and made-up to look just like Nero, changed his name to Terence Hill and starred in Baldi’s "Django, Prepare a Coffin" (above) becoming the last Spaghetti Western superstar in "They Call Me Trinity," "Trinity Is Still My Name," and "My Name Is Nobody."

Two decades after "Django," Franco Nero starred in the only official sequel, 1987’s "Django 2" (also known as "Django Strikes Again"), directed by "Ted Archer" (Nello Rossati, the director of 1975’s "The Sensuous Nurse," starring Ursula Andress). A.V. Club critic Keith Phipps called it "a belabored, confusing, deeply unpleasant movie…which pits Nero against an evil slavemaster and his minions." The film "feels more like a Chuck Norris movie than a western, spaghetti or otherwise. (The fact that it was filmed, rather conspicuously, in South America doesn’t help.)"

In 2007, Takashi Miike, the director of the graphically violent cult film "Ichi the Killer," made "Sukiyaki Western Django." In this Japanese western, two rival clans hunt for hidden treasure in a town, a nameless gunman shows up to help a wronged prostitute get revenge, and the film gets criticized for its cool, self-aware hipness, ironic detachment, and smug sense of superiority. According to A.V. Club reviewer Sam Adams, "Even good jokes turn into shaggy-dog stories when they run too long." This shaggy-dog story, filmed on-location in Japan, co-starred Quentin Tarantino (below).

Coincidentally, it was also in 2007 when Tarantino announced he had an idea for a Spaghetti Western set in the Deep South. Instead of a Western, he called it a "Southern." Inspired by the original "Django" and 1975’s "Mandingo," he said he wanted to "do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery…but to do them like Spaghetti Westerns…" The result, released on Christmas Day 2012, is "Django Unchained," starring Jamie Foxx (Tarantino reportedly originally wanted Will Smith to portray Django), Christoph Waltz (Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for his role as SS officer Hans Landa in Tarantino’s "Inglourious Basterds"), Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Tarantino stock company member Samuel L. Jackson.

The supporting cast boasts several cult favorites, including Dennis Christopher, James Remar, James Russo, Don Johnson, Tom Wopat, Don Stroud, Russ Tamblyn, Bruce Dern, Cooper Huckabee, Jonah Hill, Lee Horsley, Michael Bowen, Ted Neeley, Tom Savini, Michael Parks, Robert Carradine, and none other than the original Django himself, Franco Nero (below).

Tarantino has repeatedly emphasized that he avoids hiring a single composer to provide a full film score for fear of disliking the outcome and rejecting it, and his films are well-known for their eclectic music soundtracks, mixing existing movie music with pop singles and oldies. Along with existing tracks and original compositions, "Django Unchained" also reprises the original "Django’s Theme," as sung by Rocky Roberts.

The late Rocky Roberts was a professional boxer turned singer who introduced soul music to Italy and set fashion trends for Italian youth in the 1960s. Crooned more as a Marty Robbins gunfighter ballad than a soulful R&B piece, the theme includes such unforgettable lyrics as "Django, have you always been alone? / Django, have you never loved again?" and "When there are clouds in the skies, and they are gray / You may be sad but remember that love will pass away."