Rent Some Dollars for Django (1966)

Django Rides Again! (and again, and again, and again...) - Some Dollars for Django review by Count Otto Black

After "Django" was an unexpectedly massive international hit, dozens of other spaghetti westerns - some sources say over 50 - attempted to jump on the bandwagon. Many of the earlier unofficial sequels weren't initially intended to be about this character, but since almost any generic spaghetti western tough guy who wasn't Lee Van Cleef could at a pinch be said to look a bit like Franco Nero, they were able to redub foreign language prints so that the hero was now called Django, and nobody was any the wiser.

As it happens, in this particular print, the protagonist is never once referred to as Django (his name is Regan, though he spends most of the film pretending to be somebody else who isn't called Django either), and the fact that he wears a poncho in the opening scenes suggests they were trying to imply that he was Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name", a character who never caught on in the way Django did because the fact that he didn't have a name made it impossible to establish that he was the same guy if he wasn't played by Clint Eastwood, who was one hell of a lot more expensive than the likes of Anthony Steffen.

That being said, this is one of the best of the endless unauthorized Django sequels. Steffen is no great shakes as an actor (the usual terrible dubbing doesn't help), but he does all that's required of him pretty well, other than looking as though he has any chemistry whatsoever with the obligatory love interest. He went on to play Django a few more times, notably in the utterly bonkers but magnificently titled "Django The Bastard", in which our hero returns from the grave to avenge his own murder - if that reminds you of "High Plains Drifter", Django did it first!

There's plenty of the action you expect this kind of film to deliver, and the plot is less formulaic than usual, due to the ambiguity, only resolved near the end, as to whether the other, much more interesting main character is "Django's" friend or foe. It's not a masterpiece by any means, but it cracks along and does what it says on the tin. In summary, this is a good solid example of the kind of spaghetti western that doesn't try to be funny.