Director: Giulio Questi
Written by: Franco Arcallo, Benedetto Benedetti, María del Carmen Martínez Román, Giulio Questi
Cast: Tomas Milian, Ray Lovelock, Piero Lulli, Milo Quesada

Year / Country: 1967, Italy / Spain
Running Time: 117 mins.

This spaghetti western by director Giulio Questi has nothing to do with the popular Django series. The studio just called it that to cash in on the success of the Django household name. However, its quality is certainly equal or better than most of the Django cash-ins.

Tomas Milian plays half-breed gunslinger ‘The Stranger’, who is betrayed and left for dead by his fellow outlaws, after they stole a considerable amount of gold. With the help of two Indians, he is brought back to life and he heads to the town ‘The Unhappy Place’ to take revenge on the bandits who double-crossed him. This is the beginning of a bizarre, surrealist journey filled with torture, graphic violence and sexual depravity.

Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! is perhaps best described as Django on peyote. It features homosexual cowboys, scenes of brutal horror and many weird images, such as ‘The Stranger’ rising from the ground. Somewhere I suppose, it includes some sort of message about how gold causes greed and death, a bit like The Treasure of Sierra Madre. This never becomes exactly clear though, due to the weird hallucinatory editing.

The film goes on a bit too long and its shock value is perhaps a bit overdue. However, this is worth a look for spaghetti western lovers with a taste for the bizarre. The cinematography by Franco Delli Colli (Rocco and his Brothers) is excellent and so is the unique atmosphere created by director Questi. The uncut version is now available!

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Biography: Giulio Questi (1924, Bergamo, Italy) is an Italian director, screenwriter and cinematographer. He started his movie career with an uncredited role in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. He is considered an original filmmaker, who performs a lot of tasks alone. He has worked in different genres such as thriller and horror, but is most famous for his spaghetti western escapade Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!.

Filmography: Giocare (1957, short), Latin Lovers (1961, segment: ‘Viaggio di nozze’), Nudi per vivere (1964, doc), Amori pericolosi (1964, segment ‘Il passo’), Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! (1967), Death Laid an Egg (1968), Arcana (1972), Vampirismus (1982), Quando arriva il giudice (1986, mini-series), Don’t Open the Door for the Man in Black (1990, TV), Il segno del commando (1992, TV)