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Four of the Apocalypse
Four of the Apocalypse is perhaps the tenderest western I have ever seen (and yes, I’ve seen John Ford’s My Darling Clementine). The stupefying element to this assertion is that it is directed by Lucio Fulci, the Italian splatter king who specialized in movies featuring eye-gouging and exploding heads. This film was made in 1975, four years before Fulci became notorious for the blood-soaked Zombi 2, so I suppose we should assume that this was an exploration of his canvas, before he allowed himself to get pigeonholed. While I’ve come to embrace Fulci on his own terms as a great filmmaker (House by the Cemetery and The Beyond were both surreal masterpieces of terrifying images and moods), to watch his work here is to appreciated a strong talent for telling deeply moving, human stories—something he clearly lost in his later, neogothic works. Sans a few particularly violent episodes (and they’re surprisingly brief), this is a script that the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks could have directed, and I can’t image them doing a better job with the material than Fulci (albeit with very different approaches). Not to say that this isn’t foremost a Fulci film. It certainly is—his visual characteristics are present immediately, from the very first frame. Among the Italian horror directors of his era, he was unsurpassed at conveying sadness and doom by simply zooming across a desolate environment and allowing the surrounded characters to look engulfed and helpless within its bleak landscape. Instead of a zombie apocalypse or a gateway into hell, however, Fucli achieves the same effect by first resting the camera on a muddy, rainy town in the Old West, and then following his characters as they continue throughout an environment that will take them through the desert, the prairies, snowy mountains, and, eventually, back to the mud and muck. The film’s title is cleverly vague, in that it first seems to suggest that these four perpetuate apocalypse, when really they are only its observers. Also per usual, Fulci isn’t particularly interested in plot. His film concerns four exiles—a compulsive card shark (Fabio Testi), a pregnant prostitute (the beautiful Lynne Frederick), a crazed ex-slave (Harry Baird), and an inebriant (Michael J. Pollard)—who must band together after they find themselves the only survivors of a raid on a town in which they are imprisoned. (There is a brilliantly macabre scene at the beginning where the town is being shot to pieces, while the four prisoners remain hidden inside the jail and the sheriff silently looks on at them, calmly eating his meal and listening to the carnage outside.) The film is episodic, and many scenes are isolated islands, as the travelers meet various characters and find themselves in assorted predicaments, some good (a band of missionaries take them in and show an ample amount of Christian charity), some quite disturbing (a Mexican bandit—played effectively by Thomas Milian—at one point joins their pack, with disastrous results). The script is based on the writings of the great Bret Harte, and though it’s not particularly faithful to the source material, it plays like a series of short stories rather than a full-length motion picture, glued together by the developing relationship between the four outcasts. The character development is crucial, and it is the most joyfully distracting non-Fulci element on display. This is a far cry from the zombie fodder of later Fulci works: One of the aspects of Fulci’s horror canon that I have come to admire is that there is no depravity so unthinkable to him that he wouldn’t have it happen to his characters, which keeps us perpetually gripped with fear. Remember the terrifying sequence in City of the Living Dead in which a man tries to break a woman out of a coffin with a pickax and nearly impales her? That scene worked because neither characters nor good taste matter to Fulci, so the “rescue” could feasibly end in either the woman’s salvation or her gory death. We must brace ourselves for either. But a funny thing happened while I watched Four of the Apocalypse: For the first time in a film under Fulci’s direction, I found myself giving a damn about his characters and expecting the best for them. They are interesting and noble, capable of both cruelty and warmth, and they eventually cast their lot with the latter. Gory scenes infrequently creep up (financers in the Italian schlock market basically required them), and, because this is a Western, characters ultimately choose revenge over compassion. But in this case, the violence serves to confirm the persevering human spirit, and the revenge is born not from cruelty, but out of sincere justice. The film chiefly concerns the card shark’s journey as chief caregiver of this troupe, as he makes the transition from egotistical creep to a surprisingly kind and decent fellow. Fulci’s theme isn’t unlike Gavin Hood’s Tsosti, in which a South African thug gradually changes when an infant is thrust unexpectedly into his care; in this case, we have three adults incapable of surviving without the card shark’s ingenuity. Kindness, even when it is reluctant, is the greatest perpetuator of positive change, and Fulci wisely tells the film through the card shark’s eyes, so that by the time central characters die, we have experienced the tenderness through which their leader now sees them, and we are sincerely moved. There is a death scene near the end that we instinctually know is too conventional and predictable to work, yet Fulci gives us interactions between these characters that are so simple and true that its formulaic distraction dissolves. The scene seems less inevitable and more surprisingly heartbreaking, because we have come to admire the dying character so much. Fulci has always specialized in mood over narrative; he prefers archetypal storylines that allow audiences to fill in narrative gaps, and this allows him space to explore the atmosphere and emotions of his worlds. To appreciate the greatness of Four of the Apocalypse, it is best to let the characters’ dialogue inform you of plot developments and, in the meantime, to simply soak in the mood that the director creates. Along with his longtime cinematographer Sergio Salvati, Fulci provides an environment that is among the most haunting of all spaghetti westerns—certainly on par with the gothic works of Sergio Corbucci (Django, The Great Silence) and comparable to Leone’s paragons. He masterfully gives the familiar spaghetti western locations (where Corbucci, Leone, and the rest all shot their films) a unique and ghostly quality: Consider the passage in which two characters affectionately wonder where another character, who is probably watching them, hides. Fulci places the two travelers in the middle of a muddy street and shoots them through various windows, holes, and cracks all over town, turning the entire landscape into their benevolent watcher’s eyes. It is effective craftsmanship and, considering the context of the scene, hauntingly poignant. It’s really quite stunning how Fulci is able to create such a convincing universe through simple techniques, on what is obviously a shoestring budget. Observe the four protagonists’ journeys through the desert, the mud, the rain, and consider how little of this world we actually see (Fulci likes his zoom shots) versus how wide and expansive it seems due to the little details that the film creates. I particularly admired the ex-slave’s constant, quiet singing of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and how his soothing, baritone voice calmly saturates scenes that seemingly require a more traditional soundtrack. Watch the sequence in which the card shark stumbles upon the source of their food, and think about how offensively exploitive this scene could have played if Fulci had cued the typical reaction music (high, jolting strings) instead of the ex-slave’s distant echoes. The quiet, simple song echoes throughout the chasms of the film; it generates a quietly stirring energy that turns even the schlockiest plot twists into poetic meditations. The characters’ journey through the Old West countryside eventually leads them to a snowy, all-male colony on top of a mountain. The film’s final act occupies this place, and it is perhaps the greatest use of winter locales I have seen since Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Fulci composes these scenes by combining extreme shots detailing the icy desolation with close-ups that betray the weathered faces of its inhabitants. Everyone moves in slow motion, and even eye movement seems to take a wearisome act of will. Within this icy plain, the film’s saddest, most heartfelt sequence takes place, and the chilling landscape almost single-handedly informs this moment and provides its motivation. Even the most barren of men can be moved to compassion when a person in need is the only warmth emitting from their surroundings. I have already mentioned that this is a very episodic film; if this act in the snow was a single short and Fulci’s only directing credit, it would still be enough to herald him as a great filmmaker. He sounds inimitable notes here that he has never sung before, and his visual storytelling is nothing short of triumphant. The film is admittedly not perfect, mostly due to the Grindhouse requirements under which Fulci generally worked. Because this is Italian exploitation cinema, there are a few unnecessary scenes of gore, and one (brief) rape sequence. Notably, these scenes were originally cut from the film, though the U.S. DVD, released by Anchor Bay, has unwisely restored them (albeit in their original Italian language, as they were never dubbed in English), perhaps because its distributors know that anyone who purchases a film by Lucio Fulci expects such nonsense. One such restored scene involving the bandit Chaco renders the following scene, in which the characters accept a hallucinogen from him, completely absurd—why would they make themselves so vulnerable after they have just witnessed him sadistically torturing someone to death? But these exploitive moments are succinct; the film’s violence is generally on par with any number of Ford-era westerns, and Fulci cushions most if it with rich irony—I’ve already mentioned the sheriff stuffing his face as a lynch mob outside paints the town red; I also enjoyed the way the card shark treats himself to a much-needed shave as he implements his final act of justice. It should also be noted that the best thing I can say about the soundtrack, a kitschy rip-off of Bob Dylan’s work on Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, is that it is better than the music for Keoma. But then, so are most things. But perhaps these exploitation origins, and the flaws that come with them, ultimately reveal why Four of the Apocalypse is a great western. It is the story of told with warmth and beauty, about four strangers forced into episodes that eventually make them closer than lovers. These friends fight to survive in their hostile environments—both the Old West and the Grindhouse—and we watch their struggle as it eventually leads to great moments of tenderness and kindness that never strike a false or insincere note. Even as Fulci’s inevitable doom falls into place around them, even as his mood points only to hopelessness, here are convincing and compelling characters struggling in the right direction and eventually overcoming their violent and depraved instincts. If only we could say the same of Fulci himself. Cast: Anchor Bay presents a film by Coralta Cinematografica. Directed by Lucio Fulci. Written by Ennio De Concini. Based on stories by Bret Harte. No M.P.A.A. rating, but contains strong, stylized violence, drug-use, and sexuality/nudity. Running time: 104 minutes. Original year of release: 1975. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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