Four of the Apocalypse (1975) from Tuna

I Quattro dell'apocalisse is a spaghetti western, one of three made by Lucio Fulci before he found his niche with horror and gialli.

As the result of a morality crackdown by the good citizens, a gambler (Fabio Teste), a drunk (Michael J. Pollard), a crazy black cemetery worker (Harry Baird), and a pregnant hooker (Lynne Frederick) are tossed out of town with nothing but a wagon and horses. The four petty criminals are soon joined by evil personified, in the form of a bandit named Chaco (Thomas Milian), who rapes Frederick, shoots Pollard in the leg, and leaves everyone to die in the desert. The rest of the film is taken up with their journey to reach a town. After significant hardships, the gambler and the hooker reach an all-male mining town, where her son is born. Of course, the baby is named "Luck."

The source material is obviously two short stories from Brett Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp, and The Outcasts of Poker Flats. These two stories were staples of High School freshman English in the early 1960s, and can be read online:

As a master of capturing the local color of the Western states and territories, Brett Harte is usually cited alongside Mark Twain himself. In fact, there is a town in the gold country today called Twainharte, named for both of them. Unfortunately, the plot of this movie does not do justice to The Outcasts of Poker Flats. Harte's story pitted the Outcasts against the elements, and the elements won. As obnoxious as Thomas Milian is, he is not as fearsome as severe winter storms. The baby portion of the story is a little stronger, and is more in the spirit of the source material, but the love angle between Teste and Frederick generates no heat at all.

This spaghetti western is not just a failure at capturing the flavor of Bret Harte, but also fails to capture the flavor of the American West. Nor does it do a very good job at the western genre in general. The pace is glacial and there is virtually no action. There is a fairly bloody shootout at the beginning of the film, and then very little gunplay after that.  Furthermore, there is no good guy. Westerns were, after all, morality plays with easily distinguishable heroes and villains. You only needed to check the hat colors to be sure, but it was pretty obvious who the good guys were. In this story, nobody.
 

DVD INFO

  • No features
  • the transfer is anamorphically enhanced, and is not especially vivid

 

NUDITY REPORT

Lynne Frederick shows breasts in two scenes, and is seen strategically naked from the side.
Sidebar:

Lynne Frederick was married to Peter Sellers, but rebuked by his family as a gold digger. She was only 20 when she made this film, and still only 22 when she married 51-year-old Peter Sellers. She was still with him three years later, when he died the day before her 26th birthday. If she was a gold-digger, she was a successful one. She received almost every last penny of Sellers's estate.

Within an astonishingly quick six months of Peter's death, his grieving widow was consoled by another marriage to another successful older man, the famous TV interviewer and satirist David Frost. That one didn't take at all. They divorced the next year.

A very heavy drinker, Lynne died while still in her 30s, of ... er ... natural causes. (An autopsy failed to determine the cause of death.)

The Critics Vote ...

  • No major reviews on file

 

The People Vote ...

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

  • A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
  • B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
  • C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
  • C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
  • C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
  • D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-. Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor popular acceptance.
  • E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
  • F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

 

Based on this description, this film is a C-. Competently filmed and acted, but not of interest except to spaghetti western fanatics.

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