I love westerns, and am very fond of the oeuvre of Sergio Leone. The day after Thanksgiving, we had a date with She Who Sleeps Through Movies and Art Who Is Always Right to see The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, which AWIAR had never seen, and had a good time.

The next day, I was off work, and Mr. Otter had to work (a rare juxtaposition) and I just happened to have this in my Netflix movies: the last of the Sergio Leone westerns that I had not seen. At least, not for a long time.

Because I remembered seeing this as a young Otter- a funny movie starring extreme cutie Terrence Hill about a guy named Trinity. And there was a sequel. And when I looked it up on IMDB...I found out that these movies did indeed exist (My Name is Trinity, and Trinity is Still My Name), and they did star Terrence Hill...but they were not THIS movie.

Damn.

And I also remembered the semi-awfulness that was Duck, you Suckers which was the movie Leone made before this one (he made one other western after this, but the negative was stolen, and they had to cobble leftover bits and pieces together to try to recreate some of it...not successfully. So this is essentially Leone's last western.) and the thought that this might be worse than that one was kind of scary. But I am brave and intrepid, and I thought, if it's REALLY awful, I can turn it off and read and pretend it never happened.

And I was very pleasantly surprised. This was a charming movie in many ways.

Terrence Hill (who was Italian but used this name in the movies because it sounded American, LOL) is a young gunfighter (amazingly good) whose hero is the aging gunfighter played by Henry Fonda. Hill follows Fonda around like a puppy dog, telling him over and over that someone of his reputation can't just retire, he has to have a final gun battle...which they do, after Hill maneuvers him into it.

Meanwhile, the Wild Bunch is also after Fonda...and this is hilarious, because every time you see them, it's a huge pack of about a hundred guys thundering by on horses, with some rinky-tink instrument playing the ride of the valkyries music on the soundtrack. I kid you not, it's HILARIOUS. But Hill is also forcing Fonda to have a showdown with this ginormous group of outlaws (and this is also funny because the original Wild Bunch, the Doolin-Dalton gang...was eleven guys...and Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch was nine, including the girls...)

But I digress. So one thing leads to another, the plot is resolved brilliantly and amusingly, and this otter enjoyed the ride very very much. Might have to buy this one, woudln't mind seeing it again.

And of course, the real Trinity westerns are now on my netflix list...I'll let you know if they're as funny as I remembered them. I'm sure glad I got them mixed up with this one, though, it was seriously amusing.