"Viva Django" vs "Joe, der Galgenvogel"

I spent time writing this in a post on FB so I might as well re-post it here as well:


This is a trailer for Ferdinando Baldi's brutal spaghetti western PREPARATI LA BARA! from 1968, in English known as Viva Django and in German Joe, der Galgenvogel. It stars Terence Hill before he bacame a "funny" guy.

The weirdest example of German censorshit I've seen is their version of VIVA DJANGO. The film is very cynical and brutal. Django's wife is killed. He is also shot and the bad guys believe he is dead. He digs his own fake grave and puts his ...own name on the tombstone. He shoots people in the back. He shoots one guy in the face. He kills the main bad guy from the back while he's trying to escape. In other words, Django doesn't follow the normal "good guy" code.

The Germans didn't like this! Haha. So they cut out all the violence and changed the story in the German dub. Now the woman who dies isn't his wife but just some woman. His grave is some other guy's. Somebody else shoots the bad guys in the back (off screen). And the most ridiculous scene is where he shoots the guy in the face. They couldn't cut out the scene so in the German version Django narrates the scene and says "I pulled an old trick: I blew powder in his face" (the "powder" is the smoke from the gun, for fuck's sake, hahaha).

And the Germans loved the Trinity brothers and they actually made it into a Trinity bros film, the other "brother" is just on holiday somewhere. At the end of the film he narrates again: "I'm tired of being alone, I'm gonna find the fat guy now". Hahaha. It's the weirdes and most insane cut version I've ever seen. I taped it off TV.

PS: Hmm, it occurs to me that the German version must have left quite an impression on me: I reviewed the two versions in great detail in the first issue of my zine BANNED IN BRITAIN in 1994 and here I am STILL talking about the Germans' abuse!! Haha.

The dead are in their graves and you are dead. Understand!

I'm by no means an expert on this genre but this is one of my favourites and this is a pretty cool trailer (plus the title music is awesome!). :D

VIVA DJANGO was released in Germany as a Trinity brothers film, haha. I have it on tape (I actually wrote a long comparison article in Banned in Britain #1 fifteen yrs ago) and it's hilarious. The German title is Joe, der Galgenvogel [lit. trans: Joe, the Gallows-bird] The original version is a cold and cynical western, very violent and relentless. The Germans changed the entire dialogue so it became a comedy along the lines of the real Trinity bros films. The fact that Bud Spencer's character isn't there is even explained in the new dubbing. I wish someone would subtitle the German print and release it. It's a laugh riot. In the original version there's one scene where Django in a cold manner shoots a guy in the eye. Well, we can't have that in a funny western aimed at 12 y.o. boys in Germany so the scene is explained by a voice over who says something along the lines of "I did the old powder-in-the-eye trick; instead of shooting I blew powder into his eyes", hahaha. In another scene Django shoots a guy in the back but this is cut out and explained with some more voice over: "I let him ride away, there's been enough killings". Haha.

Here's the awesome intro song in full followed by the amazing shoot-out at the end (the uploader basically cut away the entire middle part, lol). I really should check out if there's CDs out there with only spaghetti western soundtracks on 'em. The bad guy is played by German actor Horst Frank who had one of the best bad guy faces ever.