Preparing for Tarantino: Spaghetti Western Compañeros 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 Compañeros, which also inspired Quentin Tarantino's upcoming anti-slavery opus.

The Film: Compañeros  (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 Compañeros 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, Compañeros 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). more »