Product Details

• Actors: Fabio Testi, Lynne Frederick, Michael J. Pollard, Harry Baird, Adolfo Lastretti
• Directors: Lucio Fulci
• Format: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: Italian
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
• DVD Release Date: December 18, 2001
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005R24L
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #233,093 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Four of the Apocalypse" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fulci goes spaghetti, August 27, 2004

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Four of the Apocalypse (DVD)

Spaghetti westerns are, in my opinion, generally the best fictional films about the American West. You can argue that John Wayne made a bunch of great movies about life in the Old West, and you would be right to say so, but for some reason the Italians captured perfectly the specific elements of the era that made their movies seem more realistic. The frontier was a dirty, violent place full of unsavory types trying to get rich quick. Italian westerns capture this mood expertly whereas American films portray characters whose outfits look like they just came back from the dry cleaners. Hollywood films also tend to apply a black and white dichotomy onto their characters, the old "good guys wear white, bad guys wear black" philosophy that obscures the reality of the time and place. Not so in Italian films, where even the good guys often have distinctly unsavory traits. It's too bad spaghetti westerns went the way of the dinosaurs a few decades back; I never tire of watching these films even though I am not an expert on the genre. "Four of the Apocalypse," part of the larger Anchor Bay "Once Upon a Time in Italy" spaghetti western box set, serves as an excellent example of how powerful the genre once was. Too, none other than goremeister Lucio Fulci directed the picture.

Fulci's contribution to the spaghetti western genre contains some of the great cult classic actors of the Italian film era. Fabio Testi, who later teamed up with Fulci again for the mobster picture "Contraband," plays a renegade gambler named Stubby Preston. Testi's character looks the part; he wears the clothing of a dandy, possesses an oily smile that could melt steel, and has four or five decks of marked cards tucked away in his suitcase. Unfortunately for this poker shark, the local sheriff promptly arrests him when he steps off the coach in a small Utah town. It seems the townspeople are weary of dealing with miscreants, so they've taken the step of cleaning up the town the hard way. The process involves waiting until nightfall, donning masks, and gunning down all of the goons. One poor chap takes a header out of a window with a noose around his neck. Bodies litter the street the next morning when the sheriff orders Stubby and three of his fellow detainees to hit the bricks. The four individuals, now traveling companions, form an odd bunch. Besides Stubby, there's a pregnant harridan named Bunny (Lynne Frederick), an alcoholic called Clem (Michael Pollard!), and a scary guy answering to Bud (Harry Baird) who actually says "I see dead people" years before "The Sixth Sense" arrived on the scene. For better or for worse, these four set out across the alkali flats (or is it a desert?) of Utah in search of Sand City, a town full of the vices all four have come to love.

Problems emerge from the get go. First, the four run into a shaggy looking fellow named Chaco (Thomas Milian), a crack sharpshooter with a penchant for violent outbursts, peyote, and whisky. At first, Chaco befriends the group, but at some point he paints crosses under his eyes and turns as mean as a snake. The thug literally skins a prisoner captured in a shootout, then turns his attentions to Stubby's cohorts. He critically wounds Clem and terrorizes poor Bunny before riding off into the mountains with the group's wagon and horses, leaving the four to plod miserably through the blasted climes. It's not long after this incident that the group begins to melt away. By the time Bunny and Stubby arrive in Altaville, a small town peopled by a ragtag bunch of grizzled men, the movie oddly turns into a rather sappy series of scenes about caring for an infant. The conclusion to the film whips "Four of the Apocalypse" right back to where it should be with the obligatory showdown between Stubby and the evil Chaco. I've watched all but one of the films contained in the Anchor Bay boxed set at this point, and Fulci's film is the strangest of the lot.

Odd though it is, the picture is still a lot of fun to view. The performances on the whole stand well above usual Italian film standards. Milian is the one to watch, though. His villainous Chaco ranks as one of the most despicable bad guys I've seen in awhile. The humorous, languid attitude Milian's character exuded in "Companeros" is nowhere apparent here--this guy is just plain evil incarnate. He even overshadows the general weirdness Michael Pollard brings to the Clem character, and that's quite a feat if you're familiar with any character portrayed by Pollard during his lengthy career. Beyond the performances, "Four of the Apocalypse" shows us a hint of the Fulci gore that would become a staple in his later horror films. When bullets strike down guys in this film, the wounds explode like miniature atomic bombs. Then there's that skinning scene. Yep, shades of the grotesqueries of "The Beyond," "The Gates of Hell," and "Zombie" are perceptible in this ultra violent spag western. A series of great prog rock ballads serve as the musical score.

All in all, I'd say this film is one of the best I've seen from Fulci. Heck, the guy even forgoes the usual eye zoom shots so prevalent in his later work. A big round of applause should go to Anchor Bay for bringing us this flick on DVD. Even better, they added in the gory scenes cut out of prior releases, and even throw in a seventeen-minute documentary containing interviews with Fabio Testi and Thomas Milian. You also get talent biographies, a trailer, and an easter egg accessible from the extras screen. Spaghetti western fans will want to add this one to the collection. So will fans of Fulci in general.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars SOLID ITALIAN WESTERN, December 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Four of the Apocalypse (DVD)

For it's time (1975) I Quattro dell'Apocalisse (Four of the Apocalypse) was considered so graphically violent that it was banned or shown largely edited in most countries when it was released and was never released in the United States. Now on DVD, it is shown uncut for the first time, and while it is a very violent film, it certainly isn't anything shocking by today's standards. It's a solid spaghetti western though, with some terrific performances by Fabio Testi, the beautiful and doe-eyed Lynne Frederick, and Harry Baird. There's also a typically quirky performance by Michael J. Pollard (probably the only actor in this film most American viewers will recognize), but the show is absolutely stolen by Tomas Milian as Chaco, a brutally sadistic outlaw the four encounter in the wilderness who terrorizes them then leaves them for dead. This is a good solid western, with good performances, some great action sequences, some truly disturbing scenes, and also some very touching ones. The only downside to the film is one sequence where Chaco hunts by shooting birds and rabbits--and it seems to go on FOREVER. Seemed totally unncessessary and cruel and could have been easily cut out of the film. The film would have lost nothing by removing this tasteless scene. The other downside to the film is the soundtrack. The instrumentals work well, but the songs that include vocals are horrid. So bad, in fact, that they nearly ruin the movie. Instead of the moody and ethereal soundtracks associated with most films of this genre, I Quattro dell'Apocalisse has a soundtrack that sounds like something out of a 70s easy listening radio station--just awful. If you can get around that one animal-violence scene and the hideous soundtrack, and you enjoy violent, brooding, thoughtful westerns, I Quattro dell'Apocalisse is one you're sure to enjoy. Tomas Milian's performance alone is worth the price of this DVD. And for Fulci buffs there's a very interesting (though awfully short, only about 17 minutes) extra featuring current day interviews with Fabio Testi and Tomas Milian that is worth seeing. Not great, but a good, solid Italian Western.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Four of the Apocalypse, February 22, 2005

By 

Steven Hellerstedt "SH" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Four of the Apocalypse (DVD)

Three hippies and a brother run away from a bad scene in a lawless town. They meet Charlie Manson in the desert, who turns them onto some peyote. The trip turns into a bummer and Charlie Manson turns cruel.
Only the names were changed, baby. There are four refugees and one requisite Bad Guy in FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE, a rambling yet entertaining spaghetti western from the Italian Lucio Fulci, who is best known for directing such Italian horror classics as A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING.
The Manson reference comes from something Tomas Milian, who plays the evil Chaco, said. (All bad guys in Italian westerns never have a last name, or much of a first name, either.) Milian said he took a make-up cue from Charles Manson, who had notoriously carved a swastika in his forehead, and drew a blood red cross beneath each eye. Constrained by time and driven by Method, it seemed the thing to do, and it works.
Chaco is a brutal character, and he's involved in a couple of grisly scenes, cut from the original English release, that have been restored with subtitles on the dvd. The scenes may have been a little much for audiences in 1975, but they're unlikely to raise many eyebrows three decades on. A little skin flayed here, a little cannibalism there. Been there, done that, excuse me while I stifle a yawn.
The characters in FOTA, a gambler (Fabio Testi), a prostitute (Lynne Frederick), a town drunk (Michael J Pollard), a mentally challenged mortuary assistant (Harry Baird) and a few plot points may have been ripped from current headlines, but the movie also borrowed heavily, with attribution, from the works of Bret Harte. Most of act three, which is by far the strongest and most coherent section of the movie, is taken directly from Harte's "Luck of the Roaring Camp."
FOTA is cobbled together and not all the pieces fit. As Milian tells us, he was available for only six days of filming, so his character sort of drifts in and out of the movie without undue rhyme or reason.
I liked FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE, even though I feel compelled to admit, sheepishly, that it's not a very good movie. The plot is all over the place and the climatic revenge theme should have been torn down and rebuilt from scratch. On the other hand, the acting was a notch above that found in most spaghetti westerns and I found myself involved with and caring about the characters. Also, from the parched deserts to the snowy mining camp, this movie looked good. With reservations, a moderately strong recommendation.