Fulci on western

Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Lucio Fulci is more known from his ultra violent horror movies and giallos, but he has done a wide variety of movies ranging from comedy to westerns. His take on the spaghetti western is surely interesting. The movie tells a story of four people driven on the run from a small town after a very violent "clean up" by the town officials. On their journey they meet a man called Chaco, played brilliantly by Tomas Milian, who turns their lives into a nightmare. Surprisingly this movie is quite dramatic in emotions, something not common in the usually muted spaghetti westerns. Sure there is the usual vengeance theme and all of the basic ingredients, but it also has a bit of a romance and lots of drama. At first it seemed like a good thing as it raised the potential quite a lot, but unfortunately it doesn't really work out in the end. Fulci seems to take the focus into the wrong things and missing quite a bit of the juicy setup the script would have provided. Also the look of the movie is not what one would expect from the visually praised spaghetti westerns as this one is quite plain in the company of it's kind. Sure there are some individual shots that are quite brilliant and even some very nicely crafted scenes, but still it's a bit too straight forward. The cast is quite great with Tomas Milian shining above others but Fabio Testi and Lynne Frederick do a great job as well. The music was from quite ok to absolutely horrible, another thing that other of it's kind do aeons better. All in all it had lots of potential, some of which was unfortunately lost and even though it does many things right it still has so many things wrong it falls just below average in it's genre.
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