THERE'S A NOOSE WAITING FOR YOU TRINITY! (1972)

After a heavy duty month+ of nothing but work, work, work interrupted by baby wrangling and diaper changing, Afternoons with Klaus have finally returned here at Kasa Klaus.

Today's triumphant return featured the entertaining Eurowestern THERE'S A NOOSE WAITING FOR YOU... TRINITY! aka THE RETURN OF CLINT THE STRANGER, directed by and starring George Martin in a sequel to/remake of CLINT THE NEVADA'S LONER.

Trinity Harrison (Martin) abandoned his wife and two children in order to seek revenge on the man who killed his brother and sister-in-law on their wedding night. After busting out of prison he returns home to find that his wife has assumed the role of a widow and is working a farm outside of town.

Assuming the guise of Joe, Trinity takes on a job as her farmhand so he can keep an eye on her and their two kids: Jimmy, his too-big-for-his-britches son who resents the father who abandoned them; and, Betty, a tomboy who doesn't remember her dear old dad. And has a voice that's like nails across a chalkboard.

Naturally, his return lands Trinity smack dab in the middle of a battle between local farmers/ranchers and an unscrupulous businessman who wants to buy up all the land so he can sell it to the government. Not above a little arm twisting, the land baron has a team of thugs who harass, beat up, and shoot those who won't cooperate, even framing a local farmer for the murder of a bank guard.

Essentially, THERE'S A NOOSE... is one long build-up to Trinity's inevitable breaking point as Harrison eschews opportunity after opportunity to make the thugs eat lead, though he does get into a couple full-scale fistfights with them.

Hanging around the periphery of all this action is our man Klaus as Scott, a long-haired, cigar-chomping bounty hunter who has a penchant for brining his captures back dead because they're a lot less trouble that way. When he hears of the $5000 reward for bringing Trinity in alive, he heads to the gunman's old town to see if he can track him down.

While everybody else in the cast has a fairly straightforward, cliched role to play (Long Suffering Wife, Mouthy Kid, Sheriff Who Looks the Other Way, Simmering Gunman Pretending to be Cowardly), Kinski easily gets the flick's juiciest, most interesting role.

Unsure that Joe is really Trinity, Scott watches and waits, hoping for a sign that will prove his hunch right. Along the way we get to see the cold-blooded side of this bounty hunter, which makes the twists and turns his character takes all the more interesting. Though not outright heroic, leave it to Kinski to win over the audience all the while sneering through his ever-present ceegar.

Kinski's character aside, THERE'S A NOOSE... doesn't hold many surprises and suffers from not enough plot development. The bad guys are fairly stock issue and the land baron's role is so underdeveloped that it's hard to ever give a crap about him or his plan. Martin is fine as the simmering quick draw artist but you never develop a ton of sympathy for his character or his plight. Most regrettably, the big showdown with the bad guys is anti-climactic at best, despite the film setting itself up for a rousing gun battle.

An entertaining entry in the annals of the Eurotrash western, THERE'S A NOOSE WAITING FOR YOU... TRINITY! has the potential to be much more than it is. But it's well worth watching for a top-notch turn by Kinski that'll have you guessing till the very end.