Die rechte und die linke Hand der Parodie - Bud Spencer, Terence Hill und ihre Filme

By the end of the 1960s, the western genre had petrified into an unimaginative and violent endless shoot-out until Bud Spencer and Terence Hill came along. With their films "The Right Hand and the Left Hand of the Devil" (1970) and "Four Fists for a Hallelujah" (1971), they swept the apocalyptic gloom out of the cinemas with determined ease and instead caused uproarious laughter in the dusty prairie. Instead of pathetic US pioneers or insidious Italian outlaws, two completely new screen heroes suddenly appeared on the scene, revolutionizing the genre and taking it to its end point at the same time. In a parodistic affront, their films revolved around a pair of unequal brothers who, instead of bloody shootouts, preferred to engage in bizarre verbal battles and lively cartoon brawls, capturing the hearts of millions of viewers with their playful and naive situation comedy. Christian Heger consciously distances himself from superficial trivial information and sensationalist star reportage by categorizing the Spencer/Hill phenomenon in a cultural-historical context, examining the comic principles of their dualistic play and presenting the most important minds and motifs of their cinematic universe. In addition, all of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill's films are discussed with cast details, content, and short reviews. A separate chapter on the history of German distribution and dubbing rounds off the book. The Spencer/Hill filmography has been updated and supplemented for the revised new edition of the volume, which was first published in 2009, and the reader-friendliness has been improved by translating foreign-language film titles and quotations. An additional chapter deals with the great public revival of the two screen heroes in recent years, characterized by cinema comebacks, unexpected off-screen successes, and an overwhelming number of pop-cultural tributes from the dedicated fan community.