Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I remember one night watching late-night TV with my older brother… I used to call him my big brother but I’m much bigger than he is now… and this movie ‘My Name is Trinity’ came on. I must say that at the age of seven I was pretty convinced that I had just seen the best movie ever made. But I was seven. I also believed in Santa Clause and thought bugs came from nose boogers. You can thank my grandma for that one. The hours I would spend looking at a booger waiting for it turn into a bug. Thanks grandma. But back to ‘My Name is Trinity’ I don’t remember ever seeing this movie again, until yesterday of course some thirty plus years later. I’m pretty sure there’s no way a movie loved by a seven year old boy could possibly be enjoyed by a forty year old man. How wrong you would be in that presumption.

The man’s name is Trinity and he is played with all the mischievous blue eyed, blond hair and cleft chinned glory that actor Mario Girotti could muster up. Terence Hill to you and me. When we first meet Trinity we can see he’s lazy, dirty and hungry, qualities he will largely maintain throughout the movie, and we also observe that the mere mention of his name strikes fear into all men. Trinity is so fast off the draw that they call him the Right Hand of the Devil. But damn if there isn’t always somebody who needs proof, like those clowns at the eatery who thought it would be a good idea to shoot Trinity in the back after some perceived wrong. Actually this effrontery wasn’t so much perceived as it was real but they should’ve known better.

Onward Trinity goes with a drunk Mexican in tow, it’s complicated, when he stumbles upon a small town where some never do wells are threatening, via standoff, the overweight sheriff of this town. It looks bad for this sheriff but Trinity isn’t worried nor is the sheriff because where Trinity is the devil’s right hand, his brother Bambino (Bud Spencer) is the devils left hand and those three suckas are now officially and permanently laid out. The thing that has Trinity in such a quandary is why his brother, a notorious horse thief, is wearing the tin star of a sheriff. Again, it’s complicated but it has a little something to do with the cat who was supposed to be the sheriff going the same way as the horse thief which unfortunately got the man shot up for his poor choice of directions.

So a lot of stuff happens, such as the Bambino cursing the day his trouble maker brother was ever born, the trouble making brother becoming his deputy as the older brother angles in on a big score, they meet some peaceful Mormons including a couple of hot Mormon chicks who are eyeing our blue-eyed hero who has upset the local town big wig in the Major (Farley Granger) who wants their land for his horses. Did we mention that Bambino is a horse thief? The Major has decided that the sheriff and his deputy needs to be eliminated. Good luck with that Major. The Major has also decided to use aggressive force to run these Mormons off, but the non-violent Mormons are now being trained by the sheriff and his trouble making deputy who has gotten wind that this particular religion allows polygamy. Good luck with that Major.

One of the reasons I had to revisit this movie is I just saw that Terence Hill, at 71, has made another western and if I’m going to watch a new Terence Hill western I gotta make sure I watch this and its sequel ‘Trinity is Still my Name’ first before I even think about watching this ‘Doc West’ flick that the old man has made. While the late Enzo Barboni’s ‘My Name is Trinity’ is fully a spaghetti western ‘Once Upon Time in the West’ it is not. ‘My Name is Trinity’ is a lightweight, easy going, nutty as a fruitcake fun movie that features a big dude bopping people on the top of the head with his fist over and over again. That in itself should explain why a seven year old would like this insanely simple movie so much, but its broader appeal lies in the fact that Terence Hill and Bud Spencer play so well off of each other, which shouldn’t be too surprising considering the twenty or so movies these cats have made together.

Hill and Spencer make this movie consistently amusing, take none of what is going on all that seriously and genuinely seem to be having a great time making this movie. Then when you add in Farley Granger as the scurrilous Major who also seems to be having a good time vacationing in Italy while making a movie on the side and you have a movie that is silly, irreverent and a lot of fun to sit through. The final fight scene between the banditos, bad guys, Mormons and our heroes did seem like it went on forever. Even a seven year old had to get tired of watching Bud Spencer bop people on the head for twenty non-stop minutes, but outside of that, for anybody one looking for a spaghetti western without the added weight of Sergio Leone depressing the hell out of you, one can’t go too terribly wrong with the Trinity films.