The vast majority of these 600 features were routine or worse, and most Americans are familiar only with Sergio Leone's great contributions to the genre (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, etc.) and maybe a few of the other best examples (Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence and Django, Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown, Tonino Valerii's My Name Is Nobody, etc.).

But the genre's fans are continually finding great or at least quite interesting diamonds in this rough. The French-made Cemetery Without Crosses is one example, and thanks to everything that's great about the Blu-ray format, interested parties can now enjoy the wonderful Winnetou series made in, of all places, Yugoslavia by West German filmmakers.

The Unholy Four ( Ciakmull - L'uomo della vendetta, or "Ciakmull, Man of Revenge," 1970) doesn't live up to the promise of its early scenes and its English-language title does it a disservice, suggesting a different movie altogether. It has much to recommend it, however, and the HD transfer on this Kino release is nothing short of outstanding, especially good news as the picture's cinematography is its greatest asset.

Bank robbers create a diversion by setting fire to what apparently is a prison for the criminally insane. This isn't entirely clear, however, as the film's protagonist, Chuck Mool (Leonard Mann) suffers from amnesia but any crime that might have brought him there is never mentioned. Further, credibility is stretched by the wisdom of placing such a facility smack-dab in the center of a bustling frontier town.

In any case, Mool and three others - towering Woody (Woody Strode), his companion, Silver (Peter Martell), and gambler Hondo (George Eastman) - manage to elude the frenzy of prison guards, bank robbers, and bounty hunters during the confusion and aftermath.

Mool and the others head to his hometown, Oxaca, searching for answers to his identity, soon learning of his reputation as a crack gunfighter. There, the foursome discover of a clan feud between John/Joe Caldwell (Helmuth Schneider) and his son, Alan (Alain Naya) with Udo (Giuseppe Lauricella), father of the leader of the bank robbers.

The English title is misleading, suggesting the kind of story where the four escaped inmates will wreak unholy havoc, either committing unspeakable acts of vengeance themselves, or perhaps form an alliance against the bank robbers, neither of which quite materializes. Moll only wants to learn the truth about his identity, while the others basically just want out of prison, and none is particularly violent or recognizably crazy.

Instead, the picture resembles another recent Kino Blu-ray release, The Man Called Noon (1973), a much superior Euro-Western with almost an identical set-up. I was intrigued by The Unholy Four mainly by the presence of actor Woody Strode, and perhaps unfairly hoped this might be something along the lines of Richard Brooks's great Western The Professionals (1966), which prominently featured Strode, one of the all-time great African-American screen heroes.

However, in The Unholy Four, Strode's part is relatively minor, and like all of the characters except Mool, sketchy at best, with Woody a pious Christian who in one interesting scene wanders into a church, sings and plays hymns on its pipe organ. There are the vaguest of hints of a homosexual relationship between Woody and Silver, based mainly on their reactions toward one another during the final shootout, but that might not have been the filmmakers' intention.

The project was intended for director Fernando Baldi, but Enzo Barboni, a cinematographer making his directorial debut, replaced him. Undoubtedly Barboni influenced Unholy Four's look, which is especially vivid in the picture's night-for-night scenes, generally are ablaze in primary color. Barboni also experiments in terms of the cutting of the film, which is interesting but not distracting, and predicts his editing of They Call Me Trinity and Trinity Is STILL My Name!, the movies for which he is most remembered.

The score, with its too-often-repeated motif for the foursome, was by Riz Ortolani (Mondo Cane, Day of Anger). It's distinctive and pleasingly breaks from the glut of Ennio Morricone imitators, though it does sound hurriedly orchestrated.

Video & Audio

Licensed from Euro London Films, The Unholy Four is presented in its original 1.85:1 widescreen format at 1080p and looks fabulous, among the very best Italian Westerns on Blu-ray to date. The transfer utilizes Italian opening and end titles, and is offered in both its English-dubbed version (featuring Strode's own voice) and in Italian with optional English subtitles. The mono DTS-HD Master audio on those is good as well, but it's the extremely clarity of the image and trueness of its color that most impresses. Region A. No Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Not a lost classic but a most welcome release nonetheless, The Unholy Four looks great and is Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian largely absent from reviewing these days while he restores a 200-year-old Japanese farmhouse.