Preparing for Tarantino: Spaghetti Western Compa�eros Features Star of Original Django Before He Was Unchained

Before there was�Django Unchained, there was�Django, and the star of that 1966 spaghetti western, Franco Nero, can be found in the 1970 surreal comedy�Compa�eros, which also inspired Quentin Tarantino's upcoming anti-slavery opus.

The Film:�Compa�eros��(1970)

Why It's an Inessential Essential: With Django Unchained on the way, it's a good time to revisit the films that inspired Quentin Tarantino's upcoming pastiche. The winningly surreal action comedy�Compa�eros�is the third installment of a trilogy that �spaghetti-western director Sergio Corbucci's shot with Franco Nero, the star of the original Django (1966) and the mysterious man �who makes a prominent cameo at the end of the Django Unchained trailer. Like most spaghetti westerns, Compa�eros�is a mish-mosh of narrative tropes that takes the kind of mercenary outsider made popular in the genre by A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and�Django�and places him in the political, revolutionary-centric context of "Zapata westerns" like Tepepa (1969) and Duck, You Sucker! (1971).

Compa�eros�stars Nero as "The Penguin," a Swedish mercenary who blows into town and is instantly plied with requests to join two warring factions: the current political regime and the revolutionaries. Soon enough, he bumps into the effusive Vasco, played by spaghetti-western staple Tomas Milian, a shoe-shine man who accidentally becomes a captain in the revolutionary cause.

Through a series of convoluted events that inevitably involve double- and triple-crosses, Vasco and the Penguin team-up to help protect a scientist (Fernando Rey!) who knows the combination to a hulking bank vault that everyone suspects houses a huge bounty. But to get to the safe, the trio has to avoid Jack Palance's mustachioed, pot-smoking baddy. (Did we mention that his character keeps a pet falcon? ) Almost everyone betrays everyone else along the way, making the film's uplifting finale a welcome one.

How the DVD Makes the Case for the Film: Blue Underground…

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