They Call Me Trinity
| They Call Me Trinity | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover | |
| Directed by | E.B. Clucher |
| Produced by | Italo Zingarelli |
| Written by | E.B. Clucher |
| Starring |
Terence Hill Bud Spencer Steffen Zacharias Farley Granger |
| Music by | Franco Micalizzi |
| Cinematography | Aldo Giordani |
| Edited by | Giampiero Giunti |
Production company |
West Film |
Release dates |
|
Running time |
109 min 105 min (cut edition) |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
They Call Me Trinity (Italian: Lo chiamavano Trinità) also known as My Name Is Trinity, is a 1970 Italian spaghetti western comedy film starring Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.
Plot
Trinity (Terence Hill) comes into view accompanied by the movie's theme song, being dragged around in a travois by his horse. He is filthy, yet seems perfectly content as the horse drags him across the desert and through water crossings. When the horse stops near a dwelling, Trinity gets up, pulls on his boots, gets stung by a scorpion hiding in the boot (but is clearly insusceptible to the venom), drags his Colt 45 in holster, feeds some hay to his horse, then walks inside.
The building is the Chaparral Stagecoach Station and restaurant. The owner, noting Trinity's wretched appearance, tells him he will sell him a plate of beans if he has money to pay; a fly-infested mis-shapen slattern prepares the dish. Trinity takes the frying pan along with the plate, scraping the beans from the plate back into the pan and proceeds to eat from the pan with gusto, punctuated by occasional loud burping. The eating scenes are a frequent comic element of the movies in which the team of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer appear.
There are two white men in the restaurant with an injured Mexican prisoner. The two men are bounty hunters and are disappointed to see that Trinity's face does not appear in their batch of "wanted" posters and proceed to disparage him for his sooty, unkempt appearance. After Trinity has eaten every scrap in the pan, he gets up, strolls over to the men's table, and calmly relieves them of their prisoner. When they ask him his name so they'll know what to put on the headstone, he answers, "They call me Trinity." The resulting double-take foreshadows Trinity's notoriety. Trinity offers them a disarming grin when they refer to him as the "Right Hand of the Devil" and tell him that it's said he has "the fastest gun around."
As he walks outside with their prisoner, the men stick their rifle through a window in preparation to shoot Trinity. But in one smooth movement from behind his back and apparently without aiming, Trinity drops both men in their places. It's a zen move showing his effortless, almost mystic skill with a gun. He casually gives the injured Mexican his spot on the travois as he perches himself backwards on the horse so the men can converse as they travel.
Soon they reach a small town where an enormous man with a sheriff's star on his chest is seated outside his office, apparently trying to read a newspaper. He is being harassed by three local toughs standing in the street loudly demanding that he release their friend from jail. Trinity stops to watch the developing gunfight, predicting to the Mexican that the toughs will be "stiff before they hit the ground." When the enormous man quickdraws them with his left hand and outshoots them without blinking, the Mexican asks Trinity who the fast gun is and is told the enormous man is the "Left Hand of the Devil."
It quickly becomes apparent that Trinity and the enormous man, an omnipotent bearded buffoon with squinty eyes—comically called Bambino (baby), are half-brothers. Bambino (played by Bud Spencer) is merely posing as the sheriff of the small town while he awaits the arrival of his gang from the penitentiary from which he escaped. He is not happy to see his troublemaking brother. However, the two form a temporary partnership to deal with Major Harriman (Farley Granger), who is attempting to run a group of pacifist Mormon farmers off their land with the intention of using their property to graze his own horses. The fact that these horses are valuable and unbranded explain Bambino's grudging willingness to work with his little brother even though he considers Trinity to be a shiftless bum without ambition.
However, Trinity has fallen in love with two Mormon sisters and is genuinely concerned with the Mormon settlers' welfare. He persuades Bambino and Bambino's henchmen to help train the pacifistic Mormons to fight, and in the final battle, the Mormon leader finds in the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible that "there is a time for fighting," and the Mormons are unleashed against Major Harriman's goons, using the dirty fighting tricks they have just learned.
Bambino is flabbergasted and then infuriated to learn that Trinity has given the Major's horses to the Mormons. Trinity is about to be happily married to the two Mormon sisters when he learns to his horror that being a married Mormon means actually having to work. So he skips out and goes after Bambino. But his brother has had enough of him and sends him off in the opposite direction. Trinity gets the last laugh, though. He directs the real sheriff (who has come looking for Bambino) in Bambino's direction.
There are slight differences between the original Italian version and the dubbed English version. In the former, the injured Mexican has more dialogue explaining that he was arrested for knifing a gringo who tried to rape his wife.
Cast
- Terence Hill as Trinity
- Bud Spencer as Bambino
- Farley Granger as Major Harriman
- Steffen Zacharias as Jonathan
- Dan Sturkie as Tobias
- Gisela Hahn as Sarah
- Elena Pedemonte as Judith
Sequel
A sequel, Trinity Is Still My Name was soon produced and proved to be an even bigger success. Terence Hill and Bud Spencer would pair up in over a dozen other films, using the formula of brawls and jokes established here. Several of Hill's and Spencer's Westerns made prior to Trinity were rereleased in the United States to take advantage of their popularity with one given a "Trinity" title.
Differences in various versions
In the English version, the scenes where a man on a horse rides past Bud Spencer have the exchange "good evening sheriff" with Spencer grumbling "shut up" whilst the Italian version is silent. The Italian version has the two Mormon women quote suggestive Biblical dialogue to seduce Hill that is not in the English version. The English version adds a loud clap of thunder when the head Mormon remarks about God helping them through sending them the two brothers to protect them whilst the thunder is not on the Italian soundtrack.
Copyright status
They Call Me Trinity was in the public domain until 1996 (due to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act), and hence most video releases were of a poor quality.[1][2] Hen's Tooth Video officially released this film and its sequel on DVD in the US on September 4, 2007. Both are new digital transfers from the original negatives, but there are complaints that some scenes are missing from the sequel.[3][4] The Hen's Tooth Video release also features interlacing due to using pulldown to take the PAL digibeta transfer and put in an NTSC format. The PAL digibeta should have only been given to DVD companies who use said format. The film was released on Blu-Ray in late 2013 in Germany.
References
External links
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