Four people and a monster. In the town of Flat Salars, somewhere in the dead ass of the Wild West, a charming crook Stubby Preston arrives and immediately falls into the hospitable embrace of the local sheriff, who locks the hapless hunter for luck in the lockup. There are already cooling three other “lucky”: charming prostitute Emmanuel O’Neill nicknamed Zaika, bitter drunk Clem and crazy black gravedigger Bud, confident that he talks with the souls of the dead.
At night, respectable citizens decide to cleanse their favorite Saltchaks from the strapped criminal element, for which they put on hoods and arrange a grandiose massacre, making no difference between a murderer and a card cheater. Our heroes are saved only by the fact that at the time of the massacre they were in prison.
In the morning, the sheriff drives all four out of town, generously providing them with a horse cart. After consulting, the whole company decides to rush to some town as far as possible from the Flat Salars, and the journey goes more or less safely until the fifth – the mysterious Mexican Chaco – is nailed to them. Since then, their journeys have become hell.
"Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" noticeably knocked out of the rest of the work of Maestro Fulci, who first of all became famous for bloody horror films about zombies, maniacs and supernatural phenomena with a strong shade of sura. In addition to the Horsemen, he shot two more traditional westerns - "The Colt Sang about Death" and "Silver Saddle" - high-quality, good-quality, but quite stereotypical samples of "spaghetti" (the westerns of Fulci are sometimes conditionally attributed to his famous dilogy "White Fang", shot in about the same spirit). “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” is unlike any of these films: it is leisurely, almost meditative, it has very little traditional for the genre of dashing shootouts and heroism. All the positive heroes are formally the scum of society, although in fact they are just people with great weaknesses, but still retaining a human face even in the face of the most cruel adversity, a kind of “golden mean” that lies between the “Good” in the face of ruthless saints from the Flat Salars on the one hand, and the “absolute Evil” in the face of the thug Chaco on the other. Empathy for these young people who managed to preserve humanity in a world riddled with cruelty, madness, suffering and grief is the main humanistic message of the film.
At the same time, the old man Fulci also did not forget about the signature bloody urine, as well as the surreal atmosphere, due to which the adventures of the heroes resemble wanderings in the circles of Hell. Nevertheless, there are enough bright moments in the picture, in which people reveal their best side. All this is perfectly filmed and played, annoying Fulchiva tricks like obsessive close-ups of the eyes and false look of gouryatina are completely absent. In short, almost a masterpiece, which is not without reason included in the list of favorite paintings of Quentin our Tarantino.
10 out of 10