Man of the East (1972) Poster

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6/10
Funny Spaghetti Western with humor, mirth and amusement
ma-cortes16 November 2007
This Western comedy deals with the young man, Sir Thomas (Terence Hill), he's a dandy from East who goes to the West following the last wish his deceased father . His mentors are a threesome sympathetic crooks , Bull , Holly Joe and Monkey (Gregory Walcott , Harry Carey Jr, Barto). The cocky Thomas carries a bicycle and wearing elegant clothes . The veteran friends teach him the West manners and training him for shooting . Thomas Moore must fight against a nasty enemy named Morton (Ricardo Pizzuti ) who is jealous his girlfriend (Yanti Somer) , daughter of a land baron (Enzo Fiermonte) falling in love for the ingenious young.

The film contains action-Western , brawls , shootouts , fist-play , humor with tongue-in-cheek and results to be pretty bemusing . It's an entertaining film with enjoyable comedy in the wake of Trinity and Bambino , in fact , is unofficially regarded as the third part of the Trinità Trilogy . Agreeable main cast with a likable Terence Hill (though I miss Bud Spencer) as a naive East young man and Yanti Somer (Trinity is still my name) as a gorgeous girl looking for the dreamt prince riding on a white horse . Furthermore , Harry Carey Jr , as a nice preacher , he's an usual secondary of John Ford films , Gregory Walcott as a tough illiterate and , of course , Ricardo Pizzuti , Hill's habitual antagonist and whom receives the knocks and kicks . Adequate cinematography by Giordani and jolly musical score including songs by the usual Guido and Maurizio De Angelis . This is a French-Italian co-production , mostly produced by Alberto Grimaldi (PEA Productions) , famous producer of ¨Dollars trilogy¨ by Sergio Leone. The motion picture was well directed by Enzo Barboni or E. B. Clucher . He was a notorious cameraman , including classical Spaghetti Western (Django , Goobye Texas , Hellbenders) , but with the hit of ¨Trinity is my name¨ left it and turned to film-making, and directed the following ¨Trinity is still my name¨ and the third outing ¨Trinity and Bambino, the legend lives on¨, plus other Hill and Spencer vehicles .
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5/10
A disappointment
MarKus-3717 March 2001
Sir Thomas Moore, An eccentric Englishman, is sent to the Wild West by his dying fathers last wish, to teach him how to be a "real" man. He is threatened by a man called Morton, who wants to marry the girl that Hill also wishes to marry. With the help of his 3 friends, Hill learns how to fight and use a gun in case he is challenged by Morton.

Being a fan of Terence Hill movies, I decided to get a bootleg of this movie off a friend. I was told this movie was better then Hill's 2 most famous movies THEY CALL ME TRINITY & TRINITY IS STILL MY NAME. This movie wasn't that funny and the action was just average. Still I enjoyed seeing MAN OF THE EAST, but its nothing special, and a bit overlong I might add. It's worth seeing once if your a Hill/Spencer fan. My vote: **1/2 out of ****
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6/10
Reversed Crocodile Dundee
cengelm12 October 2001
City dweller meats countryside and encounters a lot of trouble. Naturally he has to gain respect and to prove that he's worthy, too. The humor is similar to the one of the Trinity series and is never truly violent. No one will be killed or injured. The film was shot in the beautiful environment of the Plitvice lakes in Croatia and reminded me of the days I spent there.

6 / 10.
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7/10
It's neither "Trinity" or "Nobody" but it's pretty much everything a Terence Hill fan would expect
t_atzmueller1 February 2012
Warning: Spoilers
It's both sad and ironic that Terence Hills portrayal 'Lucky Luke' had nothing in common with the comic-character but the name and Jolly Jumper, the talking horse. Ironic because Hills parade-roles, 'Trinity' and 'Nobody', both owned more to Lucky Luke than probably actor and director (Enzo Barboni) would care to admit.

Many "Trinity" fans consider "Man of the East" an unofficial prequel: here Hill plays Sir Thomas Fitzpatrick Phillip Moore, a textbook Greenhorn who has arrived in the rugged Wild West claim his father's inheritance. The inheritance consists of a ram shackled old farm and three of his fathers cronies, who've taken it upon themselves to turn Thomas into gun-totting cowboy.

Having mentioned Lucky Luke, only at the end does Terence Hill (of course) turn into the faster-than-your-shadow, damsel-saving gunslinger but originally his character, Sir Thomas, is taken straight from the Lucky Luke comic book "The Greenhorn" – an archetypical bowler hat wearing, tea totting English gentleman, blissfully unaware that this is the West and not Kensington.

At first, the absence of Hill's "Trinity"-partner Bud Spencer is painfully obvious. However, Bull Schmidt (Gregory Walcott), the jovial friar Holy Joe (Harry Carey Jr) and Monkey Smith (Dominic Barto, who had previously played a steel-eyed killer in "Trinity"), playing Hills mentors and surrogate fathers, make a quirky trio, soon compensating for the absence of Spencer. Plus, we have director Enzo Barboni who knows the terrain of the spaghetti western comedy like the back of his palm.

The movie has all the elements necessary to please fans of early Hill/Spencer/Barboni co operations but never quiet reaches the high level of mentioned "Trinity"- and "Nobody" films. Still, far better than anything Hill was starring in the past 15 years and infinitely better than the dreadful "Lucky Luke" films.
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6/10
Not bad, but I've seen better
stamper19 January 2002
I must admit, this was not the worst Terence Hill film I've ever seen but certainly one of his worst ones. The jokes are not too frequent and there is too much made of the romance. For me the highlights of his career are still the movies he made with Bud Spencer. Some of those are really hilarious. On his own I find Terence Hill not to be too entertaining. His best solo works is Renegade.

6 out of 10

P.s.: I watched the german dubbed version (as I always do) for these films are hard to come by, plus I find the voices and the dialogues much better in German than I do in Italian
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hilarious
Yonie3 July 1999
The Man from the East. My husband and I along with another couple saw this movie when it was originally released at the theater in the 1970's. We have never forgotten it. We all thought it was extremely hilarious! We have been trying to find in on video for the last 10 years because we thought it was one of Terence Hill's best, and we are big fans of his. We hope it will be released soon on video.
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6/10
Where'd You Get Those Blue Eyes?
bsmith55525 July 2019
Warning: Spoilers
I didn't quite know what to make of this spaghetti western. To be fair, I am not all that familiar with the work of Terrence Hill. It has to be rated as a comedy although there are plenty of fights and saloon brawls. Oddly enough and unusual for a spaghetti, no one gets killed.

An English aristocrat Thomas More (Hill) comes west to claim his late father's ranch and property. The father known simply as "The Englishman" had been partners with three rough unkempt ruffians, Bull Schmidt (Gregory Walcott), Preacher Holy Joe (Harry Carey Jr.) and Monkey Smith (Dominic Barto). In a letter to the three from "the Englishman", he asks his former partners to "make a man" out of the tenderfoot. Tom it seems, prefers poetry, classic prose and bicycling to the rough and ready ways of the west.

Tom becomes enamored of beautiful rancher's daughter Candida Olsen (Yanti Somer). Her father Frank (Enzo Fiermonte) is the most powerful rancher "in these parts" who offers to buy Tom's ranch. He refuses. Also in the picture is Olsen's scruffy foreman Morton Clayton (Ricardo Pizzuti) who also has designs on Candida and threatens to run Tom out of town.

After being shown up in a showdown with Clayton, the three friends decide that it is time to make a man out of the timid Tom. Miraculously, in 30 days he becomes a rootin' tootin' gunslingin' cowboy. He renews the challenge with Morton and.................................................................

Following the success of the Clint Eastwood trilogy, many out of work Hollywood actors went to Europe to appear in spaghetti westerns. The latest were veterans Gregory Walcott and Harry Carey Jr. both of whom have substantial roles in this film. All the other roles were filled with poorly dubbed Italian actors.

Walcott's humorous encounters with the two greasy bounty hunters are sprinkled throughout the film. Carey, one of my personal favorites, is way over the top in his initial preacher scenes but otherwise is his old familiar self..

Apparently. this film was a third installment of Hill's "Trinity" films.
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6/10
Broad euro western comedy
phlbrq584 November 2020
Bizarre low satire. On the other hand its a simple joy to see Hill show off horse riding skill or bar fight ineptitude.. Ya gotta be into it to get it. This is easily enjoyable or negligible. Where ya from & coming at it? I like it. I'd run from peeps that claim its their fave.
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10/10
One of the most complete movies ever made
Tobbe-1620 January 2001
This is, except perhaps for Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid", my favorite movie at all. It's biggest quality is its completeness in almost every respect. Completeness in its themes, in its means, and a glorious cast.

It's a film most of all about friendship (I most often think of the scene where monkey, usually the most 'rude' of the protagonists, eagerly grasps the last letter of their dead friend, and then, realizing he can't read at all, is forced to pass the letter to Holy Joe, but in fact the friendship theme is present in the whole movie), about the antagonism of freedom and civilization, about the need and the struggle to find and defend your own position towards everything surrounding you (the 'star' to follow), about how dreams and reality can influence each other (remember the scene of Candida experiencing the man of her dreams riding towards her in a gracious slow motion, while Terence Hill in fact cusses his half-dead horse), about technological progress, it's consequences, and about almost every other theme that has ever been dealt with in 80 years of western history.

The movie's means are comedy, satire, drama, buddy movie, a really great musical score by Guido & Maurizio de Angelis, and all style elements of the classical western.

The cast is superb, creating at least half a dozen unique characters you can root on; unfortunately with one exception: Yanti Somer's lousy performance as Candida.

Another wonderful thing about this movie, is that it doesn't condemn any of its characters; everyone has his place in the film's world and gets his respect by script, direction and cast: the protagonists as well as the whores, the 'villains', the bounty hunters and the jailers. By the way: This quality also characterizes most films by Sam Peckinpah.
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6/10
later spag western...
ksf-219 January 2021
Written and directed by italian Enzo Barboni. seems to have been filmed in Yugoslavia. clearly, some of the actors are speaking italian, and later dubbed into english. Harry Carey is in here as Holy Joe. they are pals to "Tom" (italian actor Mario Girotti aka Terence Hill. Tom's dad sent him out to the ol west to learn the ways of the cowboy. but Tom is wearing fancy clothes, uses good manners, and speaks in the polite, upper class way. so he immediately makes enemies. he sits in his bath tub, reading books. and why does one of the rough, tough cowboys carry around a little barky dog? odd choice. the script is a bit silly, some of the the action is silly. as expected in such a late western, filmed in europe. but it's all played pretty seriously. some humor here and there. moves pretty slowly, but it's entertaining enough. ps. acc to imdb, the name of the film in italian is actually "And then they called him the magnificent one", which happens to also be what he calls his new horse.
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5/10
Lots of fun
BandSAboutMovies8 February 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Man of the East is a vehicle for Terence Hill, directed by Enzo Barboni and written by E.B. Clucher*. Barboni had tremendous success parodying the Italian western genre, starting with They Call Me Trinity and then following that with the even bigger Trinity Is STILL My Name!

These movies follow a pretty simple formula of Hill and Bud Spencer as a comedy duo. Every once in a while, they'd make solo films, which this one being a good example.

It's really close to the story "The Tenderfoot" from the Lucky Luke comic. Hill would go on to direct and star in an adaption of the overall comic, so this may be no accident.

Sir Thomas Fitzpatrick Phillip Moore (Hill) has come from England at the request of his father, who had to leave the country behind after an affair got him in trouble. His father wants him to see the country he had come to love, which brings our hero into the orbit of his dad's associates, stagecoach robbers Monkey Smith (Dominic Barto, Jungle Warriors), Holy Joe (Harry Carey Jr., a John Ford company actor) and Bull Smith (Gregory Walcott, Plan 9 from Outer Space).

Thomas' father - known as the Englishman - wants his hapless gang to turn his son into a man, as his head is in the clouds. He'd rather ride a bike than a horse and refuses to skip baths. However, he's great with the ladies, as he quickly woos Candida Olsen (Yanti Somer, Star Odyssey) with his knowledge of Lord Byron.

This puts him into conflict with her rich father Frank (Enzo Fiermonte, War of the Planets), who doesn't think he's good enough for her, and Morton Clayton (Riccardo Pizzuti, the creature in Lady Frankenstein), one of their ranch hands who has his eyes set on Candida.

The gang teaches Thomas how to fight, shoot and spit tobacco, which he takes to quite well and ends up winning the day. That's to be expected. What isn't is the sadness underpinning this movie, which sees the gang facing the progress of technology and realizing that soon, the west that they know will no longer exist.

Another odd thing to watch out for is the opening credits and subsequent transition shots are B-roll from Support Your Local Gunfighter.

You can get this from Kino Lorber on a new blu ray, which looks gorgeous. Here's to them releasing more little known Italian westerns!

*E.B. Clucher is...Enzo Barboni. Just look at the initials.
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5/10
Surprisingly jaunty Italian-made western...Terence Hill makes it fun
moonspinner5516 August 2010
East meets West, with the usual pleasures to be had in a rather typical fish-out-of-water story. Terence Hill is the jolly Britisher who arrives in Old West Arizona upon his dying father's wish that he become a cowboy. Writer-director Enzo Barboni knows just how to utilize Hill's starry-eyed charm, and the actor is very funny exercising in the morning in front of the gunslingers or riding his bicycle down tumbleweed streets. A ready-made romance is provided for our hero with a literature-minded lass into Byron (her baby-blue eyes match up well with Hill's, although his dimply prettiness is tough to beat). The film isn't much, but the English-dubbing is good and the Yugoslavian locations give it a curious and unusual look. The general handling is so amiable that viewers may become absorbed by the movie without even realizing it. It sneaks up on you, like the best kind of sleeper. ** from ****
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10/10
the best terence hill film ever
guyguisborne8 March 2001
I allways liked Bud Spencer and Terence Hill films as a kid. And I still think some of them are quiet good and fun to watch, but this one is different (in a way). Of course there's fights in the typical terence hill style (with the favorite opponent Riccardo Pizzuti), but then there's this fine irony, the melancoly sometimes and the story of the greenhorn coming to the wild west, having no idea about it and getting into big trouble without realizing it.
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I loved it!
rtillman5 October 2000
I saw this film back in 1972 in a small town where I lived. It came to the theater as "The Man from the East". I loved it! I walked out of the theater with my gut aching from laughing so much. That was my first experience of seeing Terence Hill. I have been a fan of his ever since. To this day I tell my wife of some of the scenes. I wish it would come out on video so that my wife will not think that I am making things up. It is a film for the whole family and I would be one of the first ones to buy it if it ever came out!
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1/10
I love the "Trinity & Bambino" movies..
xpat-5519219 October 2019
...except this one - which isn't one! Terence Hill is on his own in this, and his silly English accent is just incredibly annoying and the story is unmitigated asinine crap! If I gave a bigger review it would become a bigger pile...
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8/10
aka Man from the East
mooncrow-231 August 2018
Pretty good Terrence Hill movie. I watched it on the Starz premium network; but there, it is titled "Man from the East"; and the dialog is all in English. I could not find that title on IMDB so I matched the DVD cover art to this movie.
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1/10
If this is a western then Wonder Woman 84 is Citizen Kane
frankl33 April 2021
Absolutely nothing to save. Boring, ridiculous, pathetic.

I can't believe the reviews.

People should try and learn what a good movie is, and what's a film director's job.

Hopeless. I couldn't pass the 20 minutes mark.
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Surprisingly entertaining
gordodj200029 October 2002
I saw this film as the opening film at a drive-in many years ago, and found it to be more entertaining and enjoyable than the feature, which I don't even recall. If this is available on home video, it is a Must-See, especially for fans of Spaghetti Westerns.
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8/10
The Englishman
thebushwacker1 December 2021
"Man of the East" 1972 is one of Terence Hill's better movies. But I'm not sure his role as a weenie. This movie has great characters in it. The 2 gunslingers are funny and pathetic. They don't know when they are well off. Bull keeps whoopin' on 'em. This movie has romance, humor, and lots of fist fights. Ya can't ask for more! // And, oh gee whiz. Another movie that Noflix doesn't carry. // The Bushwacker 11/30/2012.
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Terence Hill as "Tenderfoot" from Lucky Luke decades before he stars as Lucky Luke himself
muratmihcioglu21 September 2023
Watching this right now, trying to figure out if it was directly inspired by the Lucky Luke adventure about the Duke arriving in the USA from England. And I suspect it is, because all the humor structure is centered around that.

Come to think of it, back then it must have been quite normal to adapt a major comic book to cinema without properly crediting the source material. Still, this is a head scratcher and I gotta check the publication date of that Lucky Luke adventure to make sure.

Anyways...

Terence Hill is watchable even without Bud Spencer, however the supporting cast has difficulty shining when there is only one lead.

Production quality and pace are same with all those other spaghetti westerns. Facial expressions during the brawl scenes are the highlights.

Watchable after half a decade, but not the best example to the genre it belongs with.

P. S. Just checked it. The adventure is titled after the character "Tenderfoot" and was published in French in 1968. Yep, my theory holds water. Italian filmmakers saw the potential soon as (and maybe even before) translations were around.
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