646f9e108c The "Bulldozer", a former football star, is now working as a fisherman. As a group of street-people arranges a football match against the local Armybase, he is asked to be their trainer. His boat was damaged by a submarine and he currently has no work, so he agrees.
This is the non-fiction back story about the movie Bulldozer with Bud Spencer. I will attempt to ID rumor from fact . In 1977 a group of Italian Soccer and Rugby players formed an American style football sports team. I had heard it was formed by two former American GI's with sportsman drawn from the Milano and Bologna areas. They came to Tirrenia(IT) to play an exhibition game against the Darby Rangers at Camp Darby , a US Army installation close to Livorno ,Italy. Hammered by the experienced Darby Rangers the Italian team suffered many injuries but they would not give up.<br/><br/>In 1978 an Italian film crew came to Tirrenia to film the movie with Bud Spencer. I can't say that the writer's intent was to do a story about the above event but I think it is too close for coincidence. The football scenes were shot at a local sports coop in Tirrenia. Many extras were drawn from the local US military community with soldiers that had played in the 1977 game taking leave to allow them to appear. I was on the Darby Ranger team in 1977 but did not play in that game. I recognized many of the GIs in the movie. I played the medic in the locker room scene and I was one in real life also working with the volunteer ambulance Misericordia Livorno.<br/><br/>One day on the set when were shooting the football scenes one of the GI's had brought a Frisbee. We had Bud Spencer and many of the cast and crew throwing Frisbee. The director eventually pleaded with us to stop as we were slowing down his schedule. In the first take of the locker room scene Bud Spencer kicked the prop door off it's hinges!<br/><br/>It took me many years to find clips of this movie on YouTube. I still haven't seen the full movie.
Bud Spencer gives a wonderfully warm and charming performance as Bulldozer, an amiable, but ill-tempered former pro football player turned fisherman who's recruited by a wacky gang of street people to whip them into shape for a major all-or-nothing football game against a rival group of American soldiers led by gung-ho jerk Sergeant Kempfer (a deliciously obnoxious portrayal by Raimund Harmstorf). Director Michele Lupo and screenwriters Marcello Fondato and Francesco Scardamaglia concoct a blithely silly and lighthearted comedy that not only delivers the expected amusingly goofy slapstick humor (several wild rough'n'tumble fight scenes in particular are absolutely hilarious), but also a nice small coastal town atmosphere, likable characters, and a truly uplifting story in which Bulldozer gives his misfit team a much-needed sense of self-worth while the team in turn help Bulldozer regain his passion for the game. Spencer easily carries the film on his massive shoulders as the decent and honorable Bulldozer; he receives excellent support from Kempfer, Ottaviano Dell'Aqua as smartaleck Gerry, Marco Stefanelli as lanky klutz Tony, Giovanni Vettorazzo as swift, wily thief Spitz, and Reinhard Kolldehoff as the stern Colonel Martin. Both Franco Di Giacomo's slick cinematography and the bubbly score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis are up to speed. The climactic football game is very funny, gripping and exciting. A hugely enjoyable little hoot.