La colina de los muertos

The U.S. TV print of this film is awful. There is no pan and scan so there are long sequences where nothing is in the center of the screen! I found myself almost hallucinatory after an hour of this film. None of the American actors dubbed their own voices with the possible exception of Lionel Stander. Terrence Hill plays it straight here.

I would be very interested to see this film in Italian, subtitled and letterboxed. If you get the Trinity box set here in the U.S., I recommend you throw Boot Hill out immediately, unwatched.

I approached this film with little to no expectations, after reading a few fairly negative reviews here on IMDb. I was pleasantly surprised.

The film opens up with Stephens (Terence Hill) trying to evade a posse of killers chasing him through a small town, where a circus is performing. After taking a bullet, Stephens eludes his would-be killers and stows away in a circus cart. We soon learn that one of Stephens fellow gunslingers is working as a trapeze artist with the circus. Ultimately it is revealed that a local exploitative mine owner is in control of the posse and one of his henchmen eventually crosses the circus performers. So the gunslinger, trapeze artists and a local itinerant official join forces to fight against the corrupt mob lead by Honey Fisher (Victor Buono).

The film is well-paced, though not as hurried as many spaghetti westerns sometimes are. The camera work is just a touch above the standard spaghetti western, and a little different from the standard approach. There are a lot of close-ups and the camera is used effectively to create an unsettling and downright weird atmosphere throughout a good portion of the film - this puts an unexpectedly sinister spin on the seeming novelty gimmick of circus performers in battle.

Director Collizzi did a masterful job with a script and story which were - by genre standards - merely OK. Some of the characters remain somewhat weakly developed, but this doesn't really detract from the film's entertainment value. The actors perform generally well (though the charismatic Lionel Stander gets just a little irritating at times).

Recommended for fans of the western genre.

Boot Hill, the English title for this spaghetti western finds Terrence Hill confronting a the hired thugs of town boss Victor Buono and getting shot up for his efforts. A traveling circus takes him in and gives him shelter over the objections of owner Lionel Stander who reluctantly gives in. After that Hill teams up with Bud Spencer, a fellow gunfighter whom he brings out of retirement and Woody Strode who is with the circus, but has his own agenda with that town and its boss.

The film sadly enough tries to be a comedy, but the laughs don't quite come in the right places. For the life of me I could not understand the dubbing of Victor Buono who is playing a variation on the part he had in Four For Texas. Buono had one of the most cultured voices in the English language during his lifetime so that just seemed incredibly stupid to me.

Boot Hill marks the farewell performance of Eduardo Ciannelli who was all of 80 years old and looked it. He was dubbed, but his Italian accent would have been really out of place in this western. My guess is that Ciannelli was not in the best of health making this film. Not one I'd want to go out on.

For those who like the pasta westerns from Europe you might enjoy Boot Hill. But it just isn't my taste.

Released in 1969 and directed/written by Giuseppe Colizzi, "Boot Hill" stars Terence Hill as Cat Stevens, a hunted and wounded man who hooks up with a circus troupe and the oppressed citizens of a small town in the Southwest to take on Honey Fisher (Victor Buono) and his murderous gang who corruptly gain leases on valuable gold-yielding land in the area. Woody Strode plays one of the trapeze artists.

"Boot Hill" is the last film in a trilogy that started with "God Forgives... I Don't!" (1967) and "Ace High" (1968), all starring Terrence Hill as Cat Stevens. It was then rereleased as "Trinity Rides Again" to cash in on the later success of "They Call Me Trinity" (1970) and "Trinity Is Still My Name" (1971) even though "Boot Hill" has nothing to do with those movies, except that Terrence and Bud Spencer star in them.

The main reason people complain about this movie is not due to the quality of the film itself, but rather the lousy fullscreen pan & scan 1:33:1 reduction print, transferred to VHS from 16mm and then transferred from VHS to DVD and typically sold for a buck or less. This crappy version often cuts out the speaker during a scene (!). The movie itself, however, was filmed on anamorphic 35mm in 2:35:1 Techniscope, and was meant to be seen in the widescreen format.

In regards to the film itself, it's a spaghetti Western in the tradition of Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy. I like it better than the first two "Dollars" movies, but it's not technically as good as 1966's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

There are several things I appreciate about "Boot Hill." For one, Terrence Hill is as good or better than Clint Eastwood and it's surprising that he didn't become more popular. Secondly, the traveling circus sets this movie apart from other Westerns. Thirdly, it's nice to see a black character in a Western as one of the protagonists. I can only think of two other Westerns off the top of my head that have done this (not including Mario Van Peebles' "Posse" from 1993): "Duel at Diablo" (1966), with Sidney Poitier, and "The Gatling Gun" (1971), also with Strode. Fourthly, there's a cool Ennio Morricone-like score by Carlo Rustichelli.

On the negative side, the story's kinda muddled and the circus girls aren't as prominent as they should be. In fact, the latter is made out to be a joke when the high wire act starts to perform and the audience boos because they're all male, lol. I also don't like the title "Boot Hill" because I can't figure out why it's the name of the movie; I'm assuming it's the name of the main town in the story, which they should've made clearer at some point.

The movie runs 97 minutes and was shot in Almería, Andalucía, Spain.

GRADE: B-

Misleadingly promoted as a "Trinity" film, "Boot Hill" can barely even be classified as a "Bud Spencer-Terence Hill" film, since it gives the two stars very few chances to exercise their teamwork (Spencer appears after the first half-hour). The story is confusing, and the direction is annoying: for one thing, many action scenes take place in the dark, and for another, the camera focuses a little too closely on the actors; too often half the action appears to have been chopped off the sides of the screen, even though the version I watched was letterboxed. Not recommended. (*1/2)