They called it Trinity: 5 curiosities you may not know about the cult with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill

Discover 5 secrets about They Call Me Trinity with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill: from the original casting to real beans, to the German titles of the 1970 cult film.

badtaste films

By Alba Rossi

May 27, 2026

When we think of the Italian cinema that has conquered the world, They Call Me Trinity occupies a place of honor in the Olympus of cults. The film directed by Enzo Barboni in 1970 transformed Bud Spencer and Terence Hill into planetary icons, redefining the Italian western genre with a revolutionary formula: replacing shootouts with ironic fistfights, lowering the level of violence without sacrificing action, and seasoning everything with irresistible comedy.

From 9 June 2022, thanks to the initiative of the Cineteca di Bologna, the public has been able to rediscover this masterpiece on the big screen in a restored version. But behind the memorable scenes that we all remember lie surprising stories that even the most ardent fans may not know.

1.      The role of Child

[A scene from They Call Me Trinity]

Today it is practically impossible to imagine Trinity and Child with faces other than those of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Yet, half a century ago, director Enzo Barboni had completely different ideas. Initially, the role of Child was to be entrusted to George Eastman, an actor already known in the panorama of Italian genre cinema. As for Trinity, the choice had to fall on Peter Martell, in a curious twist of fate considering that Martell had already been replaced by Terence Hill on the set of God Forgives... I don't.

There is also an alternative version of this story, according to which Franco Nero was the main candidate to play Trinity, but his refusal forced Barboni to fall back on Hill for reasons of physical resemblance to the actor originally planned. The history of cinema is full of these lucky crossroads, where a no becomes the gateway to a legend.

1.      A double partnership

The artistic partnership between Spencer and Hill was not the only one to be born with this film. They call it Trinity marks the debut of another couple destined to enter the Italian collective imagination: the one formed by voice actors Glauco Onorato and Pino Locchi. It is precisely in this feature film that for the first time Onorato lends his unmistakable voice to Bud Spencer, while Locchi becomes the Italian voice of Terence Hill.

Their collaboration will accompany almost the entire filmography of the duo: Locchi will stop after Born with a shirt, while Onorato will continue to dub Spencer in the next two films that closed the classic era of the genre. When Spencer and Hill met again in the nineties for one last film adventure, both had new voice actors for the Italian version, which definitively marked the end of an era.

1.      "Slaps and beans"

Among the most iconic sequences in the history of Italian cinema there is certainly the initial one of Trinity devouring an entire pan of beans with apparently inexhaustible taste. What few people know is that Terence Hill succeeded in the feat for real, without tricks or substitutions. To prepare for the scene, the actor fasted for about 36 hours, although some versions of the anecdote even speak of 48 hours of abstinence from food.

This dedication to realism produced one of the most memorable moments of his career, so indelible that in 2017, when a video game inspired by Spencer and Hill's filmography was made, the developers titled it Slaps and Beans, literally "slaps and beans", a direct homage to that legendary scene.

1.      "Whistles"

Although They Call Me Trinity was born as a comic reinterpretation of the stylistic features of the spaghetti western, the film does not renounce the philological elements that pay homage to the genre in a respectful and not necessarily ironic way. The musical score is the most striking example of this. The famous whistled part of the soundtrack bears the signature of Alessandro Alessandroni, a musician who became famous all over the world for his "whistles" in the opening credits of Sergio Leone's films, made at the request of his friend Ennio Morricone.

That whistle has spanned the decades keeping its evocative power intact, so much so that Quentin Tarantino chose to take it up again for the finale of Django Unchained, thus recognizing the debt of contemporary cinema to the Italian masters of the western.

1.      A planetary success

 The international success of They Call Me Trinity produced curious phenomena in different nations. In the United States, distributors began to haphazardly insert Trinity's name into the titles of other feature films starring Spencer and Hill, taking advantage of the character's popularity. But it was in Germany that the phenomenon reached surreal levels. The progenitor film was renamed Die rechte und die linke hand des Teufels, or "The right hand and the left hand of the devil", shifting the focus from weapons to fists.

The sequel, Trinity is STILL My Name, became Vier Fäuste für ein Halleluja, that is, "Four Fists for Hallelujah". This Teutonic obsession with fistfights reached its peak with the spin-off on the children of Trinity and Child, known in Germany as Ein Begräbnis und die Auferstehung der vier Fäuste, which can be translated into "A Burial and the Resurrection of the Four Fists". Titles that testify to how each culture has reinterpreted in its own way a phenomenon that remained unmistakably Italian.