Four Of The Apocalypse (1975) is a late-period spaghetti western, as the Italian genre was on the decline in the 1970s, directed by Lucio Fulci. Even though this before Fulci’s ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy, and some of the more gnarlier movies that would make his name as a horror filmmaker (Zombi 2, The New York Ripper), I still assumed there would be a grotesque edge to this tale. The opening sequence sets a dark town as four strangers find themselves locked in the sheriff’s jail for petty crimes. Turns out they’ve also been locked up to keep out of the town turning into masked vigilantes and massacring all the degenerate gunfighters and criminals hanging out in the saloon. All the while, the Sherriff sits at his desk eating dinner as people are shot to death outside.
The quartet are a bunch of archetypes – the gambler (Tomas Milan), the pregnant prostitute (Lynne Frederick), a man who says he can see the dead (Harry Baird) and a drunk (Michael J Pollard). As they travel together towards the next town, they fall into being a make-shift family. Their genial company is interrupted by a disturbed bandit named Chaco (Tomas Milian) who initially promises to help them, but then shows a taste for torture, eventually using peyote to drug and brutalise the group. Here is where I felt this was becoming more of a Lucio Fulci horror western, and yet the movie surprises with its disarming nature. Even within the hellish trek through the desert and the presence of death that befalls the group, there is a sequence in a ghostly town filled with men only that is comporable to the atmosphere of McCabe & Mrs Miller. The arty qualities of the movie are also helped by the Sid Barrett era Pink Floyd style rock tunes on the soundtrack (Music by Franco Bixo, Fabio Frizzi, Vince Tempera).
A strange spaghetti western that finds a certain glimmer of hope within the despair, some sense of kinship and compassion, even in the light of a brutal world. Available to stream on Tubi. Recommended.
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