Django Shoots First (1966)

Glenn Saxson plays Glenn Garvin, also known as Django. He guns down a bounty hunter named Ringo who’s taking his dad to Silver Creek to claim the $5,000 reward on his head.

As he’s preparing to bury his father, Glenn has a change of heart. Why not claim all those dollars for himself?

Besides, would his dad really want to be buried in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around but sagebrush and jackrabbits?

Once in Silver Creek, he’s quickly befriended by a man named Gordon (Fernando Sancho). Seems Glenn’s dad was partners with a now rich town boss named Ken Kluster. They went in together on the bank, the saloon and a ranch outside town.

In Gordon’s mind, Glenn’s half-owner of all of it.

So Glenn sets out to claim what’s his. Kluster sets out to have him eliminated.

Glenn finds another friend in a gentleman who used to be a doctor, though no one’s sure what his motives are now.

As for Kluster’s woman, Jessica (Ida Galli)?

Well, she’s likely to be on the side of whoever’s most likely to leave Silver Creek a rich man.

Review:

Fast-moving, well-done film with a spirited performance by Saxson in the lead and Ida Galli in one of her best Spaghetti roles. Typically cast as the helpless female in need of rescue, she’s the ultimate gold digger here, twisting men to her advantage so she’ll wind up with as much money as possible.

But when it comes to capturing Django’s affections, she has a worthy rival in a pretty blonde saloon girl named Lucy (Erika Blanc). She has a trick up her sleeve as well. It comes at the end, after the bullets have stopped flying, when a couple of late plot twists are likely to boost your opinion of De Martino’s work on this film.

Directed by:
Albert De Martino

Cast:
Glenn Saxson … Glenn Garvin/Django
Fernando Sancho … Gordon
Ida Galli … Jessica Kluster
as Evelyn Stewart
Nando Gazzolo …. Ken Kluster
Erika Blanc … Lucy
Antonio Piretti … Lucy’s brother
Jose Manuel Martin … Ringo
Guido Lollobrigida … Ward
as Lee Burton
Alberto Lupo … Doc

aka
Django spara per primo
He Who Shoots First
No Mercy for Django

Score: Bruno Nicolai
Song: “Bolero”

Runtime: 84 min.

Memorable lines:

Ringo to Glenn: “You just wait now. I only aimed to bring in your Pa. I don’t hanker to kill the whole family. Unless you got a price on your head, I ain’t interested.”

Glenn, to his dead Pa: “You don’t want to be buried here. There’s nothing but sagebrush. Jackrabbits. No trees. Nobody’s passes by here. Wouldn’t it be much better to be buried in town … I was thinkin’, it’d be a real shame to let that reward go to waste.”

Gordon, on Doc: “He appears wrong in the head. All that learning will do that.”

Trivia:

Nando Gazzolo who plays a convincingly slimy villain here appeared in just two Spaghetti Westerns (“The Hills Run Red” being the other, also in 1966). He enjoyed most of his success on TV and played the lead of Sherlock Holmes in an Italian TV mini-series two years later.