Trinita va tout casser: La colline des bottes

Third and rarest pairing of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer after God Forgives... I Don't (1966) and Ace High (1967), both by director Colizzi, before the Trinity films turned them into Italy's most dubious exports of the Seventies. Hill was given these cold-eyed roles before the more familiar slaparound antics; here he plays a grimy cheroot-huffin' hombre called `Trouble', who enlists a traveling circus (led by Woody Strode and Lionel Stander) to defeat a money-grubbing land baron (Batman's King Tut, Victor Buono). Like all good Spaghetti Westerns, Boot Hill combines claustrophobic visuals and a lumpen left wing philosophy, with the added novelty of the circus backdrop. Bud's almost a supporting player, but thankfully the dumb ox still gets to throw his weight around. Recommended, muchachos.

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 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)