After the stupendous success of a comedy (or any other movie), what would expect next ? You would expect a sequel, and that is exactly what happened when “They call me Trinity” was released and became a huge success; after all, it was a bet that a comic turn to the spaghetti western would do well, and it was against odds that the movie did really well. And lo and behold, the next movie in the series was ready for viewers the next year. The movie had the same principal crew, with the same Director (Enzo Barboni), same principal cast (Terence Hill and Bud Spencer). And you know what, the sequel did even better, being Italy’s highest grossing movie of all time. Both the cast members, Terence and Bud, could not have asked for a better jump to their movie career with this movie.

The movie is a continuation of a comedy, with several scenes, such as the one where Bambino hits a convict over the head, knocks him out, and when the guy gets up, he has become addlepated, similarly, in another scene, Trinity is able to draw his gun and slap another guy 15 times before the other person can do anything (this is how fast Trinity is). You see them trying to be bad guys, but are so good-hearted that they end up helping a family multiple times, such as helping repair a broken wheel on their wagon.
Again, when they finally manage to get some loot after tricking some more of the bad guys, they give it to the Rangers to ally their suspicion.

Italian made western spaghetti movies were all the rage during the 60′s, and till the early half of the 70′s, by which time there were a number of movies that had started lampooning such movies. In addition, audiences had also changed their tastes, and the culture of spaghetti movies died out, but not before making the reputations of a number of characters. Both Terence Hill and Bud Spencer gained immensely from the making of this movie, since the movie was a huge success worldwide and made them hugely successful starts. In fact, this success led to a short period of craze for comedy westerns, and also led to the inevitable sequel called ‘Trinity is still my name’ which was even more successful. The movie was written and directed by Enzo Barboni. Right now, the movie is in the public domain.

As you would expect from such a movie, the story is not very complicated. However, there are visual effects in the movie that are important, such as the starting scene where Trinity appears, with his horse dragging him around in a travois, perfectly content to live an easy life, dirty as his horse drags him around. What seems to contradict this view is that he is known as the fastest hand in the west with a gun, a person who can move faster than any other gunslinger.
The story starts with Trinity getting into a dwelling where the restaurant is, quite logically, unsure of Trinity’s ability to pay for his meals; so Trinity eats directly from the pan, burping while doing so (and these types of eating scenes are part of the comedy elements of the Trinity series). He then proceeds to relieve 2 bounty hunters of their Mexican prisoner, and shoots them effortlessly when they try to shoot him down from inside the dwelling. This is part of the magic, how easy he handles a gun. He moves along with the Mexican, and moves to another town. There he sees an enormous sheriff being challenged by 3 roughs, and apparently the sheriff is in the same league as Trinity. However, it soon becomes clear that the make-believe Sheriff, Bambino, is actually Trinity’s brother, and although they do not get along with each other, they cooperate for different reasons to support Mormons against their fight with Major Harriman (Farley Granger). How the fight goes should be clear, but is fun to watch.

More reviews:

1. At Rotten Tomatoes (link)
2. The Spinning Image (link)
3. Roger Ebert (link)
4. Fistful of Pasta (link)

Westerns have been a popular theme in the history of the United States, and there have been many many movies and books on the same theme. There have been many famous figures and incidents in the history of the Westerns in the US, with the most prominent being characters such as Wyatt Earp, Doc Halliday, both of whom took part in a real life incident that took place in the town of Tombstone in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. The town of Tombstone was founded in 1879, while the actual incident took place on October 26, 1881 (read about the shootout at Wikipedia).

The movie was directed by John Sturges, and was written based on a screenplay by the famous author Leon Uris, and was released in 1957. The movie was nominated for 2 academy awards for the Sound and Editing categories, but did not win anything. It starred some of the big stars of that era such as Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday. The movie looks at the lives of these 2 pivotal characters of Marshall Wyatt Earp and his companion, the famous gun fighter Doc Holliday (who was very sickly at that point of time), and builds up to the battle they had with the rival Clanton gang. The movie details the friendship between two, starting when Earp helps Doc Holliday escape from a tricky situation.
The movie portrays Doc Holliday as a larger than life person, a person who has a strong sense of honor, and yet is driven by his own private demons, something that makes him struggle and leads a tortured life; his portrayal by Kirk Douglas threatened to steal the show out from under Lancaster’s portrayal of Earp. The actual scene of course is always dramatized, and many aspects of it is inaccurate.

‘For a few dollars More’ was a movie directed by Sergei Leone and starred Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volontè. It followed the first successful movie of the spaghetti western trilogy, ‘The Man with No Name’. However, what was interesting was that when Clint Eastwood was sought to be signed on for the second movie of the series (after the first, A Fistful of Dollars was not yet released), and Clint was hesitant to sign on the second movie without having even seen the movie (A Fistful of Dollars had been released in Italy, and was a success there, but not yet released in the US). For him, an urgent copy of the print was ordered, and after seeing the movie (even though the print was not in English, but in Italian), he believed enough to sign on for another movie. Another interesting bit from the movie was that the set that was built for the movie, a town called ‘El Paso’ in the Almeria desert, still exists. The movie is rated as one of the best in this category, with the classic portrayal of the characters in the Wild West along with the depiction of the American Southwest.
Clint Eastwood was called ‘Manco’ in the movie because people would see him doing any work using his left hand, his character always kept the right hand free to draw a gun and always be ready.

The movie is about the hunt for an outlaw called “El Indio (Gian Maria Volontè)” by 2 bounty hunters, one of them being the` younger ‘Manco’ (CLint) and the older, once highly respected Colonel Douglas Mortimer (who is no longer much respected, since he is now reduced to being a bounty hunter – one who hunts down criminals for the cash reward on offer against them). Colonel Mortimer has a personal agenda in the hunt for “El Indio”, since El Indio had once raped and killed the Colonel’s sister. Manco however is after the bounty money.
The 2 join hands in the hunt for El Indio, however, each has their own agenda. As a part of the hunt, it is decided that a reluctant Manco will join Indio’s gang, as Indio is planning a raid on a safe in El Paso that contains almost half-a-million dollars, a huge sum of money by any standard. After the raid, Manco and Colonel Mortimer are caught in the act of stealing the money from the bandits, and are brutally thrashed, but are left free by Indio who in reality wants to have a fight between the gang members and the bounty hunters so as to ensure that the entire money belongs only to Indio. This action dutifully happens, and now there is a face off between Colonel Mortimer and Indio.