Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

FightingWesterner Bandit Tomas Milian survives an impromptu execution by double-crossing partners. Crawling out of a pit, he's nursed by two Indians who ascribe mystical reasons for his not dying. Soon he tracks the others to a strange town where inhabitants strung up the gang and took the gold, which another violent big shot is willing to kill to possess.I don't quite get what others say about this being "surreal" or "hallucinatory", as the film appears to be pretty straight-forward to me. It's weird, but it's not Eraserhead or Alejandro Jodorowsky weird.It's more along the lines of an artiste tying to make a political statement about capitalism, using shocking, violent imagery to attract the attention of the bourgeois and perhaps make the movie attractive to the art-house and grind-house crowds.Although pretentious, this stays interesting throughout, with a good performance by Milian. However, teen-aged Ray Lovelock's implied gang-rape by Zorro's (Yeah, that's the villain's name!) horribly-dressed goons was a bit silly and gratuitous.

lost-in-limbo The first time I watched this spirited spaghetti western, I was somewhat disappointed after a promising opening thirty minutes of a certain eerie quality. Watching it again the story soaked in a bit more, but I didn't find it all that captivating even with its oddly sprawling and grim nature that ends with poetic justice. It's rather an unconventional effort into Gothic territory, but I found it to go on for too long and completely drag and flounder about after the half-way mark. I was really into it until Tomas Milan's character 'the stranger' made himself at home with the town's occupants. There it seemed to stall, not knowing which way to go and being disorienting. Nothing against Milan's turn, as he was astounding (even if most of the time he feels like nothing more than a passenger), but I guess I expected way too much from this highly regarded genre film. It's weird and unbalanced, as the atmosphere is quite tripped out (wait for the hallucinatory torture scene involving bats) and the maniac violence is sadistically graphic (the restored scalping scene comes to mind) and underneath the surface is a homoerotic edge. It's a boundless and at times wicked mixture. The structure of the psychedelic story is solid (a melodrama leaning on greed, corruption, religion and retribution) and the script squeezes out a morbid sense of humour, while director Guilio Questi infuses some striking images (hanging corpses) and modestly staged shoot-outs. What it seemed to lack though, was a real kinetic edge to its violence. Ivan Vandor's saucy score and Franco Delli Colli's elastic photography shape up well.

Witchfinder General 666 Giulio Questi's "Se Sei Vivo Spara" aka. "Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!" of 1967 is a great and very violent Spaghetti Western, and easily one of the genre's most twisted films.After The Stranger (played by the great Tomas Milian) is double crossed by his fellow bandits, he seeks revenge, and comes to a little town inhabited by folks who are anything but hospitable towards strangers. But not only are the towns inhabitants slightly psychopathic leisure time vigilantes with a strong fondness for lynchings and ultra violence, the area is also tyrannized by a sleazy fat landowner and his gang of gay cowboys.Rightly a cult flick, "Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!" is a great mixture of Horror Exploitation and Spaghetti Western, coming along with a great theme song by Ivan Vandor. The violence in this film is very graphical - lynchings, torture, mutilation, and a scalping, "Django Kill" got it all. And the movie is pretty surreal. Right in the beginning of the movie, Tomas Milian is crawling out of a mass grave, and saved by two Indians who make him bullets out of gold. Furthermore the movie has some other very bizarre elements, like a guy who rests his feet on a child, or a talking parrot for example.The acting is very good, especially Tomas Milian's performance is great (as always), the supporting cast includes Piero Lulli, and I also thought that Roberto Carmadiel, who plays the villainous landowner Mr. Sorrow did a great job. The cinematography and the locations are great, and so is the theme song, which I can't get out of my head.Like many other movies with Django in their title, "Django Kill, If You Live, Shoot!" has little to nothing to do with Sergio Corbucci's 1966 masterpiece "Django", however it is one of the best of these movies. Furthermore, this is not actually a Django movie, since it doesn't originally have the name Django in its title. "Se Sei Vivo Spara" was just given its Django-name in German and English, due to the success of Corbucci's masterpiece. If I counted this as a Django movie, however, I would have to say that this is my second favorite after the original.A great, gory and surreal film, "Se Sei Vivo Spara" is a must-see for us fans of Spaghetti Westerns and Tomas Milian. 9/10

marc-366 The Stranger (Tomas Milian) arrives in the town known by the local Indian tribes as "The Unhappy Place" to see the bodies of his recent partners in crime hanging in front of him. Flashbacks have already revealed that he had been betrayed and left for dead by the gang, led by Oats (Piero Lulli), following a theft of gold from the army.The two most prominent townsfolk, Tembler (Quesada) and Hagerman (Sanz) have split the stolen gold between them, and are keeping it hidden from Sorrow (Camardiel), a larger than life bandit whose "muchachos" dress all in black and, lets say, presumably enjoy the pleasures of men. Throw into the pot the mysterious figure of Hagerman's imprisoned wife, who beckons the Stranger from her cell window, and you have a very strange, yet apt, setting for this highly entertaining and frankly bizarre movie.In fact, this film is straight out of horror territory, from the Stranger's first screen appearance - clawing his way out of an open grave - until its bitter ending. The mood is ably assisted by Ivan Vandor's score, which adds suitable suspense and tension, particularly during the scenes portraying Hagerman, his wife and her relationship with the Stranger.The cast is quite superb, particularly Sanz in the part of the treacherous Hagerman. Milian meanwhile plays the Stranger role competently but fairly static without the mysterious charisma of a Nero or Eastwood. I am a huge fan of Milian, but much prefer to see his characters portray a little more humour (as he does so brilliantly in Face to Face and the Big Gundown, to name just two performances).At times graphic (like the notorious scalping scene, or the sight of Oaks' body being torn apart by the locals desperately clawing at the gold bullets within his barely alive body), at times obviously low budget (such as the scene in which the Stranger is tortured, by being subjected to blood sucking bats and other creatures), but captivating throughout. One of the "must view" euro-westerns, in my view.