Ciakmull, le bâtard de Dodge City

A band of tough gunslingers carry out a diversionary heavy fire set-up in a State Mental Prison as part of their scheme to rob a gold shipment in a bank of Dodge City . Meanwhile , four convicts escape together from a madhouse , these are the followings inmates : One of them is a young called Chuck Mool played by Leonard Mann , Woody Strode as Woody , Pietro Martellanza (as Peter Martell) as Silver and George Eastman (as Luca Montefiori and screenwriter , though uncredited) as Hondo . One of the escaped reveals his name , Chuck Mool , ¨a man without past¨ , as he hasn't records . Without memory , he gone back from a dark past and the three other convicts with reputation for being fast-guns help him to getaway and to find back bits of his existence . As the gang being pursued and chased by a sheriff (Enzo Fiermonte) and bounty hunters , they are detained but they get escaped . Later on , some tracks lead them in a small town that turns out to be the Chuck Mool's hometown , a location dominated by violent gangs and nasty gunfighters . In that place there are dangerous bands and two warring families led by Udo family and Joe Caldwell (Helmuth Schneider) family and their sons and hoodlums . Chuck is reintroduced to his family but things go wrong . There he learns that has been paid to avenge against nasty villainous , as he has to kill a wealthy owner , but then to be aware he results to be his father .

This exciting Spaghetti contains noisy action , thrills , riding pursuits , shootouts , brawls at saloon in Hill/Spencer style , and turns out to be a passable Western and entertaining enough . There is a breathtaking final showdown between the protagonist , his friends and their enemies , as well as a dramatic result when things come to a tragic denouement . The picture is starred by Leonard Mann as the young man who has lost his memory , an amnesiac who hopes to find out who he is and where he comes from . Mann is good in his usual two-fisted role , he starred two classy Pasta western : ¨Gunmen of Ave Maria¨ and ¨Vengeance Is a Dish Eaten Cold¨. Other colleagues who escaped from prison are the followings convicts : George Eastman or Luigi Montefiori as his partner . Luigi starred as an extra but Italian westerns soon followed , usually under the pseudonym "George Eastman" . He once reportedly missed out on a role in a Franco Nero western because his height made Franco Nero look too short . As he performed several Pasta Westerns , such as : ¨Django Taciturno¨, "Django Sees Red" , ¨Keoma¨ , "Humpty Dumpty Gang" , "The Unholy Four" , and "The Three Musketeers of the West". Never quite "typed" , Luigi played some of them as main actor , others as secondary player . Soon moved into other film genres playing good guys , bad guys, and good-bad guys . These parts often exploited his athletic physique by having him remove his shirt, perhaps most memorably in Lina Wertmüller's Belle Starr (1968) . And the American Woody Strode who starred the John Ford classic , ¨Sergeant Rutledge¨ , and other Spaghettis as ¨Boot Hill¨ , ¨Shalako¨ , ¨The deserter¨ , ¨Keoma¨, among others . And Peter Martell who starred a lot of Spaghetti , such as : ¨Two Brothers, One Death¨ , ¨Two crosses in Condor Pass¨ , ¨Long day of massacre¨ , "His Name Was Pot... But They Called Him Allegria" and ¨Forgotten Pistolero" along with Leonard Mann . Charismatic acting for the whole support cast . Secondary cast is plenty of familiar faces from Spaghetti Western , such as : Luciano Rossi , Enzo Fiermonte , Remo De Angelis, Roberto Del'Aqua , Romano Puppo and the beautiful Evelyn Stewart or Ida Galli .

Emotive as well as thrilling musical score by Riz Ortalani , this soundtrack is one of the best parts of the film , plenty of catching and attractive sounds , including an attractive leitmotif . Colorful and evocative cinematography by Mario Montuori . The motion picture was well directed by Barboni . Barboni was a good professional , a nice craftsman who directed various films of all kinds of genres . He began working as a prestigious cameraman who turned to filmmaking and creating the super hit ¨Tritiny is my name¨ , following ¨Trinity is still my name¨ and a third sequel : The troublemakers¨ , besides other Terence Hill , Bud Spencer vehicles .

Wow! I wasn't expecting much from this little known movie. I think it comparable to any of the spaghetti westerns and I must have watched nearly all of them now. After breaking out from a lunatic asylum 4 inmates band together. Chuck Mool has no recollection of his past prior to the asylum and the rest follow him on his quest to discover his true identity. Things don't go smoothly for the foursome but their friendship is strong. Excellent characters and acting, great story..but I don't want to give away the ending.

The script for this revenge western manages to avoid most pitfalls that threaten most run of the mill productions of the genre. The story of four men, escaped from a lunatic asylum, helping a friend of theirs to revenge himself on the man who almost killed him gives room to the usual nonsensical duels and shootouts. It is here, however, that truly inspired camerawork leaves us breathless. The antics of the four men bring a healthy dose of humor and diversity to the script and director Enzo Carboni knows how to bring out their different characters. As is often the case, an American actor is hired to make the film more attractive for the US market. Gun for hire this time around is Woody Strode, who visibly has a lot of fun playing the simple but loyal brute. A hugely enjoyable spaghetti western, then, from the man who brought us the Trinity films starring Terence Hill.

Enzo Barboni (as E. B. Clutcher no less) was catapulted to fame and the top of the Italian box office (which he wrested away from Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars) that same year with the first Trinity film. That Trinity is a household classic of sorts across Europe, most people have seen it growing up in a Sunday afternoon TV showing, while The Unholy Four is obscure even by spaghetti standards, says a lot not about the quality of either movie, because both are well made, both tap into different parts of a western mythos for inspiration (the land, the people, the violence) while essentially they speak about very Italian things, things that Italian movie-going audiences can connect in a very immediate sense because a wild barroom fistfight is a fistfight in any language and unshaven people wolf down a pot of beans the same way in Naples and Texas; no, the different status says more about the different pulls within the spaghetti western genre by the crucial turning point of 1970 and the western paying audiences validated with their ticket money. On one hand the silly slapstick farce that kicks down the mythic a peg or two for good measure, on the other hand something a little more ambitious..

That's not to say The Unholy Four poses grand moral dilemmas, it don't, and the emphasis is once again on ostentatious cameras gliding around set pieces of frontier violence, on fistfights energetically filmed, on the ugly and the grotesque, the funny and picaresque, poking fun at coward priests and incompetent bank guards alike (again things the Italians had a soft spot for). But at some point amnesiac Leonard Mann (playing Chuck Moll or Django depending on the print you see) is taken in as the lost son by the bitter enemy of his father and turned loose against him, he's introduced to his love interest who thought him long dead as her brother and can't remember a thing anymore than she's allowed to remind him, so there's something burning there that remains unrequited and there's a breakdown in communication that is very literal yet still terrifying. And then his real father takes him in as his real son, long presumed dead, and turns him against his bitter enemy, and he acquiesces to that too, who probably couldn't tell the difference between the real or fake fathers so that he becomes, not just a pawn at some trivial game of vendetta that will be forgotten by all the moment they all hit the ground, but a ghost of his real self exiled from the world because he can't tell real from imagined, right from wrong, so there's no place for him there. And then the movie twists again to reveal his true identity, after a long shootout in a dusty town that seems like the same set used in movies like Keoma, filmed with rapid cuts and long tracking shots around alcoves and across balconies and great in-depth staging; while one reloads his pistol in the frontground, another one is getting shot through the floor in the background.

The movie never really establishes itself as a "thinking man's western", but at the same time there's something that hints at deeper meaningful things here. Enzo Barboni was probably not the man to bring them to the surface, like most Italians genre directors he never *really* cared to probe deep at identity themes, but this needs to be seen by more people.

After a jaunty, upbeat credits sequence, we cut straight to a bunch of bad guys who think it's a good idea to set fire to the local loony bin in order to cause a distraction while they rip off one hundred grand. Four of these lunatics escape: religious maniac Woody Strode, card shark George Eastman, some knife guy, and a guy called Chuck who has no memory of who he is or where he comes from.

These four immediately head for the hills, which is just as well, because the locals are more concerned that they have escaped and less concerned with the missing money. So while the robbers are double crossed and some young upstart takes all the money, a bunch of bounty hunters stalk our four guys through the woods. Eventually some sort of plot starts to form itself, and it isn't centred around Woody Strode's organ playing and holy rolling.

Turns out the town they all end up in has two opposing factions in it (as usual), and Chuck may have belonged to one of them. The bad faction however, once they discover that Chuck ain't got no memory, decide to convince him that they are his family and that it might be a good idea to go kill the head of the other faction – his own father!

This film jumps crazily from subtle humour (usually involving Woody Strode or George Eastman), a wee bit of slapstick, and violent showdowns to the extent that most of the cast are dead by the end. There's also the young bad guy who puts the moves on his own sister that adds to the schizophrenic atmosphere. The showdown at the end is pretty good and you get a sense of the companionship that grows between the four lunatics. George Eastman, as usual, looks like he's having a lot of fun.

That'll do.