What really put Hill on the map, however, were a long series of comedies, sometimes Westerns but often not, that teamed handsome, blue-eyed Hill with fat, balding, and bearded Bud Spencer (born Carlo Pedersoli), beginning with They Call Me Trinity (1970). (Like Laurel & Hardy before them, Hill and Spencer had appeared in a handful films together going back to 1959's Hannibal, but not as a team.) Their last starring film together was The Night Before Christmas (1994) but they remain close friends. Hill also starred in other Italian comedies without Spencer, by far the best of which is My Name Is Nobody (1973). It paired him with Henry Fonda, featured one of Ennio Morricone's best scores, and was co-written and partly directed by Sergio Leone.

Mr. Billion and March or Die, the French Foreign Legion drama starring Hill, Gene Hackman, and Catherine Deneuve, released later that summer, both flopped and Hill went back to Italy, where he remains a big, iconic figure. As for Mr. Billion, it makes the common mistake in trying to showcase foreign talent while denying them the opportunity to let them do the kind of thing that made them so popular in the first place. Director and co-writer Jonathan Kaplan and the studio clashed over how best to introduce Hill to mainstream audiences and the resultant action-comedy is rather lumpy and shapeless.

The picture surrounds Hill with heavyweights of one sort or another. The Great One himself, Jackie Gleason, was but two months away from a huge career boost with Smokey and the Bandit, while co-stars Valerie Perrine and William Redfield had won much acclaim for their recent work in Lenny (1974) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), respectively.

A Fox Cinema Archives release, Mr. Billion is presented in a fine 1.85:1 enhanced widescreen transfer with solid picture and audio.

The story has lowly Italian automobile mechanic and inveterate Hollywood movie fan Guido Falcone (Hill) inheriting his uncle's multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, provided he can sign papers in San Francisco formally accepting the huge fortune within 20 days. Naturally there's a greedy executive at the uncle's company, John Cutler (Jackie Gleason), anxious to gain control of the company for himself, so he and likable assistant Leopold Lacy (William Redfield) fly to Italy, unsuccessful in their attempts to get Guido to sign over to Cutler power of attorney.

Cutler then hires voluptuous private eye Rosie Jones (Valerie Perrine) to seduce Guido and secure his signature during Guido's cross-country Amtrak train ride across America. Predictably, they fall in love. Numerous bad guys try to halt Guido in his tracks, while he runs into numerous obstacles and meets varied eccentric characters along the way.

Hill's established screen persona in Italy cast him as a smiling but circumspect leading man, outwardly naïve but generally more clever and aware than he usually appeared. The appeal of Hill's broad, non-Western Italian comedies is lost on most Americans, and this reviewer hasn't seen enough of them to fully grasp their or Hill's appeal, either.

Mr. Billion might have played better had Bud Spencer tagged along for the ride, perhaps as Guido's buddy, looking after his friend's interests. That might in turn have helped flesh out Hill's character, who mostly stands around looking bemused by all the fussing around him. Guido is presented as a good-natured innocent but little else. Hill, performing in English (except for the opening scenes), speaks with a slight accent not so much halting as an actor stuck with an only vaguely defined character to play.

Kaplan hoped to cast Lily Tomlin but the studio insisted on Valerie Perrine, an excellent actress in flighty free spirit roles (e.g., Slaughterhouse Five), but here she's miscast and with Hill they're like oil and water. Gleason is stuck playing a stock villain but he's pretty funny within those limitations. His reactions to Guido's innocent silliness in the Italian scenes are priceless. William Redfield, terminally ill of leukemia while Mr. Billion was being made (he died seven months before it was released) also has several nice scenes with Hill.

Kaplan, like another Roger Corman/New World graduate, director Joe Dante, appears to be a movie buff (both Guido and Rosie decorate their homes with classic movie posters, as there are myriad references to other films, including The Court Jester's "Get it?" "Got it" "Good" running gag). He seems to have envisioned Mr. Billion as a kind of contemporary quasi-remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), in which Gary Cooper's innocent title character likewise inherits a fortune from a late uncle. Positing Hill as a kind of Italian Mr. Deeds isn't a bad idea, and viewed as a homage to that type of film Mr. Billion, while not exactly good, has a certain unpretentious charm.

Besides Corman-produced drive-in fare like Night Call Nurses (1972) and The Student Teachers (1973), Kaplan scored a big hit directing White Line Fever (1975) for Columbia, all while Kaplan was still in his 20s. This experience probably helped him make Mr. Billion look a bit more expensive than it actually was and Mr. Billion's action set pieces especially impressive. The movie may be forgotten but it's worth seeing just for some of the stunt work; a long shoot-out and fistfight on cliffs above the Grand Canyon appear extremely dangerous and still impress in this age of CGI everything.

Mr. Billion damaged his career but Kaplan recovered specializing in women's dramas, including the excellent Heart Like a Wheel (1983) and the Academy Award-winning The Accused (1988). He later directed numerous episodes of ER, Law & Order, and co-executive produced Without a Trace. Interested readers are directed to Kaplan's own amusing and brutally honest comments about the film on the Trailers from Hell website.

Video & Audio

The 1.85:1 enhanced widescreen transfer of Mr. Billion has soft and grainy title elements but the rest of the presentation looks great, with unusually good Dolby Digital mono audio. A trailer is tossed in as an Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Only fitfully amusing but fascinating as a woebegone production that with less studio interference might have been delightful instead of merely fascinating, Mr. Billion is at worst harmless and worth seeing once. Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, is now available while his commentary track for Arrow Video's Battles without Honor and Humanity will be released this month.