everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This spaghetti western might have been the germ of inspiration for the movie "Four of the Apocalypse", which came out five years after this one. (Though both movies only have a few minor similarities in the end.) Anyway, while "Apocalypse" has in recent years been rediscovered and acclaimed, this one has mostly been forgotten. To a degree, this is understandable. As others here have pointed out, the movie is quite slow, not only taking a very long time to set up the plot and characters, but also that the last third of the movie drags at times. Strangely, even though the movie doesn't have all that much plot elements, not only are most of the members of "the unholy four" not fleshed out well, there's at least one plot thread that's unresolved at the end. But despite the sluggish pace, the movie does have its share of rewards. While there isn't a terrible amount of action, what there is (ranging from gun fights to fist fights) actually packs some punch, thanks to the skillful direction and editing. The musical score, while a little repetitive, is upbeat and pleasing to the ears. And while the movie is often slow and uneventful, it's a credit to the filmmakers that all the same things never get downright boring. While the movie isn't really all that memorable - I'm sure I'll eventually forget everything I saw in it - it does manage to engage and entertain the viewer while he or she watches it.

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.

Amnesiac Leonard Mann escapes from a sanitarium with fellow inmates Woody Strode, George Eastman, and Peter Martell. The four make their way to a town where Mann's father and angry brother are feuding with vicious rivals that try to use him and his state of amnesia for their own benefit.This re-teaming of Mann and Martell (after The Forgotten Pistolero) has an intriguing premise and a slew of familiar faces, but takes way too much time for things to heat up. Everyone involved has definitely done better.That being said, this isn't bad. The four leads have great chemistry and keep things fairly interesting. The direction by E.B. Clutcher (best known for They Call Me Trinity and it's sequel) is adequate enough and the final thirty minutes fairly good.The actress that plays Mann's love interest here, previously played his mother!

Django aka Ciakmull in the original (played by Leonard Mann) escapes from a lunatic asylum where he stayed because he had lost his memory. He does not even remember who his father is. Thus handicapped, it takes him quite some time until he realizes who the bad guys are that he must fight. Unfortunately, the happy music by Riz Ortolani is totally out of place for a darker type of western, the story gives away too much too early and the action is sometimes poorly directed. Example: the torture scene with Woody Strode. Never seen somebody starting to talk so quickly! But this was the debut of director Enzo Barboni who went on to much better things! And I don't want to say "Ciakmull" is a bad movie - it is simply a bit disappointing that it achieved only 80 per cent of what it could have.