4 Star

Skulduggery, Bar Brawls, and Defenestration.

It’s Spaghetti Western time, and in 4K UHD from StudioCanal, this classic 1966 film directed and co-written by Alberto De Martino (The Chosen, Dirty Heroes) who brings you everything you expect in an Italian Spaghetti Western, just not as polished as Sergio Leone’s (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful Of Dynamite) famous films. Django Shoots First takes you to all the usual locations, such as the deserts, bars and cemeteries, with obligatory double-cross thrown in for good measure. A great addition to your Spaghetti Western 4K UHD shelf.

Glenn Garvin (Glenn Saxson, Cry of Death, Kriminal) sits in the middle of nowhere as a man pulling another horse with a body slung over the saddle pulls up at Glenn’s fire. He is Ringo (José Manuel Martín, The Student Connection, Fall of the Mohicans), a bounty hunter. He doesn’t live very long, as the body draped over his horse is his father, who has a $5,000 bounty on him dead or alive. After some deliberation with himself, he decides that it would be it would be much better if that money was in his pocket.

Whoever brings in the body gets the reward.

In town, he visits the sheriff (Marcello Tusco, Revenge of the Dead, The Magistrate), who is shocked to find out that the person collecting the bounty is the fugitive’s son. This also comes as a shock to the owner of the bank and most of the town Ken Kluster (Nando Gazzolo, The Spy with Ten Faces, The Hills Run Red).

This shock is because Glenn’s father used to be Kluster’s partner and has a fifty-percent stake in the bank and the town, he finds this out, by the man that has adopted him since he arrived in town, Gordon (Fernando Sancho, The Son of Captain Blood, The Boldest Job in the West) sticks to Glenn and helps him with the ways of Kluster’s town and the trouble he has stirred up.

He’s wrong in the head, all that learnin will do that.

It doesn’t help when you add in Lucy (Erika Blanc, Sacred Heart, Kill, Baby… Kill!) who runs the tavern that Glenn wants to be a part of, and Kluster’s demanding wife Jessica (Ida Galli, La Dolce Vita, The Leopard). With one man wanting revenge and what he is owed, and another wanting to keep what he has 100% of. Bullets will fly and there will be massive bar brawls. Just what you want on a balmy afternoon.