In 1873, vigilantes decide it’s time to clean up Salt Flat, Utah. They don masks and gun down the town’s troublemakers, all with the sheriff’s blessing.

But four outcasts slip away in a buckboard by bribing that same sheriff. They include a gambler named Stubby Preston (Fabio Testi), a pregnant prostitute named Bunny O’Neill (Lynne Frederick), a drunk named Clem and a half-mad black man named Bud.

Then the four become five as they cross paths with Chaco (Tomas Millan), a Mexican bandit who promises they’ll have a piece of meat every day because he’s such a good shot.

His boast proves true. He proves pretty good at gunning down posses members too. Then comes the night he gets the travelers high on peyote.

Once they’re incapacitated, he has them tied up with Clem’s help. He rapes Bunny in front of Stubby, believing they’re married. He shoots Clem in the knee. Then he rides off in the buckboard, leaving them to die.

They survive the ordeal, but making it back to civilization will be more difficult.

Bud loses touch with reality. Clem’s wound fails to heal. Bunny struggles with her pregnancy.

As for Stubby, he’s fallen for Bunny, and figures he has a score to settle if he ever finds Chaco again.

Fabio Testi as Stubby Preston, a down-on-his-luck gambler planning his next score in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Lynne Frederick as Emmanuelle “Bunny” O’Neil, the pregant whore kicked out of town in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Review:

Worth a watch as a well-done, serious Spaghetti at a time when most Westerns were looking for laughs. Just beware that it’s a bleak film, remembered mostly for its violence.

There are redemptive moments. You’ll find yourself rooting for Bunny. You’ll find yourself rooting for Stubby to show her the love she craves.

Lynne Frederick might be the most innocent looking whore to ever grace a Spaghetti. And Testi comes off as far less wooden than in the better-known “China 9, Liberty 37.”

But they’re traveling through an inhospitable West and accompanied by pure evil in the form of Tomas Milian’s Chaco, who shows up with a black cross drawn under each eye.

He delivers most of the violence. at one point skinning a posse member alive, then killing him by stabbing a lawman’s badge into his heart.

But some of the gore comes off as overkill. And to say the film’s score doesn’t match the mood of the film is an understatement.

Michael J. Pollard as Clem, realizing the evil in Chaco in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Harry Baird as Bud, the man who speaks to the dead in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

Cast:
Fabio Testi … Stubby Preston
Lynne Frederick … Emanuelle “Bunny” O’Neill
Michael J. Pollard … Clem
Harry Baird … Bud
Tomas Milian … Chaco
Adolfo Lastretti … The Rev. Sullivan
Bruno Corazzari … Lemmy
Giorgio Trestini … Saul
Donald O’Brien … Sheriff

Runtime: 104 min.

aka
I quattro dell’apocalisse
Four Gunmen of the Apocalypse
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
The Four of the Apocalypse

Score: Franco Bixio,Fabio Frittz, Vince Tempera
Songs: “Movin’ On,” “Bunny (Let’s Stay Together),” “Was It All in Vain,” “Let Us Pray,” “Stubby” — sung by The Cook and Benjamin Franklin Group

Tomas Milian as Chaco, making plans for Bunny while he’s got her and her fellow travellers tied up in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Donald O’Brien as the sheriff of Salt Flats in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Memorable lines:

Clem: “Indians?”
Stubby Preston: “We’ll know if they scalp us.”
Bunny O’Neill: “I don’t want to die, Stubby.”
Stubby: “Neither do I, Bunny, if that’s any consolation to you.”

Rev. Sullivan: “I don’t know how much you know about that card shark husband of yours, but he once beat me out of all of my investments and the building I was using as a church.”
Stubby: “Great game. One of my best.”
Sullivan: “You were helped by the devil. I know Satan’s work when I see it.”
Stubby: “Those were four aces, reverend. No devils. Four little aces.”

Stubby: “Reverend, what are we going to do? I don’t know a damn thing about babies. I never even seen a kid being born.”
Rev. Sullivan: “We’ll have to leave it in the hands of God.”
Stubby: “What the hell does God have to do with babies being born?”

Saul to Montana, after he warns a fellow outlaw to assist with Bunny’s birth: “Never seen you so queasy about a human life when it was at the end of your gun.”
Montana: “They were leaving. He’s just getting here, Saul.”

Lemmy: “Two or three got prices on their heads. Me, I’m wanted for whatever comes after bigamy. Trigamy. Can’t anyone be stupider than to marry three women at the same time.”

Adolfo Lastretti as The Rev. Sullivan, who comes to the aid of Stubby and Bunny in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Bruno Corazzari as Lemmy, the man who delivers Bunny’s baby in Four of the Apocalypse (1975)

Trivia

* Lynne Frederick was most famous as the fourth wife of Peter Sellers, whom she married in 1977 when she was 22 and he was in his 50s. She married again six months after his death, but inherited nearly his entire estate. She died in 1994, at age 39, from the effects of alcoholism and substance abuse.

* Harry Baird was born in British Guyana and appeared in four Spaghetti films. “Those Dirty Dogs” (1973) was another. Around the same time, he was diagnosed with glaucoma, which forced him to retire from acting.

* At the opening of the film, the narrator tells us we’re in Salt Flat, Utah, 1873. But, later, when the quartet winds up in a ghost town, Bud reads the date 1884 on a grave marker.

* Best known for his gory horror films, Fulci directed two other Spaghettis — “The Brute and the Beast” (1966) and “Silver Saddle” (1978) — among his 60-plus movies.