Jesse & Lester – Due fratelli in un posto chiamato Trinità (Jesse & Lester – Two Brothers In a Place Called Trinity) starts Richard Harrison as woman-loving, gun shooting Jesse Smith and Donald O’Brien as Lester O’Hara, a God-fearing Mormon. They’re also half brothers who have inherited land from their uncle and must kick gold prospectors off the land. Not just other people who want the gold but rustlers using slaves to get the gold. They also get involved in gambling on boxing, which means that Jesse has to fight in the ring to get their gold back.
Jesse is running from a series of fathers angry that he’s impregnated the daughters and has the dream of opening his own bordello while Lester wants to open a church. These are not mutual goals, but they must work together. Anne Zimmerman also plays Elena Von Schaffer, the love interest of Jesse. She’s also in The Sister of Ursula, Camorra and The Bloodstained Butterfly.
Director Renzo Genta worked with Harrison to write and direct this movie. He’s better known as the writer of movies such as Concorde Affaire ’79, Last Cannibal World and Day of Anger.
This is episodic and, as you can imagine, trying to be a Trinity movie. Harrison and O’Brien are good, but they don’t reach their inspirations.
Jokko Barrat (Richard Harrison, years before he would appear in so many Godfrey Ho movies), Richie (Alberto Dell’Acqua, one of the many undead in Zombi), Domingo (Luciano Pigozzi, who appears in so many movies and always gives me so much joy when he shows up) and Mendoza (Claudio Camaso, the brother of Gian Maria Volonté. Unlike his leftist brother, Claudio was ultra-fascist to the point that he may have planted a bomb at an entrance to Vatican City. He was exonerated, but years later was arrested for strangling a friend to death and then killed himself in jail) have a plan to steal gold from some bandits, but are betrayed by Domingo. Mendoza dies and Ricky is tortured before between torn apart by horses.
Jokko follows the five men and Mendoza, killing them one by one and leaving part of a bloody rope — the same that was used to kill Ricky — all while being followed by a detective (Paolo Gozlino).
As much a gothic horror film as a Western, this was directed and written by Antonio Margheriti. The end even takes place in a mine and feels like its more Italian horror than cowboy epic. I’ve seen some reviews that say that this is a typical Western, but I wonder what movie they were watching.
An Italian Spanish co-production, this was directed by Eugenio Martín and produced by Phillip Yordan as part of three movies they’d make together, which also include Bad Man’s River and Horror Express.
After being double-crossed in an arms deal by a gun merchant McDermott (Luis Dávila) from New Mexico, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa (Telly Savalas) and his American lieutenant Scotty (Clint Walker) attack a U.S. Army weapons depot and seize McDermott.
Colonel Wilcox (Chuck Conners) is stationed on the American side of the border and is assigned to rescue the shady McDermott, who is as bad or worse than the Mexican revolutionaries.
In his book Hollywood exile, or, How I learned to love the blacklist: A memoir, producer Bernard Gordon goes into how little Telly Savalas and Clint Walker liked one another. Savalas made attempts to upstage Walker while — unlike their characters in the movie — Anne Francis and Walker got along quite well. Walker was also not far from a near-death experience. The actor Walker skied out of control and had his heart stabbed with a ski poke. He was pronounced dead until a doctor heard a faint sign of life and performed life-saving surgery.
Walker is pretty much Rick Dalton. He was the lead on Cheyenne before getting into Western and war movies. He eventually moved into TV movies, several of which are pretty good, including Killdozer! and Snowbeast.
Pancho Villa even has a song, We All End Up the Same”, which was written by John Cacavas and Don Black and sung by Savalas. This feels very Vietnam-era, in that Connors has a scene where the entire army can’t kill one fly. It ends as all movies should with a train on train head to head crash.
Jim Latimore has been battling the Gonzales brothers and when he marries their cousin Rosaria (Mónica Randall, The Witches Mountain), things get even worse. They hire El Matanza (Antonio Molino Rojo) to kill him and take his son to be raised as one of the Gonzales family. Rosaria is assaulted and barely survives. Three years later, Tex (Guy Madison, Long Days of Hate; he also plays Jim) arrives with four other men — Dan (Vassili Karis), Ramon (José Manuel Indios (Giovanni Cianfriglia) and Alan (Mariano Vidal Molina) — who plan on killing every one of the Gonzales brothers, giving Rosaria back her home, getting her son back and getting vengeance.
This is directed by Aldo Florio, who also made Dead Man Ride and wrote 2020 Texas Gladiators, which is pretty much a Western with cars instead of horses. This movie was written by Dirk Wayne Summers, Bernard C. Schoenfeld and Alfonso Balcázar (La casa de las muertas vivientes).
One of the camera crew with Aristide Massacesi, the man of many names who most call Joe D’Amato.
Milklos “Mickey” Hargitay left Hungary in 1947 to get out of being drafted into military service by the Soviet Union. He settled in Cleveland, where he worked as a plumber and carpenter. Can you imagine Hargitay coming to your house to fix your toilet? He’d already been in an acrobatic act with his brothers, a football player, a champion speed skater and a freedom fighter. He was just 21 by the time he made it to America and he started an acrobatic act with his first wife, Mary Birge. Steve Reeves inspired him to start bodybuilding and just a few years later in 1955 Hargitay won the National Amateur Body-Builders’ Association (NABBA) Mr. Universe. Jayne Mansfield demanded that he be in her movie Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? The two became lovers, appearing in movies like The Loves of Hercules, Primitive Love and Promises! Promises! together. After they were divorced in 1963, Hargitay kept acting in Italy, appearing in Revenge of The Gladiators;Stranger in Sacramento; The Sheriff Won’t Shoot; Bloody Pit of Horror; Sette donne d’oro contro due 07; Cjamango; Ringo, It’s Massacre Time; Lady Frankenstein; Black Magic Ritesand Delirium.
Charles Allen Pendleton was born in Denver, Colorado and began working out to deal with the rough kids in his neighborhood. He was in the Battle of the Bulge and taken prisoner and when he got back to America, he became a high school teacher and guidance counselor in Los Angeles. He was reenlisted for the Korean War and when he came home, he acted in Prisoner of War, The Man with the Golden Arm and The Ten Commandments in which he drags Moses to meet the pharaoh. Before going to Italy to be an actor — the success of Steve Reeves brought every bodybuilder there — a psychic asked him if the name Gordon Mitchell meant anything to him. When he got to Italy, that was the name that he was given. He would appear in everything from Fellini’s Satyrcon to crime movies, horror, sexploitation and post-apocalyptic films.
Both Mickey Hargitay and Gordon Mitchell started their show business careers as part of Mar West’s Muscleman Review. Other bodybuilders who appeared with West included Reg Lewis (Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules), Charles Krauser (who later became Paul Novak, the love of West’s life), Armand Tanny (a Muscle Beach bodybuilder who often wrote about weight lifting; he organized a strike when West attempted to reduce pay of the group), Dan Vadis (Hercules the Invincible, Mission: Impossible), George Eiferman (The Devil’s Sleep; George of the Jungle was based on him), Irvin “Zabo” Koszewsk (Tommy Chong’s stunt double; he’s also in Spartacus), Dick Dubois (Athena), Dominic Juliano and Joe Gold (the founder of Gold’s Gym). Krauser and Hargitay even had a fight at a press conference in 1956 over West.
This movie is the one time that Hargitay and Mitchell would be in a movie together. Ringo Carson (Hargitay), Frank Sanders (Mitchell) and Tom (Spartaco Conversi) are hired by Walcom (Amedeo Trilli) to rescue his daughter Jane (Milla Sannoner). She falls for Ringo and that splits the friendship between him and Frank.
After the Civil War, Ringo becomes the town sheriff of Stone City and has a son with Jane. Frank is the leader of an outlaw gang who is hired by Daniels (Ivano Staccioli) to terrorize his hometown and drive down the price of ranches. Ringo is blinded in an accident and Frank takes over as the law, which allows him to go wild. Eventually, he kills Ringo’s mother and kidnaps Jane, which is not how you repair a friendship. There’s even a voodoo scene in this oddball Italian Western.
Also known as The Stranger and the Gunfighter, Là dove non batte il sole (Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine) and El kárate, el Colt y el impostor (Karate, Colt and the Imposter), Blood Money comes from the era where Shaw Brothers was working on other genre mash-ups as part of international co-productions like Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.
Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh) must go to America and find his uncle Wang’s missing fortune and return it to a warlord or his entire family will be executed. His only clue is that a thief named Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) accidentally killed his uncle when he blew up his safe and he knows where Wang’s uncle is buried.
Yes, a movie where Lee Van Cleef and Lo Lieh fight people and are on a quest to see Patty Hsepard and Erika Blanc’s butts. Did I manifest this movie into being? And it’s directed by Antonio Margheriti?
…continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità (They Still Called Him Trinity) is a sequel to, you knew it, They Call Me Trinity and was, for some time, the biggest Italian movie of all time.
It starts by reminding us that Bambino (Bud Spencer) and Trinity (Terence Hill) are as much the same as they are different. Bambino and Trinity both come across the same four men, they both steal their beans and eat them, but they do it in different ways. Bambino with his brawn and Trinity with his brains.
Those same four men follow the two of them back to their family home, where their mother Farrah (Jessica Dublin) robs them at gunpoint. Then, their father (Harry Carey, Jr.) acts as if he’s on his deathbed. He asks the brothers to get along, for once, and help each other be the best outlaws that they can be. The problem is that for as much of a scoundrel as Trinity is, he can’t not be a good person. And that keeps rubbing off on Bambino, even if it makes him angry that he has to go along with his little brother.
For example, they keep finding the same family in a stagecoach and have to help them and give them any money they’ve stolen. Even when challenged to a duel by Wild Card Hendricks (Antonio Monselesan), Trinity just keeps showing him how fast he is without killing him. This is after he’s surprised an entire saloon with his insane card sharp skills, showing off multiple shuffles and cuts of the deck.
An episodic movie to say the very least, this ends with the brothers helping some monks who have been taken over by criminals. My favorite part is in this scene, as Bambino spends an inordinate amount of time confessing his sins as a monk is shocked with every transgression.
Directed by Enzo Barboni, who wrote this with Gene Luotto, this would be the last official sequel until 1995’s Sons of Trinity. There are tons of retitled movies and ones that have Trinity in the name to watch until you get to that or you can watch Spencer and Hill in other films like Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure, Odds and Evens, Crime Busters, Double Trouble, Miami Supercops, all the Way Boys, Turn the Other Cheek, I’m for the Hippopotamus and Go for It.
According to Peter Bogdanovich, the original title for this movie — Duck, You Sucker! — was meant by Leone as a close translation of the Italian title Giù la testa, coglione! which means Duck your head, balls!
For some reason, Leone thought that this was a common phrase in America.
That’s why this is also called A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time … the Revolution.
In America, a lot of the movie was cut, as it was too violent, profane or politically sensitive. The movie starts with a quote from Mao Zedong that says, “The revolution is not a social dinner, a literary event, a drawing, or an embroidery; it cannot be done with elegance and courtesy. The revolution is an act of violence…” Moments later, a man’s bare ass is on screen.
This was sold in America as a light-hearted follow-up to Leone’s Dollars movies.
It is not.
Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) leads a gang that is mostly made up of his children, robbing rich people in a train and not part of any revolution at all. John H. Mallory (James Coburn) is an Irish man in Mexico to be a silver prospector. Juan wants him to be part of his crew that robs a bank. John refuses and gets set up as a murderer, so he has to come along.
John is working for Dr. Villega (Romolo Valli) as an explosives expert, something he did as an Irish Republican. They blow up the bank that Juan wanted to rob. It has no cash, instead being used to hold prisoners. This makes Juan a hero of the revolution.
Colonel Günther Reza (Antoine Saint-John) kills nearly everyone, including so many of Juan’s family members, including his dad. He runs into their headquarters and is nearly killed before being captured and sent to a firing squad. John learns that Dr. Villega was tortured and gave them up. This reminds him of how he and his friend Nolan (David Warbeck) had a similar thing happen, as he gave up John to British soldiers. John killed them all and left Ireland. He saves Juan by racing in on his motorcycle, yelling for him to duck and blowing every soldier to chunks.
This is a film of how people see heroes. Juan isn’t someone for the revolution and becomes one. John is someone who believed in a cause and love and now just blows things up. Dr. Villega is destroyed by realizing that he saved himself instead of those he rallied to the cause.
Oh yeah — I know it goes without saying that Morricone’s music is always making these movies epic, but here it is somehow even more glorious.
The end of this destroys me, as John is shot in the back and Juan destroys Reza with bursts from a gigantic gun. It’s not a heroic action like Django but a man in pain just obliterating someone when that’s all he has left. As John lies near death, he remembers when times were different, when he and Nolan were close, when they both loved Coleen (Vivienne Chandler, who is in Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil; she was also in Asia’s video for The Smile Has Left Your Eyes” and was rebel pilot Dorovio Bold in Return of the Jedi; she was in a relationship and had a son and daughter with Kate Bush’s brother John Carder Bush and influenced the photos that he did on her album covers. She styled Kate on her artwork for Hounds of Love).
The Spaghetti Western Database is my guide when I watch these movies and they say this about They Call Me Trinity: “…often described as the film that destroyed the spaghetti western and saved the Italian movie industry. In Italy the movie even linguistically marks the ending of an era: whereas the diehard westerns were called spaghetti westerns, the Trinity movies and the numerous imitations it spawned, would be called fagioli westerns. Fagioli (= beans) referring to the obsession with food, notably beans, both Trinity movies express.”
Terence Hill, who plays Trinity, is nothing like the dark heroes in the rest of the Italian West. Sure, there’s some violence in this movie, but by the end, it’s become an actual comedy and you care more about the characters than what they’ll do or who they’ll kill.
Director Enzo Barboni wrote the original story and screenplay for the film. which supposedly was much darker than what ended up being in this movie. Producer Italo Zingarelli suggested the inclusion of a brother, which is how Bambino (Bud Spencer) comes in.
The original idea was for Peter Martell and George Eastman to be the brothers, but Hill and Spencer were popular after God Forgives… I Don’t!, Ace High and Boot Hill (which was released as Trinity Rides Again in some areas). This wasn’t just big in Italy; it was huge in France and Germany.
Again, unlike every Italian cowboy before him, Trinity doesn’t come into town dragging a coffin or tall in the saddle. He’s sleeping, lounging as his horse drags him somewhere new. His first meeting of the movie is with bounty hunters who have an injured Mexican with them. Trinity takes their prisoner and kills the others when they try to shoot him in the back. He’s nearly superhuman in his ability to draw and shoot, which is the opposite of his laconic demeanor.
Similarly, Bambino is the sheriff, someone who can shoot just like Trinity buy who is a burly man twice his size and someone who is ill-tempered where Trinity is full of smiles and kind words. All they have in common is that when they need to kill someone, it’s second nature to them. It’s what they do best.
Bambino became the law when he accidentally killed the man riding to town to take that role. Now his scam is taking that job until his gang rides in. He has to deal with a lot, like Major Harriman (Farley Granger), who is trying to run the Mormons off their land so that he can use it for his prize horses. Horses that are unbranded, so that means someone — someone like Trinity and Bambino — can make a lot of money stealing them.
Despite being called the Right and Left Hands of the Devil, the two keep doing the right thing, Maybe it’s because he’s fallen for two angelic Mormon girls and is thinking about marrying them both. Or perhaps Trinity just sees protecting these peaceful Mormons as the right thing to do, even convincing his brother and his henchmen to show them how to fight.
Of course they’re successful. Trinity also learns that being a Mormon means working hard, so he lies back down and lets his horse take him somewhere, maybe further west, perhaps somewhere that he can annoy his half-brother some more.
“You may think he’s a sleepy-type guy, always takes his time. Soon I know you’ll be changing your mind when you’ve seen him use a gun.”
I know that I should be protective of the rougher movies of the genre, but I have to confess that I loved every moment of this movie. It’s pure joy on film, from the arguments between Trinity and Bambino to the fact that Trinity looks at beans like most Western heroes look at money.
If you ever wonder what I want for Christmas, it’s this Trinity action figure.
Also known as Kill and Pray, this comes from director Carlo Lizzani, who also made Un Fiume di Dollari. It starts with a massacre of Mexican people as they are betrayed aby Confederate soldiers under the command of Ferguson (Mark Damon). Only a young boy survives, running into the desert where he is raised by Father Jeremy (Ferruccio Viotti) and grow into a holy man who is also incredibly good with a gun.
His stepsister Princy (Barbara Frey) rebels against her family and joins a traveling circus and the boy (Lou Castel) sets out to find her, getting the name Requiescant for the words he says every time he shoots someone. It basically means “go in peace” and he’s atoning for each murder while providing last rites.
He finally finds his sister in San Antonio, a town now run by Ferguson and a place where his stepsister is forced into sexual slavery by Fergusson’s henchman Dean Light (Carlo Palmucci). Once he learns who is in charge, he joins the cause of Father Don Juan (Pier Paolo Pasolini, who also worked on the script and yes, that’s the same person who made Salo). Holy men sometimes need to kill, at least in the Italian West.
Damon is a revelation here, appearing as if he has walked out of a gothic horror movie all in black with his pale skin, literally treating everyone around him like they mean nothing. There’s a scene where he strangles his wife while Dean watches where he seems aroused as he shouts “She died well, Dean. It was a beautiful moment for her.”
I love the idea that these religious men have had enough and need to speed up God’s vengeance.
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