Cheap Four of the Apocalypse (DVD) (Lucio Fulci) Price

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Customer Reviews of Four of the Apocalypse

Uneven, nihilistic, sentimental, riveting
This is a strange film. It's a dreamy, hypnotic Western, and Fulci was evidently developing the weird dream aesthetics that permeated THE BEYOND and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY. There are some brilliant sequences: the opening massacre; Chaco's torturing of a lawman; the travelling through the desert sequences, and others are a marvel. But the film can't sustain this. Sentimentality ruins the film. There are too many extended death bed scenes and too much gushing warmth. The sequences of dread are far more convincing. The film takes a massive detour into sentimentality and takes ages to get back. But the final showdown between Stubby and Chaco is brilliant: the penultimate image of Stubby's shattered narcissism is unforgettable.

The dvd is fine. Picture is excellent, and an interesting interview with the film's stars: the brilliant actors Tomas Milian and Fabio Testi.

Overall, an interesting film, one that I wish was the masterpiece that it could have been. You'll like it, but you'll wish you could like it better.

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weird and bloody
This isn't your typical spaghetti western - you know the sort - lot's of glowering faces, silly dialogue and violent action that crops up every five minutes or so. This operates on a slower, more pretentious level. The dialogue is still silly, the glowering faces are still there, but instead of numerous action sequences, Fulci gives us a slow, pretentious - almost dreamlike - affair. It's supposed to be one of his personal favourites, and it does have that air of "the director doing his thing" about it. Lots of "meaningful" but somehow unrelated sequences strung together to give an incoherant whole. The violence, when it comes, is pretty strong stuff: there's an opening massacre that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever, a scene where a sherrif gets skinned alive (while the heroes stand by doing nothing, for some strange reason), a rape, cannabalism and torture. But it's not the stuff of westerns - it belongs more in the realm of horror films or thrillers (in fact, compare this film with Fulci's earlier western, Massacre Time, and you can see that Apocalypse is really a precursor to his ultra-bloody and silly horror flicks of the 80s, where long bouts of inactivity and inane dialogue are punctuated by extreme gore). Apparently, in order to woo audiences back to a dying genre, the spaghetti westerns became increasingly explicit in their depiction of violence (it didn't work - this was one of the last westerns made). For a better example, check out Majanna. So why 3 stars? Well, it is a strangely haunting film. Maybe it;'s the cinemaphotography, or Tomas Milian's over-the-top performance as Chaco (the DVD features a great interview with him and Fabio Testi), or even the out-of-place 70s style soundtrack. Or maybe it's a combination of all the above (and the gore, of course). But be warned. If you like your spaghettis fast and furious, stay away.

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This is an apocolpyse??
I think Fulci put that in the title (or however it translates to in Italian) to capitalize on his yet as unrealized desire to create superb horror. Westerns were not his forte' There is some violence, but it goes out of it's way to be gratuitous. There is an annoying song that is used throughout half of the movie. There is a kickass villian who sould've gotten more screen time. And there is loads of Fulcian nilhism that both the story and this view could've done without.