Trinita va tout casser: La colline des bottes

This Spaghetti Western oater starts when Cat Stevens (Terence Hill or Mario Girotti) trying to save himself from a pursuit by nasties . He's picked up and healed by a circus troupe (Lionel Stander , Woody Strode, among others). Later on , Stevens reunites with Hutch (Bud Spencer o Carlo Perdesoli) , joining forces and confronting baddies . The villain is Honey Fisher (Victor Buono) , a powerful magnate in a small town and supported by heinous henchmen . A government commissioner (Eduardo Ciannelli) comes to little town and the ruthless Fisher is worried but he's usually swindling gold prospectors and gaining exorbitant price leases .

The movie contains gunplay , Western action , circus spectacle and fist-fights . Terence Hill as a tough gunslinger and Spencer as a bouncing hunk are good but still not personified the Trinity heroes characters . In the picture appears usual Spaghetti Western secondaries as Lionel Stander , Woody Strode, furthermore, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori) , Alberto DellÁcqua and Romano Puppo . The film belongs to the Giuseppe Colizzi trilogy starred by Hill and Spencer as Cat Stevens and Hutch Bessy . This one is the third and inferior installment , the first and the best is ¨God forgives¨ or ¨Blood river¨ with Frank Wolff and the second is ¨Four gunmen of Ave Maria¨ with the great Elli Wallach . The film was produced by Manolo Bolognini , a nice producer of classic Spaghetti (Djanjo , Goodbye Texas , Keoma) and accompanied by an atmospheric musical score by Carlo Rustichelli with an enjoyable leitmotif . The film will appeal to Hill and Spencer hardcore fans .

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.

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.

Boot Hill is such a different film to the popular ‘Trinity' films amongst which it was lumped, presumably by the American distributors keen to attract the same appreciative audience, that it often disappoints those who are expecting more of the same. In fact it stands well as a serious Western in own right, perhaps not at the very front rank of the genre, but an above average Spaghetti outing, both in direction and casting.

Director Colizzi conceived the film as the third in the loose trilogy which features Hill as Cat Stevens (the other two films being Dio perdona... Io no!/ God Forgives – I Don't! (1968) and I Quattro dell'Ave Maria, / Revenge at El Paso (1968). In this movie Hill, Spencer, and Stander are all excellent with none of the jokey humour which made the official Trinity films so distinctive and, for this viewer anyway, a little forced. Strode is outstanding and makes one wish that Hollywood had made more of his talents as muscular leading man. Too often one associates him with his mute, opening appearance in Once Upon a Time in the West, or in Ford's stagey Sargeant Rutledge, and forgets how easily he can carry the action for more than one scene. His later encounter with Stevens, while Hill hides out (‘I don't like to thank a man too many times') is one of the best scenes in the film. Although race is not an issue in the film, the American trailer makes play in that ‘two colours' are fighting against one threat, and the austere pairing of Hill and Strode – noticeably seen in single shot at the climax of the film – is electrifying.

The biggest weakness of writer-director Colizzi's film lays in the middle section, when the chronology is rather truncated, although even here the growing rapport between Stevens and Thomas is effectively conveyed by way of compensation. One would have appreciated seeing more of the dissolution of the circus, the debilitating effects of the murder of the acrobat on the troupe.. Meanwhile,the late introduction of Hutch (the essential other half to the expected Trinity pairing) gives plenty of time for an on-screen bond to form and, once the new group re-encounter the show, a real sense of mission has been formed. Such difficulties are partly the problem of a script which attempts too readily to combine showbusiness and showdowns in equal measure. The fault lines in Boot Hill are perhaps best described by the music, which ranges from Bullitt-like suspense riffs, through to a sentimental ‘circus' tune to a third, decidedly ‘epic' theme for the friendship of Stevens and his black comrade.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Boot Hill is Colizzi's inventive use of cross cutting between circus and gunfight, editing between ring and revolver as it were. The most notable example of this occurs at the beginning, when Stevens is stalked outside of the performance tent. By interweaving the dangers of the high wire with more immediate dangers faced outside, Collizi achieves a timing and balance which, in a sense, is as impressive as those inside the big top. Life - at least as shown in Boot Hill – thereby becomes kind of dangerous act of its own, and Colizzi heightens this sense through his shaping of his visual materials. Some critics have compared the acts in Boot Hill to the kind of medieval pageant served up for warlords centuries ago – especially when the troupe perform in front of head villain Honey (a surprisingly underwritten part for Victor Buono); I prefer to see it as a heightening of the tension inheirent in Western action, a different play on the skilful rituals involved.

Interesting comparisons might be made between this film and others where circus play intrudes into otherwise conservative genres (Vampire Circus springs to mind as a similar example) creating an interesting hybrid. Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights – highly rated by French Critics, less well liked at home - would make an interesting double bill with Colizzi's production, which is in need of some reassessment.

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)