Four of the Apocalypse (1975) Directed by Lucio Fulci
The last thing you’d expect from a dour cynic like Lucio Fulci – who throughout his career has been accused of being a misogynist and nihilist – is a film that belies that controversial profile, or that impugns his notoriously iconic reputation as Italy’s most pessimistic exploitation filmmaker, but here we are, beholding the only one of his films that sublimates his caustic attitude towards life with a musically anachronistic blood-stained odyssey across the American frontier that manifests beatific hope in its seamy throes of violence by placing its faith – religious ecstasy – in four petty criminals. Fate unites the hapless paths of a shrewd gambler (Fabio Testi), a pregnant prostitute (Lynne Frederick), a death-obsessed black man (Harry Baird) and an incurable drunkard (Michael J. Pollard) as they traverse the lawless, inhospitable lands of the Old West, encountering first the heavenly generosity of the Quakers and then the infernal menace of Chaco (Tomas Milian), a brutish, amoral ruffian. Fulci channels Ford’s Stagecoach by depicting the motley crew of flawed personalities working collectively to surmount the tribulations of the ominous journey; the payoff is western Nirvana spaghetti-style. Just when all comes to desolation and apocalypse, Fulci pulls off his grandest humanistic masterstroke by offering redemption to his wretched characters in the shape of a newborn baby, allegorizing new life, new light, a new beginning. Lynne Frederick with her gentle poignancy leaves you heartbroken, Fabio Testi with his understated humanity leaves you heartsick, and Fulci with his self-reforming optimism leaves you moved to tears. Harsh but courageous form of mysticism, and a peerless masterpiece of Italian genre moviemaking.