I quattro dell'apocalisse

Plot synopsis:
Salt Flat Utah, 1873. Stubby Preston (Fabio Testi) a card-shard and gambling trickster, arrives in the small Wild West town to practice his art at the local casino. However, the town sheriff (Donald O'Brien) recognizes him climbing out of the stagecoach and within minutes, he is in a jail cell for the night and his marked cards are burned. Stubby's cell-mates are Emmanuelle 'Bunny' O'Neill (Lynne Frederick) a young prostitute; Bud (Harry Baird), a mentally disturbed black man who is obsessed with the dead; and Clem (Michael J. Pollard), the town drunkard. During the night, a masked posse of men wreck havoc throughout the settlement. Fearing for their safety as the massacre progresses, the prisoners demand to be realeased, but the sheriff refuses. The following morning, the sheriff, amused by Stubby's ways, allows them to leave town, pointing them to an abandoned wagon as their means of transportation. The sheriff also tells them that the massacre was all his idea to reclaim the town from lawlessness.The four released convicts decide to travel together, and Stubby takes a liking to Bunny. As they travel, aiming to his the next big town over 200 miles away, a friendship develops between the four reprobates. During their first stop for the night, Bunny reveals that she's eight months pregnant, having gotten knocked up by a client in Salt Flat and has been hiding it with oversized dresses. The following day, the four have an encounter with a group of Christian missionaries from Switzerland where Stubby has Bunny pose as his wife, who's happy about the charade.Afterwards, the four's idyll is interrupted by appearance of a Mexican sharpshooter called Chaco (Tomas Milian). Despite initial suspicious, he is welcomed into the group. Chaco displays his shooting skills by shooting rabbits and ducks for their meal for the night. But he shows a sinister side when the group is attacked by three posse members from Salt Flat, and Chaco gleefully shoots all three of them, and sadistically tortures the one surviving posse member. That evening, Chaco persuades the group to take peyote with him. Stubby, secretly spits out the hallucinogenic cactus, suspicious alerted, but the rest of the party accepts. Chaco then amuses himself with Clem, humiliating the drug-addled alcoholic by ordering that he crawl and bark like a dog for some liquor. When Stubby attempts to make a run for it, Chaco subdues him and ties up the four travelers at gunpoint. As day breaks, Chaco rapes Bunny despite seeing her condition. Stubby swears to kill Chaco one day if he survives. The evil bandit then rides off on the wagon with all their gear, leaving them tied up in the desert, except for Clem who he shoots in the leg. Clem frees the others and they continue their trek on foot. As Clems wound worsens, Stubby is forced to remove the bullet and he and Bud carry him on a makeshift stretcher. Later, the group comes upon the aftermath of another attack by Chaco and two henchmen. The Christian wagoners, children and all, have all been slaughtered.The group's journey continues. Eventually the four friends see buildings ahead. The arrive in a small town in the pouring rain, but discover that it's a ghost town. The following morning is bright and sunny. Bud is ecastic when he discovers a graveyard full of friends to talk to. That evening, Clem gets more sicker from the infection of his wound. But he makes dying request that Stubby and Bunny to get married. The couple profess their love for one another and they kiss for the first time. The next morning, the couple decide to leave the ghost town. Bud elects to stay behind having learned to hunt animals for food. But Stubby and Bunny discover Clems mutilated dead body and learn that Bud has taken a liking to cannibalism as well. Stubby and Bunny leave Bud and his 'city of the dead' and head on out.A little later, the couple run into another one of Stubby's old acquaintances, the pseudo-Reverend Sullivan (Adolfo Lastretti). Stopping for the night, they talk about Stubby's past before Sullivan broke away to join a parish. But then Bunny begins to go into labor, and Sullivan recommends that they take her to the nearest town for medical treatment, which is Altaville located deep in the mountains. The next morning, the group arrives in Altaville which as Sullivan puts it, "a strange town." Altaville is a tiny, snow-covered settlement populated entirely by men, ranging from outlaws to social outcasts. After initial resentment to these outsiders in their community, the men of Altaville become excited at the prospect of a birth in their settlement, and betting commences on the gender of the baby. Celebrations break out at the sound of the baby's cries and learning that it's a boy, but once again tragedy strikes as Bunny goes into seizures and dies from internal bleeding. Stubby is heartbroken. The village doctor who delivered the baby (Giorgio Trestini) recognizes Stubby's ambivalent feelings towards it, and persuades him to leave the child in the care of the men of Altaville. After Bunny's funeral, and following it, the baptism of the baby which the men of Altaville name the child 'Lucky', Stubby agrees to let the men of the town raise the child. The next day, Stubby is given a horse, a gun, some supplies, food and water, says goodbye to the men of Altaville, and rides away into the snow.Arriving below the snow line on the desert floor, Stubby passed by an abandoned ranch and discovers that Chaco is there after seeing the Salt Flat wagon, which enables Stubby to finally seek his vengeance. Stubby sneaks into the disused barn and surprises the Mexican bandit and his two henchmen by shooting the sleeping bandit in the arm and kills his two henchmen. Stubby then reclaims his luggage and his shaving kit which he immediately uses to give himself a shave. When Chaco spits at Stubby, calling him a coward for shooting him without warning, Stubby replies that a poker player never issues warnings. Chaco, evil to the last, then taunts him about the rape of Bunny. Stubby finally shoots the villainous Mexican dead. Alone once again, Stubby rides off into the evening sunset. At the last minute, a stray dog joins him on his way.

Tags: murder, western, violence, insanity, tragedy, revenge, sadist

Review:
Pacing up to this point was sharp, but here things did drag a little.There are some well-handled action sequences, a little hard-boiled violence (but leagues away from the incredible sadism of something like 'New York Ripper') and some humorous touches, mainly provided by the character of Clem, the town drunk.
The conventions of the Western have provided a great canvas for many auteurs - Fulci makes the most of stock characters and visual cues, imbuing them with all the sub-text he wanted to get across.I'll definitely check out 'Massacre Time' after this.
Many people, among them even fans of Spaghetti Western, seem not to like "The Four Of The Apocalypse", but it is actually a good movie, even though untypical for the genre.
Although the movie's violent reputation is maybe a little exaggerated, the uncut version of the movie has some very brutal scenes, there is a pretty gruesome torture scene, and there is a lot more blood when people are shot than in most Westerns, including Spaghetti Westerns.The Movie takes place in Utah of 1873, where gambler Stubby Preston meets prostitute Bunny O'Neill, alcoholic Clem and a mentally ill guy named Bud in prison.
They meet an obscure Mexican hunter called Chaco, who joins their group, but soon turns out to be a villainous and sadistic psychopath.The acting is very good, specially Lynee Frederick's performance as the lovable and beautiful prostitute Bunny, who gives the brutal movie a little heart-warming touch and almost seems a little too innocent for a prostitute, and Tomas Milian who is truly diabolic as vicious Chaco.The movie's biggest weakness is its score, which is not really bad throughout the whole movie, but in some parts of the movie the songs don't really fall in place with the scenes.
A must-see for every fan of Lucio Fulci and every fan of Spaghetti Westerns, although quite untypical for the genre, since Fabio Testi's character Stubby Preston is not quite the typical anti-hero of the Italian Western.A highly recommendable film, entertaining and gory, but in some parts also very moving.
Four lowly criminals that meet in jail; card shark Stubby, pregnant prostitute Bunny, a drunk Clem and the loony Bud manage to escape a vigilante slaughter of the town they were in and end up on a rugged journey in the open frontier.
Although by standard genre conventions, I Quattro dell'apocalisse (Four of the Apocalypse) is definitely a (spaghetti) western, in many ways it is just as terrifying as any of director Lucio Fulci's more famous horror flicks.The story centers on four people who end up together by happenstance--they are all jailed in a small Utah town.
Although adapted from two Bret Harte stories, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat", Fulci and screenwriter Ennio De Concini amped up the violence, added a character, Chaco (Tomas Milian) probably influenced by Charles Manson (and prescient of Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow portrayal in a way that must be more than happenstance), and embedded the Biblical "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" connection.In the Bible, the four horsemen represent the destructive phenomena of pestilence, famine, war and death.
Quattro dell'apocalisse (original title) is a bloody Spaghetti Western with usual Mexican desperado Tomas Milian who steals the show as a merciless bandit and filmed , of course , in Almeria .
Pollard) , a crazy African-American (Harry Baird) obsessed with the dead and a pregnant prostitute (Lynne Frederick) , wander through the trackless terrain of the Wild West and are hounded by a hearless outlaw who rapes , slashes, ravages and murders each person involved in his attacks .
Lucio Fulci made some Westerns in his prolific career (like the 1966 Tempo di Massacro aka Colt Concert and 1978 Sella d'argento aka Silver Saddle) but this film, I Quattro dell'apocalisse aka The Four of the Apocalypse (1975, and among the very last of the Spaghetti Westerns alongside Enzo G.
Castellari's Keoma, 1976 and Sergio Martino's Mannaja from 1977) is perhaps his most noteworthy Western as it at least has some marks of the director's talent as well as a very great premise and potential which are sadly used very minimally.Fabio Testi, a great actor, stars as a clever card shark who arrives in one town somewhere in the West.
Pollard) who all soon meet the film's and perhaps the whole Western genre's most heinous and mean spirited villain, Chaco, played by the always great Tomas Milian (Django Kill, Compañeros, Run Man Run among many others).
A tale of violence, revenge and some surreal goings-on has begun in the hands of the director who has done much better.First the negative things as Fulci has a certain place in my heart as he was the very first to introduce me to the wonderful and atmospheric, and sometimes very gory, Italian horror genre as well as being responsible for two of the greatest Italian Giallo mysteries ever, Non si sevizia un paperino aka Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) and Sette note in nero aka The Psychic (1977).
When the baby is born for Testi and his wife, we see long takes of Testi watching the small human being with amazement and something definitely going on inside him, but still he, and the film makers, don't understand how great scene that would have been to make Testi's character forget about his hunger and see what he has achieved, something that he should protect with his whole heart.
But that same sequence has some great acting, mostly by the "whore" who became Testi's wife as she really cried in that scene, and that, according to Testi, moved the whole crew a lot as they saw how emotional the girl got for the scene, and despite the actress Frederick at times moves her eyes a little too much and exaggeratedly, she shows her abilities in that moving scene.The third major negative thing is the way how the black character (Baird) is treated here.
Somewhere must be a better place as all the dead or soon-to-become-ones in the film seem to know.The actors are also good as can be expected from the cast and naturally Testi and Milian stand out.
Milian's character does some horrific acts in the film and the torture scene is very haunting and would have also been ever more so if Fulci had only shown the great face Testi has in that scene.
A fairly entertaining mix of director Lucio Fulci's usual excesses and a bit of rambling seventies style pretentiousness, Four Of The Apocalypse isn't a film I'd easily recommend to non-Fulci fans, though some spaghetti western aficionados might find it interesting.Cult stars Fabio Testi, Michael J.
However, squinty-eyed villain Tomas Milian is extremely nasty and steals the film from them, despite only limited screen-time, particularly when he feeds the four stars peyote and spits alcohol into the mouth of craven drunk Pollard, before forcing him to bark like a dog!Late in the film, the film's unrelentingly downbeat tone gives way to a heart-warming sequence reminiscent of 3 Godfathers and a satisfying revenge finale.The dated soft-rock score is pretty terrible though..
Milian heads off, and the four characters set out to follow their dreams and destinies - in Testi's case, a slow, violent death for the bandit...This unusual, horror-tinged effort suffers from slow pace and some awful music ballads, as well as Frederick phony Transatlantic accent.
Also, Milian's villain is superbly evil, and there are some excellent action sequences, such as the opening purge of the town, and Testi's score-settle.Some of the violence is truly shocking, and all prints of the film were cut down - Milian gouging into a man's stomach with a knife after pinning a sheriff's badge into his chest (commonly seen in stills), and some of Frederick's harrowing rape ordeal.Don't get the Swedish Sun Video entitled 'CHACO' - it's heavily cut down.
Although I'll have to admit that some scenes we're pretty hard to watch, overall the film had a classic spaghetti atmosphere with some fairly macabre moments, and was a step above many I have viewed.Many people have complained about the score which includes narrative songs with a kind of folksy early period Pink Floyd/Byrds sound which I personally love.
Some may dislike this, but I like that you can note what was and wasn't in the original release.The film begins with four small-time misfits sharing a jail cell--a gambler (Fabio Testi), a pregnant prostitute (Lynne Frederick), a drunk (Michael J.
I liked the portion set in the mining town--the miners were great characters and offered a nice contrast to all the violence early in the film.
Testi and Milian are top notch actors in any film and here they play things to the full.Also worth noting, despite all the grimness, is the poignant scene set in a town from a broken men, hiding from the world.
Extremely uneven and very disappointing spaghetti western that has a reputation of being violent and nasty,it's not, in fact it is slow paced and very little happens.Film is directed by Lucio Fulci who like Dario Argento in my opinion are very over rated by the horror and giallo fans.Film is violent at times, but not enough in my opinion and film is more often sad.
The performances are also uneven with Fabio Testi coming off best, but Harry Baird and Lynne Frederick are annoying.Michael J Pollard, one of my least favourite actors is surprisingly at his least annoying here.very disappointing.
A Card shark, a mad slave, the town drunk & a pregnant prostitute escape a town massacre only to find themselves at the mercy of sadistic bandit Chaco.Directed by Lucio Fulci a familiar name to fans of Italian horror movies this is a Spaghetti Western made at the tail end of the genres lifespan & it shows.
The premise is intriguing & on paper the characters are interesting, particularly the transformation of the central protagonist gambler Stubby Preston, but in execution it is not so good.Most of the acting is as flat as the direction which slows the pace right down as do the bizarre kitsch musical interludes.
The highlights are few & far between with the excellent Tomas Milian woefully underused as is the great American character actor Michael J Pollard & the remaining cast are left with little to work with.
Of the highlights are the notorious torture scenes which have a strong sadistic streak much like the excellent Django & the results of where the protagonists food came from in a rainsoaked ghost town.Unfortunately this film appears to have been made by a director who is not familiar with Westerns.
This is a shame, the film could have been great if more attention was placed upon the script & acting.In closing Four Of The Apocalypse has an interesting movie hidden somewhere in the script if only one of the masters of the genre such as Leone or Corbucci had been given the material to work their magic on..
Four of the Apocalypse (1975)** 1/2 (out of 4)Spaghetti Western about a gambler (Fabio Testi) who is thrown out of town with a hooker, an alcoholic and another criminal.
Soon Chaco shows his ugly side and before long the gambler must seek revenge against him.Lucio Fulci's FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE has gained a pretty big cult following over the years.
I think FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is a decent movie but I'm going to stop well short of calling it a great movie or even a good one.The biggest problem I had with the picture is that we've seen this type of revenge story done countless times before and there's really nothing new done with it here outside some of the gore.
this movie has a great soundtrack, which is very underrated and had great direction by Lucio Fulci, not just the master of terror, but also the master giving instructions to his actors on how to act grief, horror and revenge, I highly recommend this film, I know I give it a ten, but try to watch an episode of the Rifleman or Maverick and then quickly watch this movie.
I enjoyed this film on a different level from films like The Great Silence, Django or The Good, The Bad & The Ugly because I liked the characters more than the actual story but this is a rough film to recommend to anybody not familiar with Fulci's work or Spaghetti Westerns in general.
I'm a big fan of Lucio Fulci; both for his blood-splattered gore flicks and for some of his non-horror movies, but this western was absolutely not what I was expecting.
Westerns were obviously not Fulci's main forte, but films like this would have given him a great chance to show the blood and gore like he does best but it's never taken.
The disappointment of this film increases when you consider the talent involved; most notably, performances from two of Italy's most popular actors in Fabio Testi and Tomas Milian, who both deliver good performances alongside a decent supporting cast that includes Michael J Pollard and Lynne Frederick.
On the back cover of the DVD is stated that "I Quatro dell Apocalisse" was the most violent western ever made, and as the film was directed by Lucio Fulci, I believed the hype.
And here comes the question: Would you see an indifferent film just because of some violent scenes?In the DVD rental store I had picked up two spaghetti westerns: "I am Sartana, Trade your Guns for a Coffin" and "Four of the Apocalypse".
What happens next is something I did not expect from Lucio Fulci.Although the dubbing here is pretty bad, the acting uneven at best (though I did think Testi did perform admirably) and the music score horrendous the film possesses a strange kind of charm with it's humane unexpected twists.
The sheriff (played by Run Man Run's sheriff Donal O'Brien, locks him in a cell with the so-called scum of the earth: the visibly pregnant woman of the night Bunny (played by the late British actress Lynne Frederick), an unnervingly upbeat African American named Bud, and the weird-looking cherubic Michael J Pollard, most famous for his role as the slightly brain-damaged CW in Bonnie And Clyde, here on his downhill career slide as Clem, the slightly brain-damaged town drunk.Hooded killers cut a swathe through the rest of the town in a display of gloriously slow motion wholesale butchery while sheriff plugs his ears - and this is before the end of the credits!
Here he brings his talent to the Western genre, with compelling results.The film, based on a story by Bret Harte, unites four disparate characters as they make a perilous journey from one town to another, in the year 1873.
Now, gambler Stubby Preston (Fabio Testi), pregnant prostitute Bunny O'Neill (Lynne Frederick), alcoholic Clem (Michael J.
Their fortunes truly take a turn for the worse when they make the acquaintance of Chaco (Tomas Milian), a depraved bandit."The Four of the Apocalypse..." is fairly episodic, but its episodes are each riveting in their own way, and there's a real poignancy to the film that fans of Fulci's horror films might not expect.
The penultimate episode, when our protagonists come across a town of chauvinistic men, is far and away the best, as these macho individuals eventually come to embrace the imminent arrival of Bunny's child.The principals are all wonderful in their roles - the handsome Testi and the lovely Frederick are well matched, Pollard supplies a bit of comedy relief, Baird is engaging even as his character is clearly shown to have gone off the deep end, and Milian is great malevolent fun as the unrepentant villain.
Their struggle to survive in the desert is bad enough but the filth really hits the fan-blades when they encounter sadistic outlaw Tomas Milian, star of a few million spaghetti Westerns.There is a rape scene, a bloody gunfight with shotguns, and Lucio Fulci is one of the few who would throw a live skinning and cannibalism into a western.
By the time Testi catches up with Milian you won't care who murders who, as long as the film comes to an end.This was supposedly based on a story by Bret Harte.
It turns out that he's actually lucky, because the town has become a vigilante mob that burns that den of iniquity to the ground, leaving only Stubby and three other criminals alive: Bunny (Lynne Frederick, Phase IV), a pregnant prostitute, a black man named Bud and the alcoholic Clem (Michael J.
While the beginning slaughter of the "sinners" in the town was pretty much what I expected from a spaghetti directed by schlockmeister, Lucio Fulci ( avoid at all costs, he's no Dario Argento...though come to think of it...neither is Dario Argento) the rest of the movie failed to deliver anything remotely resembling entertainment...in fact what it did deliver was a crazy naked man named Butt.
No gunfights...no Eli Wallach...no nothin!There are some of the requisite spaghetti elements...beautiful girl (thought not a beautiful italian girl), evil mexican Chaco, and some great cast names, if Fabio Testi isn't the GREATEST actor name ever I'll eat this DVD, the only thing it's good for, really.If you're a fan of the genre, I'd steer clear of this one.
Also, and to my personal surprise, this film features many aspects that you don't expect to see in a western, like a lot of sentiment (the dreadful interactions between Stubby and Bunny) and even occult stuff (the black character Bud supposedly communicates with the deceased).
Smooth gambler Stubby Preston (an excellent and charismatic performance by Fabio Testi), sweet pregnant prostitute Emanuelle 'Bunny' O'Neill (a fine and moving portrayal by the lovely Lynne Frederick), pathetic drunk Clem (the ever-quirky Michael J.
It's a brutal, uncompromising spaghetti western, with so-so dubbing and some fine acting by Testi, Fredrick and the great Milian.
The other members of the group in Lucio Fulci's western are Bunny (Lynne Frederick), a pregnant prostitute, Clem (Michael J.