El tesoro de las cuatro coronas
Tags: gothic, violence, cult, cruelty, sadist

Plot synopsis:
The movie follows J.T. Striker, a Soldier of Fortune (Tony Anthony), who has been hired to assemble a group of professional thieves to retrieve the gems which are hidden inside two of the remaining four Mystical Crowns. Striker braves a mysterious magical cave in which skeletons and spears appear and jump out at him. He discovers a scroll in one of the crowns in the cave, which tells him that the fourth crown had disappeared long ago. He denies that the gems are magical or even valuable. He succumbs to the belief eventually and sets off to find the last two crowns, which are being held inside a heavily guarded compound that is the home of a cult led by the evil Brother Jonas. Striker's team suffers casualties from booby traps as it performs a dangerous acrobatic commando raid on the room where the crowns are kept. Striker retrieves the gems from the two magical crowns, and the magic makes his head literally spin. His face becomes half deformed, like that of Two-Face. Striker shoots fire from his fingers, melting the henchmen, their weapons, and Jonas. After, the film cuts to a shot of a boggy swamp, where a large pile of slimy brown sludge rises from the swampy water. A head like that of a moray eel with crystal blue eyes shoots towards the screen for a 3-D effect, setting up for a sequel that never happened.

Review: When I was a kid, I saw this movie and I loved it.
I thought it was one of the best movies I'd ever seen.
Ten years later, I picked it up at the video store to take another look.Ouch.OUCH!This is a bad movie!
The climax is hilarious!One good thing about the movie: Ever reliable Ennio Morricone gives the movie a good score..
I remember this movie coming on numerous times on HBO and Cinemax when I was a kid and I watched it every chance I could.
I know now that it was a cheesy movie and if I watched it again it would probably be not as good as I remembered, but I did like it when I was a kid.
Even though during one scene of the movie you can see the string on the "flying" key.
The lead guy in the first part has to get through various traps to retrieve this key thing.
The middle just consists of him recruiting people to help retrieve the two crowns.
Then it is like a spy movie as they break into some cults palace that has numerous traps.
And yes there were only three crowns, one only had paper, the other two had gems, the forth one supposedly was broken by someone who tried to open it without the key.
J.T. Striker (Tony Anthony) is an adventurer / fortune hunter hired by his associates Edmond (Gene Quintano) and Professor Montgomery (Francisco Villena) to get his hands on the legendary Four Crowns, which when obtained can make a person all powerful.
To accomplish his task, J.T. gathers together a bunch of his old friends: the weary old Socrates (Francisco Rabal), the drunken Rick (Jerry Lazarus), and the super sexy Liz (Ana Obregon).You know you're in trouble when the opening "Star Wars" style crawl is sorely lacking in any sort of punctuation.
Its extreme crudeness and cheesiness (one can clearly see the strings that are manipulating objects) could have been forgiven if only the movie had more energy.
The filmmakers thrust as many objects into the camera as they can.Helping to uplift "Treasure of the Four Crowns" (starting with that title, it's all too obvious which hit movie was a big influence on this one) to a degree are its WTF moments, its admittedly amusing opening set piece that goes on for over 20 minutes without dialogue, its absolutely priceless climax, and a wonderful, stirring Ennio Morricone music score that truly deserved a better movie.This just isn't as much fun as this viewer would have liked.Five out of 10..
Treasure of the Four Crown in 3-D is the heartwarming story of a man suffering from impotency (Tony Anthony) who races through Southern California with the government closing in.
Only then do the strings attached to the "floating key" and the fact that there's only two crowns shown in the movie (though a third is briefly mentioned) truly jump out a come alive for the viewer..
I remember seeing this movie when I was 11 with my brother, 14.
This was just a bad movie.
Not even good for a " bad movie night."  Just stay away from it.
This movie would have been a perfect feature for Mystery Science Theater 3000.I saw this in the theater when it came out.
I remember being really excited about getting to see a 3-D movie.
I guess I was somewhere around 10 years old.Even at 10, I thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I had ever seen.
I did enjoy it though, as my friend and I sat in the nearly empty theater making fun of the movie, I enjoyed a real-life MST3K moment.Serious scholars of horrible cinema should seek this movie.
I remember this movie being shown endlessly on HBO on Saturday afternoons in the 80's.
Clearly trying to cash in on "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the only thing this film had going for it was the 3D and this is sadly missing on the video version.
Strings are completely visible, repititous scenes of objects being poked at the camera and bad dubbing make for a difficult watch.
Watching this movie in the theater as a teenager with my friends was great fun - we howled and made fun of the film all of the way through, which was okay because everyone in the room was doing the same thing.
That should tell you just how bad this movie is: so bad it's good.
The thing is, I think the people responsible for this trainwreck meant for it to be a serious action film.
Instead what we got was really fake-looking special effects, bad acting and a story that barely held together.
The Treasure of the 4 Crowns, a low budget Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoff, was part of a brief 3D revival in the early 80s; on video, shorn of the novelty of an extra dimension, the film loses any impact it once had and ends up a tedious and unexciting affair.Tony Anthony, the rather piggy-faced star of Comin' at Ya!
T. Stryker, a treasure hunter who gathers together a group of fellow adventurers to steal some mystical crowns from a heavily guarded fortress (owned by a strange cult).Opening with a scene in a deserted castle, where J.T. faces deadly booby-traps in order to find a magical key, director Ferdinando Baldi makes known his intentions from the start: to steal liberally from Spielberg's movie whilst dangling everything possible into the foreground for maximum 3D effect.The story is quite simply awful, the acting rather poor, and the special effects lousy.
Scenes specially shot to make the most of the 3D technology look quite ridiculous, and the wires supporting many of the objects 'floating' in the foreground are clearly visible.The finale, which sees J.
The main bad guy, cult leader Jonas, has his face sliced up by lasers and then gets roasted by J.
Bizarre.And as if that wasn't enough, a final shot sees a strange snake-like creature leap out of a swamp, for no apparent reason.On a positive note, Ennio Morricone's score is pretty good (well...
far too good for this tripe, anyway!).Even if Treasure of the 4 Crowns received a proper 3D release on DVD, I would still think twice about watching it again!.
Raiders of the Lost Ark Wanna Be. This movie is absolutely awful.
As a kid of 8 years old, I saw this at the movies with my brother.
I remember being bored during it then, but the idea of fantastic powers from crowns appealed to me.I recently found it on Ebay and was excited to get it.
Now, I look back on this movie as just trying to make a buck off of Raiders of the Lost Ark with the additional gimmick of 3D.There is not character development.
You can see all the strings used for the fireballs, darts, and the flying key.I can just imagine the "creative team" thinking this movie up.
"If one rolling ball was good for Indy, why not create 2 or 3 flaming rolling balls coming at the lead character."This movie isn't even bad funny.
Was there a story line to this movie?
A bad movie with cheap 3D tricks (a spear in your face, looking at a rope hanging down).
Now, I saw this when it originally came out, but I seem to remember that there were only three crowns.
Diabolical cult leader Brother Jonas (a rabidly hammy portrayal by Emiliano Redondo) gains possession of a set of mystical artifacts that gives him the power to lord it over his mindless followers.
It's up to devil-may-care mercenary J.T. Striker (blandly played with stunning blankness by Tony Anthony, who also co-produced) and his motley crew who include a drunken dude (insipid Jerry Lazarus), a strongman brute with a weak heart (brooding Francisco Rabal), and, naturally, a token feisty babe (fetching Ana Obregon) to retrieve said artifacts from Jonas's heavily guarded fortress.
Boy, does this hilariously horrendous clunker possess all the so-wrong-that-they're-paradoxically-right stuff to qualify as a real four-star stinkeroonie: Ferdinando Baldi's ham-fisted (mis)direction, the plodding pace, a plethora of shoddy (far from) special effects (you can clearly see all the obvious strings that levitate various objects throughout the picture!), the cardboard characters, the maladroitly staged action set pieces, the laughably terrible acting, the ratty cinematography by Marcello Masciocchi and Giuseppe Ruzzolini, and the jaw-dropping outrageous climax all give this delectably dreadful doozy a considerable amount of lovably cruddy charm.
Moreover, not only does this movie hurl every possible object at the camera (arrows, spears, snakes, birds, keys, flames, and much, much more!), but it also boasts more than enough explosions to make even Michael Bay green with envy.
TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS may not be the best, but it's certainly the bizarrest of the various European Indiana Jones rip-offs that followed in the wake of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
This totally madcap film is bookended by two incredible scenes of action that will have you shaking your head in disbelief, whereas the slow middle section is for courageous viewers only who don't succumb to boredom too easily.
It's rip-off time from the start with this movie, which opens with some yellow scrolling introductory footage which will no doubt make any STAR WARS fan feel a sense of déjà vu.
Immediately afterwards we're introduced to J.T. Striker, our red-quilted jacket wearing hero who has to brave the dangers of a booby-trapped castle in the search for a hidden key.
As well as rabid dogs - who know what they survive on in a deserted castle in the middle of nowhere - Striker must face jumping snakes, opening pits, a fair quantity of dry ice, moving skeletons and suits of armour, loud wailing, and, most hilarious of all, a vulture - made of CARDBOARD - which comes flying at him on a plainly visible string!
If this wasn't enough, as soon as he retrieves the key, flying bolts, spears and rockets (!) are launched at him, the building burns down and Striker must escape from burning wooden spheres which roll after him and threaten to engulf him (let's see if anyone can spot the influence of this last bit).
The most incredible thing about all this action is that this all takes place in the first TWENTY minutes.Well, it's a good thing that the film settles down at this point for some plot exposition or I might have had a heart attack from watching all that excitement!
Basically, Striker must travel to a remote mountain-top castle which is inhabited by a religious cult led by the insane Brother Junas; there, he must retrieve three crowns which contain the power to stop evil in the world (one of the crowns is already owned by his local museum).
For some unexplained reason, Striker must assemble a team of five to infiltrate the castle, get past the guard and booby-traps and steal the treasure.The director is Ferdinando Baldi, who was responsible for some enjoyable peplum epics back in the early '60s.
Baldi's direction is adequate and he keeps the film lively at all times; on occasion he inserts lots of slow-motion in an attempt to emulate fellow Italian action director Enzo G.
This is one of those movies made to cash in on the short-lived 3D craze of the early '80s, so they really go overboard with things flying at the camera; we've got ropes, hands, traps, flames, crossbow bolts, harpoons, knives, candles, feet, snakes, and you name it at various points; the most hilarious bit is when two people constantly pass things to each other, towards the camera every time!
If you're a fan of cheesy, low-budget rip-offs then TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS (that should read THREE, because there's no sign of the fourth!) is the film for you..
Oh sweet irony, thy name be "Treasure of the Four Crowns" This movie revolved its entire promotional campaign on the unique selling proposition of 3-D effects, but it's this exact same gimmick that continuously muddles up the pacing and negatively affects the script's coherence.
It sounds like a rookie mistake, but in fact director Ferdinando Baldi and co-writer/main star Tony Anthony should have known better.
The duo previously made the underrated but splendid spaghetti western "Blindman", and that movie strangely enough revolved entirely on detailed character drawings and story building instead of on effects.
As you can undoubtedly derive from the title and cover image, "Treasure of the Four Crowns" is another Italian attempt to cash in on the huge success of early 80's adventure movies, more particularly the Steven Spielberg classic "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Tony Anthony pretends to be a genuine Indiana Jones and the adventurous opening sequence lasts at least three times as long as the intro of "Raiders".
Anthony plays J.T. Stryker, a professional adventurer hired to recover two out of four magical crowns from the malicious hands of the occult sect leader Brother Jones.
According to the assignor, these Crowns hold the power to solve all the earthly issues like war, poverty, famine etc  only it's never really explained HOW.
The evil Jones keeps the crowns in a hi-tech secured temple with laser alarm systems and deadly booby traps, so Stryker and his team of hired circus artists spend the majority of the film climbing walls and hurling on ceilings.
Heroic characters die in the most ridiculous ways imaginable, faces get deformed and go back to normal and the fate of the titular crowns is inconclusive.
I wished I could have written better things about his movie, but it's simply not very good.
The Movie is horrible, but the story is there (you just have to look real hard).
This movie was horrible and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves for ever having been associated with it.
Having said that, there were a few aspects of this movie that appealed to me, namely that there was a history behind the crowns.
I saw this a few years ago, so some of my details may be a little off, but you'll get the idea of just how horrible this movie is.The movie opens with J.T. Striker (Tony Anthony) approaching some old castle.
We quickly learn that this castle is booby-trapped to the max and our hero has to dodge everything from darts and flying buzzards to ancient torture racks to reach his goal, which is the coffin of some long-dead king.
He collects the key and then escapes, as the entire castle starts to "come to life" and eventually explodes.
Just where this explosion came from is a mystery.Back to the world goes our hero to meet up with Ed, who takes him to a museum where they hand over the key to Prof.
Montgomery and Ed tell the story of the crowns, which they key will unlock.
I found this to be the best part of the movie and the only true attempt at meaningful dialog.Ed speaking, as the crown slides out of its container: "This is one of the Four Golden Crowns created by the Visigoths in the 6th Century some time after the conquest of Spain." Prof.
Montgomery: "Legend held that the gold balls on top three of the four crowns contained secrets to unleashing incredible powers of good and evil.
Three years ago I learned the location of the key, but saw no sense in retrieving it since the other crowns were missing until this crown, reportedly the one containing the scroll surfaced.
And now, we shall see." The professor opens the crown and there is the scroll and now the enlist Striker to help them steal the remaining two crowns from a cult leader who uses them to control people (we are never told just how the crowns help him do this).
Striker reluctantly agrees and assembles the team of Rick The Drunk, the dying old clown Socrates and his daughter Liz, and Ed.The hapless crew infiltrates the secure room where the crowns are kept and are very close to getting them without incident, but then a piece of equipment that is supposed to knock out the security systems, fails to function and J.T. decides to go for it anyway.
Before the entire ridiculousness of this scene can even be comprehended, J.T. who has been blinded by some steam that shot out of the statue (and set off the alarms), regains his feet and opens the crowns (I guess all of the security mechanisms had been exhausted at this point).
The crowns (the green one evil, the gold one good) make breathing noises at him.
He takes them in his hands and his head spins around a la The Exorcist and then his face is divided between good and evil, with the evil side corresponding to the hand he is holding the green ball in and the good corresponding with the had he is holding the gold ball in.Brother Jonas, the cult leader, has by this time burst into the room with his machine-gun toting, mask wearing followers and J.T. shoots fire out of the two crowns and kills them all.
He snaps back out of it after they are all dead and he and Liz are lifted out of the room by the professor, but not before he throws the crowns into the fire.There is a final scene which makes no sense.
We see this blob rise out of a swamp and snake-like thing shoots out.
But I want to point out that there were THREE crowns shown in this movie.
People seemed to forget about the one with the scroll.O.K., that's basically the movie.
Strings are visible everywhere, much of the 3D was wasted on things that didn't need it, and nothing was really explained about how the crowns could help mankind, even though this why they were all risking their lives for them.None of the characters were complicated or compelling.
Why didn't he just go through that window in the first place instead of risking his life maneuvering through the booby-trapped castle?