Django

A man walks through the mud dragging a coffin behind him. Django is a former Union soldier, caught in a border town between a racist gang in red hoods and a band of Mexican revolutionaries, with a mixed-race prostitute alongside him. What is in the coffin becomes clear halfway through: a machine gun. Sergio Corbucci directed. Franco Nero plays Django in his breakthrough role. The coffin came from a comic magazine Corbucci found on a news-stand in Rome. The film became known for its violence. It carried an 18 certificate in Italy, and British censors rejected it in 1967 for excessive and nauseating violence, a ban that lasted twenty-seven years. It was not released in the UK until 1993, when examiners found it had an almost naive and innocent quality beside contemporary action films. The first reactions were negative because of the violence, and the verdict reversed later. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 94 percent and it is counted the finest spaghetti western outside Leone. Its success produced more than thirty unofficial sequels, most with no connection to Corbucci. Quentin Tarantino saluted it in Django Unchained in 2012 and gave Nero a cameo. Who it is for: viewers who like westerns ugly, muddy and merciless. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by the level of violence. The film shows it directly, including the scene with the ear.