By Adrian Smith
Franco Nero was too young to take the lead role as the titular Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966), a grizzled Civil War veteran dragging a coffin across the mud flats of the southern US-Mexican border, but some clever makeup and several days of stubble added at least ten years to the then 25-year-old and a star was born. His piercing blue eyes dazzled audiences, and he hasn’t stopped stealing the screen from his co-stars ever since. Whenever he appears on screen he leaves an impression, whether he’s mowing down an entire western town with a machine gun in Django or playing the Pope to Russell Crowe’s exorcist in, er, The Pope’s Exorcist (2023).
UK label CultFilms have restored and released Nero’s career-making Italian western Django, available for the first time in the UK on Blu-ray, alongside two other hugely entertaining westerns, Keoma (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976), also starring Nero, and A Bullet for the General (Damiano Damiani, 1967), which sadly doesn’t star Nero, meaning this collection doesn’t quite add up to a Franco Nero boxset. However, A Bullet for the General does star a magnificent Gian Maria Volonté alongside Klaus Kinski and Martine Beswicke, and could arguably be the best film of the three. Rounding out this fantastic set is the documentary Django & Django (2021) which, perhaps inevitably, focuses on Quentin Tarantino’s relationship with the original Django and Spaghetti Westerns in general, and it is a great deep dive into why these films continue to resonate with audiences in the 21st Century.
Each of the films in this set is accompanied by a terrific set of bonus features too: there are new and archival interviews with many of key players, including Franco Nero himself, but this reviewer’s favourite addition is the introductions to each film by Alex Cox; writer, director and former presenter of Moviedrome, the influential late-night cult film slot back in the mid-1990s. He knows a thing or two about Italian cinema, and having seen Cox appear on other discs introducing and discussing films as well, I would like to argue for his inclusion on all film releases from now on. He is authoritative and has an encyclopaedic knowledge, and he is also witty and likeable. Watching him on these discs really makes me miss Moviedrome. Each of his three introductions here are worth their weight in stolen Mexican gold.
The boxset comes in a card case with three poster reproductions and is an essential addition to any western aficionado's library. CultFilms have also released Django as a standalone 4K UHD set which comes complete with a 64-page bound book written by Kevin Grant, who has written some excellent books on European westerns, published by FAB Press. Truly we live in a golden age. (The discs are region-free).