They Call Me Trinity (1970)

Terence Hill is Trinity, a bounty hunter in rags who steals a prisoner from two other bounty hunters and takes him to a nearby town.

Lo and behold, his half-brother Bambino (Bud Spencer) is sitting in front of the sheriff’s office in that town, wearing a star on his chest.

Not that he’s the legitimate sheriff. In fact, he wounded the real sheriff, stole his badge, left him for dead and decided to take his place.

After all, Bambino’s really a small-time horse thief. And Maj. Harrison (Farley Granger) has a big herd of horses just begging to be stolen as soon as Bambino’s partners catch up with him.

Maj. Harrison also fancies himself the boss of these here parts. And at the moment, he’s coveting a valley rich for grazing where a religious sect is busy building a new community.

He’s determined to drive them off the land. Trinity takes one look at fawn-eyed beauties Sarah and Judith, members of that religious sect, and is just as determined that the major fail in those efforts.

The brothers eventually decide to help defend the settlers. But how do you defend someone who refuses to take up arms to defend themselves? Especially when it appears Maj. Harrison is aligning himself with a Mexican bandit named Mazcal and all of his gunmen.

Review:

A genuinely funny, occasionally hilarious Spaghetti Western that became a major hit and made stars of Hill and Spencer.

Director Enzo Barboni grabs your attention with a wonderful opening, then keeps it with a clever mix of comedy, action and plot.

Hill plays the unkept, sometimes deadly goofball. Spencer plays the brother who takes his criminal enterprises more seriously, constantly fretting Trinity’s antics will ruin his plans.

The film drags a bit when the fight scenes begin. But what seems routine now might not have been viewed that way when the film was released.

And the Trinity character likely seemed fresh several years into the Spaghetti craze. Clint Eastwood, he was not. Heck, Trinity doesn’t even look in the direction of the bad guys he’s shooting.

Unfortunately, the movie was so successful that is spawn dozens and dozens of less clever, far inferior imitations and imitators, and other actors were paired up in Western comedies with hopes of box office gold.

Box office gold proved elusive. But this film inspired some of the worst Spaghetti Westerns ever made.

Directed by:
Enzo Barboni
as E.B. Clucher

Cast:
Terence Hill … Trinity
Bud Spencer … Bambino
Farley Granger … Maj. Harrison
Steffan Zacharias … Jonathan
Dan Sturkie … Tobias
Gisela Hahn … Sarah
Elena Pedemonte … Judith
Ezio Marano … Frank / Weasel
Luciano Rossi … Timmy
Michele Cimarosa … Chico
Ugo Sasso … Sheriff
Remo Capitani … Mezcal
Riccardo Pizzuti … Jeff
Antonio Monselesan … bounty hunter
as Tony Norton
Luigi Bonos … Ozgur, waystation proprietor

Runtime: 104 min.

aka:
Lo chiamavano Trinità…
Trinity
Just Call Me Trinity
My Name is Trinity

Music: Franco Micalizzi
Song: “Trinity” by Annibale

Memorable lines:

Bounty hunter, watching Trinity gulp down a plate of beans: “That ain’t hungry, that’s a famine. Usually happens when you cross the desert on the run.”
Bounty hunter, after his friend checks the wanted posters: “Lucky for you, you’re just a starving animal.”

Bounty hunter: “You know, Sage, least you can do for a man who wants to die is wish him a cross with his name on it. You just give him you’re name, and you’ll get one.”
Trinity: “They call me Trinity.”
Bounty hunter: “Trinity? Well that’s …
Sage: “Right hand of the devil.”

Chico, after watching Bambino gun down three adversaries: “Madre mia, who is this senor?”
Trinity: “The left hand of the devil.”

“Good morning major.”
Major: “Are you sure?”
“We’re not given to lying.”
Major: “Only to shading the truth.”

Bambino: “One store destroyed. Three heads split like over-ripe melons. One man wounded and one castrated. In two hours. Just two hours I left you alone.”
Trinity: “Well, you asked me to give you a hand.”

Trinity: “If you’d only seen those girls’ eyes. They looked like two frightened fawns.”
Bambino: “Two frightened fawns? They were probably two sluts looking for customers.”
Trinity grabs his gear.
Bambino: “Where are you going?”
Trinity: “To find the fawns.”

Father Tobias: “We are truly indebted to you for aiding our sisters, Judith and Sarah. They were innocent doves, surrounded by evil. The Lord heard their prayers and sent you to answer them.”
Bambino, mumbling under his breath: “Yeah, it was approximately like that.”

Father Tobias, watching Bambino and Trinity ride off: “God is with us.”
There’s a loud clap of thunder.

Father Tobias: “Have you seen what faith can do?”
Bambino: “It’ll work. If you put it in a rifle barrel.”

Trivia:

* Terence Hill and Bud Spencer wound up appearing in 18 films together. They made three Westerns — “God Forgives, I Don’t” (1967), “Ace High” (1968) and “Boot Hill” (1969) prior to this film. The only official sequel, “They Still Call Me Trinity” (1971), marked their last Western together until they made “Troublemakers” (aka “The Fight Before Christmas,” 1994).

* On his website, Hill reports that Barboni got thumbs down from a number of producers for this project because they believed there was too much talk and not enough action, specifically killings. But he says Italo Zingarelli was “excited from the first moment and decided to produce the film.”

* Writes Hill about the film: “Enzo (Barboni)accepted a lot of our ideas to improve the daily shooting. The movie was shot in a fantastic valley between the mountains in the center of Italy and even though the budget was pretty small we were really motivated to do a good job. Between the shooting we had lots of fun. We had a great time, everything was just right and the story would not be complete without mentioning our great team of stuntmen guided by a fantastic stunt coordinator, Giorgio Ubaldi.”

* Elena Pedemonte and Gisela Hahn play the pretty Mormon sisters and are together in every scene in which they appear. This marked one of just five films for Elena, whose career was cut short by a double-fatal car accident in which she was seriously injured.

* Gisela had more than 60 film credits and also appeared in “Durango is Coming, Pay or Die” (1971), “Don’t Turn the Other Cheek” (1971) and “White Fang to the Rescue” (1981). Her non-Westerns included Bruno Corbucci’s wonderfully titled 1971 film “When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong.”

* Both women were scheduled to attend a Spencerhill fanbase party in May 2020 in Germany, according to the Westerns All’Italiana website. But the event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Bud Spencer as Bambino, loading a shotgun in case trouble comes calling in They Call Me Trinity (1970)

Terence Hill as Trinity spots potential trouble in town in They Call Me Trinity (1970)