Don't Wait, Django... Shoot!

This film should really be called Wait Django…just wait because that's what he does for most of the film! Periodically some guys turn up to be shot but it's all about the waiting.

Y'see, Django (this time played by Ivan "I'm a man, not a fish" Rassimov) is out for revenge after some bandits double cross his dad, steal his dad's money, then steal the money from themselves, then get themselves killed by another guy who steals his dad's money, then hides in a hotel with Django outside while some other guys come to Django's house and are all like 'where's Django at?', who then get themselves killed so some other guys turn up asking "Where's those guys at who were asking where Django's at?" and so on and so forth until just about everyone ends up dead.

Ivan and Rada Rassimov really look alike, eh? Never noticed that before. This one at least tries to be different, but in a rather uneventful way that must have saved a fortune on locations –Seriously, there's like four different locations here – Django's house, Bad guy number one's house, the village where the guy hides out, and bad guy number two's ranch. That's it! Thrown in a comic drunk guy, a fat sidekick and a whole lot of doing nothing and there's your film.

Good 'nervously tapping a silver dollar on a table' action though

Django (played by Ivan Rassimov in this incarnation) returns home to find out that his father has been killed, by local banditos, in a business deal gone wrong . Revenge is sworn, and a mixture of lone gun men, gang members and other assorted western types get involved with the search for a pouch of money, missing from the deal.

To me this film just seems to be a poor mans Leone flick. All of the elements are there, gunslinging good guy, evil gang leader, revenge, a general lack of respect for life by everyone, a Morrcone style score and stylistic cinematography. The problem is that none of it is up to the Dollars trilogy standard. Ivan Rassimov is no Clint Eastwood (or Franco Nero for that matter, the original Django), it has neither the pace nor timing of something like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and the music is pretty much cookie-cutter Morricone, that seems to have come out a bit misshapen.

Another problem Django Don't Wait has is that it has too many characters, all of them who have their own agenda, making it a bit difficult to follow exactly what happens. The lack of action and over abundance of talking, and just general filler, is probably one of the reasons I did not want to put the effort into following the plot line.

Here is another film which gives the name Django to the title character as an after-thought, in order to cash in on the popularity of that spaghetti western series. In this one, a gang of bandits kill a man who turns out to be Django's father which of course turns out to be pretty bad news for those criminals in the long run. And there's some missing money, or something.

This one stars Ivan Rassimov in the title role, yet he was completely unrecognisable here to me, so much so I thought there must have been a mistake in the credits here. Needless to say it turns out it was Rassimov but I guess he didn't make too much of an impression here, which is surprising given how memorable he was in some later 70's giallo flicks. I guess the western genre just wasn't too suited to him really. Much better was his sister Rada, who would also go on to appear in a prominent giallo, namely Dario Argento's Cat o' Nine Tails (1971). The reason I think I am rambling on about other movies is that this flick was so incredibly forgettable. Like many standard Italian westerns it contains nothing new or very interesting and instead just gives us more of the same. This isn't always a bad thing of course but when it's delivered in such an under par manner it gets old pretty quick. This one is strictly for die-hard fans of this sub-genre.

Directod Eduardo Mulargio (as Edward G. Muller!) churned out a bunch of cheapie spaghetti westerns in the genre's heyday in the late 60's to early 70's. Don't Wait Django, Shoot is one of them, with Ivan Rassimov (as Sean Todd - the blue-eyed character actor mostly known for his roles as villain and psychopathic killer in gialli) in the role of Django Foster (he's got a surname too this go around!) trying to avenge the death of his father by a bunch of Mexican cut-throat extras with greasy faces. The production values are as low as you'd expect from a Django clone probably made in a week to turn in a quick buck, there's lots of non-acting going on, the dialogue is very poor and the script seems to have been conceived in one day and written in another. Entire scenes seem to exist for no other reason than to communicate a single line and the gunfighting is dime a dozen. The movie looks like it was shot 15 minutes from Rome instead of Arizona, Sonora or wherever it's suppose to take place. There are dozens more well made, more interesting, more entertaining spaghetti westerns out there and I'm not even talking about the A-list pictures of Leone, Corbucci or Sollima. This is a third-tier quickie at best and just not a good movie.

DON'T WAIT, DJANGO...SHOOT! is a lame attempt to jump onto the Django bandwagon, and it's obvious from the outset that the main character's name has merely been changed to Django in post production in order to cash in on the success of the Franco Nero movie. It's nothing like a Django film at all, the titular character doesn't even wear the trademark clothing, and is instead a standard vengeance-seeking gunslinger.

The film opens as an elderly man is gunned down by a gang of Mexican cut-throats, leaving his grown up son and daughter seeking revenge for the crime. This revenge takes an inordinately long time to play out, with the running time interspersed with routine intrigue and some very unexciting shoot-outs.

One of the most interesting things about the production, for me, is the presence of Ivan Rassimov in the leading role. Rassimov is well known for his appearances in '70s movies like DEEP RIVER SAVAGES and it's fun to watching him play against his real-life sister, Rada, but he doesn't make much of an impression in this one. Pedro Sanchez has a supporting role and plays the usual larger-than-life character. The truth is that nobody's on fire here, particularly director Edoardo Mulargia who churned out at least a dozen of these cut-price spaghetti westerns.