Some people love 'em, some loathe 'em. But there's no denying the films of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer aren't some of the most essential if one wants to understand Italian Genre Cinema. For one, their punching-and-burping brand of humour brought down the spaghetti western. In some ways the overly cynical subgenre was a parody in itself, but after these guys were done with it, it was impossible to take seriously any more.
So let's take a look at the work done by them in the spaghetti western play field. Hill in particular was used quite a lot as a cowboy, as you might remember. As this post takes its H from his name, it shall focus more on his work, though Spencer was also alnong for the ride in most cases.
The Colizzi Trilogy
(Director: Giuseppe Colizzi)
God Forgives, I don't
(Dio perdona... Io no!, Italy/Spain 1967)
The first starring role of the Hill/Spencer duo. At this point their mishaps were still a bit more violent and cynical than later on, reminiscent of the rivalry of Blondie and Tuco in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Colizzi's tongue in cheek approach was to create a sort of animal fable in the west, with Hill and Spencer taking attributes of a cat and a dog, respectively, and the main villain played by Frank Wolff being, of course, a wolf. Or maybe a cunning fox.
The film's plotting is divided into several viewpoints, but the core is that two buddies with a dangerous bandit on their tails, are traveling across the west to find loot that has gone from person to person after a train robbery. As it's a study of power dynamics, cheating to win, gambling and poker are also very important aspects of the film.
This was the point still when spaghetti westerns were racing to have ever more epic scopes and bigger action scenes. As a spectacle, the movie also delivers, even though the wandering across deserts takes a bit too much of the running time. The film is explodable and at times even brutal, which makes for an odd cocktail with all the animal-based slapstick, but it holds together surprisingly well.
★★★ 1/2
Ace High
(I quattro dell'Ave Maria, Italy 1968)
This film starts off straight from where the last one left off. The two buddies are wandering across the desert, with their loot packed in. But things get complicated when they meet up with a bandit (Eli Wallach) who has survived from a hanging, and starts to swindle them out of their earnings and perhaps enlist them to help him get revenge.
It's the longest and limpest part of the trilogy, that allows Wallch's Leone-tested maneurs and charisma to drive the film rather than more intricate plotting, humour or character dynamics. But . this time around the film's balancing of epic action, cynical brutality and comedy doesn't fit together as well, leaving a taste a bit too dry.
Once again there's a long heist sequence, here saved toward the end of the film, that shines as the best part of the movie.
★★ 1/2
Boot Hill
(La collina degli stivali, Italy 1969)
As the trilogy closes, the film explores more themses such as aging and settling down. Hill's scoundrel has a new get-rich plane, but he has to try to convince Spencer who has settled as a gold-digger with a new partner, to join him and a grizzled gun-fighter (Woody Strode) to battle a bandit (George Eastman) who has taken over an entire town.
At this point the comedy aspects are starting to take hold, and there are more jokes here than in the previous two films. The film's major plot concerns a traveling circus that is used as a Trojan Horse in order to gain access to the closed city. But the film works mostly as a cavalcade of nice stunts and gun-fights, it doesn't have the well-thought out plotting and character work of the first film in trilogy.
The circus acts foreshadow the reliance of slapstic and acrobatics in lieu of gunfire later on, but in here the bodies still pile up and people get a proper lead poisoning.
★★★
They Call Me Trinity
(Lo chiamavano Trinita..., Italy 1971)
Director: Enzo Barboni (E.B. Clucher)
This was a turning point for the spaghetti western genre and a major box-office hit. I would think audiences were getting tired of the over-the-top cynicism on offer in so many spaghetti westerns (that were done in just an 8-year stretch of time. The intended audience for this one were born around the same time as the whole sub-genre.
The plot concerns the lazy bounty hunter Trinity meet up with his brother Bambino who has escaped the law in plain sight and become a sherriff for a small town. A rich dandy hires a group of Mexican thugs to create trouble, which threatens to hit also the small religious community out on the prerie, trying to build their own town. Trinity and Bambino, who walk on a morally grey line, must decide who they want to help build the west.
As a film, Trinity is overlong and uneven. The best secenes see Trinity and Bambino bickering, but neither is much fun by themselves. Barboni's greatest invention was to replace the final gundown with a beat-em-up free-for-all. This has since been topped in many ways and many times.
★★ 1/2
A Man From the East
(E poi lo chiamarono il magnifico, Italy/France 1972)
Director: Enzo Barboni
Hill is playing solo here, as a New York dandy who gets an inheritance. It turns out to be not that much in money, but more in cameraderieship with a gang of rootin'-tootin' frontier men. They are in turn tasked to grow the young greenhorn into a real man. On the way, Hill also falls in love with a beautiful young lady (Yanti Somer).
So it's more or less a romantic comedy that's only set in the old west. Even though the films with Spencer weren't exactly that raunchy, this one has even less edges than them. The most memorable things regarding this film are a quite good barroom brawl scene, and a nice scenery-chewing turn of the film's villain, gunslinger Morton Clayton (Ricardo Pizzutti). Most of the actors playing Hill's gang members do their best to even out the buddy-comedy partnership, but none of them can really hold a candle to Spencer's irritability and Obelix-level imperviousness to any physical harm.
★★
My Name is Nobody
(Il mio nome รจ Nessuno, Italy/France/West Germany 1973)
Director: Tonino Valerii
Sergio Leone himself executive produced another spaghetti vehicle to his favorite star, Henry Fonda, and also secretly co-directed several scenes in the film. It turns out he preferred to do the more comedic parts of the film. Most of the film's more stylized scenes were done by the dependably talented director Tonino Valerii.
Hill plays a wild west weirdo who happens upon an old gunslinger Jack Beauregard (Fonda) who thinks of peaceful retirement. Much as the Italians had done in real life, he decides to stage a final showdown so that legends might be written in his name. In doing so, he messes up with some powerful enemies, and soon Beauregard and Nobody are facing the men of the Wild Bunch alone.
Fonda being more of a straight man requires Hill to play his basic character shtick even more unhinged (and annoying) than usual. The film has its share of cool setpieces, including a comicbooky Funhouse shootout. But the movie also had the bad luck to come out the same year than Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, which had plenty of more insightful ideas on comedically deconstructing the westerns. But it's still one of the better films Hill ever did, and Ennio Morricone's theme song is an ear-worm for the ages.
★★★ 1/2
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