"Boot Hill" (1969) is directed by Giuseppe Colizzi and stars Terrence Hill, Bud Spencer, Woody Strode and George Eastman.The screenplay by Collizzi concerns a circus travelling the West who pick Cat Stevens (Hil), who has been injured by a mining company who are after his claim. When the company's henchmen kill a circus acrobat, former gunfighter Tomas (Strode) teams up with Stevens to avenge the man's death.This is a very underrated Spaghetti Western, brilliantly photographed (by Marcello Masciocchi) and edited (by Tatiana Casini Morigi) with an unusual script, handled well and shot through with weird moments of humour and very well handled by the director, whose third film with the duo Hill and Spencer, after "God Forgives, I Don't" (1967) and "Aces High" (1968) this was. Although there are connections in this film with the previous two, it is sufficiently divorced from them that you can watch this and not the previous entries in the trilogy.From the great opening scene to the final gun battle, this is one Spaghetti Western you can't miss.

I like these type of movies but this one which I bought as part of a 4 movie Spaghetti western Special really is terrible. This actually may be the grandfather of "Brokeback Mountain". Woody Strode along with other guys on a trapeze are the stars of the circus. The girls don't get the applause like they do. Bud Spencer's roommate named "Baby Doll" And the bad guy Victor Buono named "Honey". On top of that it looked like the movie that started director David Lynch on his little people craze. Maybe the trapeze stuff too! It's just weird. Not transfered well to DVD since a lot of action / dialogue is off screen on regular TV (don't have a widescreen to see if it's any better). I did get through it though in about 5 tries. That's just the OCD in me. Another post recommended some others and I would heartily agree.

This is an entertaining conclusion to the trilogy of westerns made by directer GIUSEPPE COLIZZI and stars TERENCE HILL and BUD SPENCER.The first collaboration GOD FORGIVES... I DON'T benefited from the presence of FRANK WOLFF, the ruthless master criminal BILL SAN'ANTONIO; ACE HIGH allowed ELI WALLACH to steal the show whenever he was on-screen, giving us a variation on his TUCO role (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY), so that we could overlook the meandering approach to the memorable finale, set deliriously to a waltz, and the third film BOOT HILL provides a white collar villain in VICTOR BUONO.His angle on life and death in the west is complementary to what SERGIO LEONE proposed in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Big business and its money was the only means of beating the gun. And so the heroes' approach to defeating the wonderfully obese BUONO is different from the slugfests and shootouts from earlier westerns.This is why I would disagree with Tom Weisser in his otherwise excellent tome on spaghetti westerns - "the genre's most (unintentionally) nonthreatening villain, Victor Buono". The most successful villains get others to do their dirty work, yet believe their own hands are therefore clean!On the Spaghetti Western Scales of Justice, another 7.5/10: good cast, music, plot and characterization with some novel elements such as the traveling circus troupe, and the stubborn old judge.

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.