The Adventures of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill

IMMEDIATE DELIVERY – AVAILABLE WITH THE DOCUMENTARY TERENCE HILL, BUD SPENCER… AND ME ON BLU-RAY

Put on your boots, stock up on beans, and practice your slapstick: the most popular duo from 1970s and 1980s cinema is back, in a beautiful book lovingly crafted over many years by author Philippe Lombard.

In the early 1970s, from the dying embers of the Italian Western, an unlikely duo emerged that would enjoy huge success around the world, moving from Western parodies to adventure comedies. The on-screen chemistry between Carlo Pedersoli, a.k.a Bud Spencer, and Mario Girotti, a.k.a. Terence Hill sparked an incredibly popular cultural phenomenon that lasted for almost 20 years. Their films grossed hundreds of millions of movie tickets around the globe. In Italy and Germany, they became true icons. Public demand was so high that producers even assembled another pair of actors who looked roughly like them, who went on to star in no fewer than five films!

Millions of us grew up with their films, from They Call Me Trinity to the unforgettables Watch Out We’re Mad, Crime Busters, Ods and Evens, I’m for the Hippopotamus, and Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure, often discovered with our families in the cinema and watched again and again on television. The memory of these two big-hearted rogues and their hilarious fights is still alive and well in the hearts of several generations.

The Adventures of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill recounts their career and recreates a bygone era of popular cinema, when you could win the love of audiences around the world by cracking jokes and dishing out slaps like no one else!

We are proud to present this beautiful, large-format, hardcover book of over 300 pages, which we have been working on for a very long time with Philippe Lombard, also the author of a documentary that we are pleased to offer with the book, Terence Hill, Bud Spencer… and Me, on or blu-ray, with English, German, Spanish and Italian subtitles.

And that’s not all: you can also purchase their films on blu-ray and 4K, the respective biographies of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, as well as T-shirts and mugs created especially for the occasion. You can even get exclusive coasters featuring the duo’s films!

Now is the time to pre-order your book so that it can be published and you can receive it at the end of the year. Bud, Terence and us are counting on you: Go For It!

For an entire generation, the films of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill are forever linked to childhood memories, to happy moments spent with family at the cinema or in front of the television. Philippe Lombard is no exception. He has never forgotten discovering They Call Me Trinity in reruns in the early 1980s or watching A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupeon French television on a Christmas afternoon. He never gave up on them, saw everything, recorded everything on VHS, then collected everything on DVD, and even ended up interviewing Bud Spencer!

 

This book is therefore a labor of love, and the fulfillment of a dream for its author and for Pulse Editions, but also, we are convinced, for you too! It is a tribute to his two heroes… whose meeting was nothing short of a miracle! Bud Spencer, a former Olympic swimmer with no ambitions in film, almost turned down God Forgives… I Don’t! , and Terence Hill only found himself opposite him after stepping in at the last minute to replace an injured actor. The stars were aligned. Bud Spencer himself said, “There’s someone up there who likes us.” ” As if, in the end, these two men were meant to meet. That’s it! It was inevitable, because the world needed them.

A book for fans, but also for film lovers. The duo’s films are part of an exciting period in Italian cinema. Because, yes, despite their American pseudonyms, Carlo Pedersoli and Mario Girotti are indeed Italian! Each worked separately with Luchino Visconti and Dario Argento. Together, they jumped on the “spaghetti western” bandwagon before turning it into a parody. The Trinity films irritated Sergio Leone to no end because they were more successful than his own films… to the point that he responded with My Name is Nobody starring Terence Hill!

Spencer and Hill then moved on to contemporary adventure comedies shot in Spain, Colombia, South Africa, and especially Florida. Every film, every title, every piece of music reminds us of something: the red and yellow buggy in Watch Out We’re Mad, the fight in a bowling alley in Crime Busters, the island occupied by an old Japanese soldier in Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure, the lookalikes in Double Trouble, and son on.

Each of the seventeen films will be discussed in detail, contextualized, analyzed, and recounted. The behind-the-scenes stories are often as fascinating as the films are funny: Bud Spencer flies a plane without a license during the filming of All the Way, Boys!, stunt legend Rémy Julienne directs the stunts in Watch Out We’re Mad, Ods and Evens is made in the midst of the Aldo Moro affair (the former Italian prime minister assassinated by the Red Brigades)…

Close-ups will be taken of key elements of the duo’s success: food, fights, music (by brothers Maurizio and Guido de Angelis) and Renato Casaro’s posters. A significant part of the book will be devoted to the exploitation of the films in Europe and in the US, through theatrical and VHS releases, press coverage, dubbing, retitling, etc.

In Italy, success means imitation. Following the success of the Trinity films, a slew of comic westerns were churned out with religious-sounding names (Life Is Tough, Eh Providence?, Return of Halleluja) or openly inspired titles (Jesse & Lester – Two Brothers in a Place Called Trinity, Trinity Plus the Clown and a Guitar). A duo of “lookalikes,” consisting of a bearded American and a handsome Italian, Paul L. Smith and Michael Coby, even followed in their footsteps with five films!

The “solo” careers of each of the two stars were just as exciting. Terence Hill appeared in Sergio Leone productions (My Name is Nobody, A Genius, A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupel) and attempted an American career ( Mr. Billion, March or Die ) before returning to Italy with a modern version of Don Camillo. Bud Spencer continued to parade his giant frame in family comedies such as Flatfoot in Hong Kong, Knock-Out Cop, The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid, Flatfoot in Egypt, Banana Joe, Bomber or Aladdin.

Italian genre cinema declined in the early 1980s and was replaced by television series. Bud Spencer went on to star in Big Man, DetectiveExtra-Large and We Are Angels, which were huge hits on Italian, German and French TV. Terence Hill became Lucky Luke and then entered the priesthood with Don Matteo (from 2000 to 2022).

In short, this is a book as huge as Bud and as handsome as Terence, which is as much about the famous duo as it is about your childhood. To be read while eating beans, of course!

The Adventures of Bud Spencer & Terence Hill is a beautiful 25x28cm / 9,×11 in hardcover book with over 300 color pages. The book is available in three languages: French, English, and German. Shipping to contributors is scheduled for November 2025. You’ll specify your version after the Kickstarter campaign, through the usual backer survey.

Terence Hill, Bud Spencer… and me

Along with the book, we are also offering an exclusive copy of the documentary Terence Hill, Bud Spencer… and me (2025) by Julien Dubois, written by Philippe Lombard. To tell the cinematic saga of the two friends, the least we can say is that Philippe gave his all, following in the footsteps of the duo across Europe, even eating beans in front of the camera.

Terence Hill, Bud Spencer… and me, a 52-minute film produced in 2025 by Label Image, with the participation of Lucas Balbo, Alain Figlarz, Stéphane Lacombe, Greg Italo, Frederic Albert Levy, Hélène Merrick, Vincent Perrot, Lumi, and Richard Sammel. Available on Blu-ray in all regions. With subtitles in French, English, German, Spanish and Italian.