Oh sweet irony, thy name be "Treasure of the Four Crowns"
This movie revolved its entire promotional campaign on the unique selling proposition of 3-D effects, but it's this exact same gimmick that continuously muddles up the pacing and negatively affects the script's coherence. Instead of dedicating all their time and efforts to searching for as many 3-D possibilities as humanly possible, the makers should have focused on their narrative structure and continuity a little more. It sounds like a rookie mistake, but in fact director Ferdinando Baldi and co-writer/main star Tony Anthony should have known better. The duo previously made the underrated but splendid spaghetti western "Blindman", and that movie strangely enough revolved entirely on detailed character drawings and story building instead of on effects. I haven't had the pleasure (?) yet of seeing their other 3-D film, the oddly titled western "Comin' At Ya!", but I fear it'll be as bad as this one, judging by the rating and user comments. As you can undoubtedly derive from the title and cover image, "Treasure of the Four Crowns" is another Italian attempt to cash in on the huge success of early 80's adventure movies, more particularly the Steven Spielberg classic "Raiders of the Lost Ark". You know the principle of these Italian rip offs: everything has to be a lot more grotesque! Tony Anthony pretends to be a genuine Indiana Jones and the adventurous opening sequence lasts at least three times as long as the intro of "Raiders". Anthony plays J.T. Stryker, a professional adventurer hired to recover two out of four magical crowns from the malicious hands of the occult sect leader Brother Jones. According to the assignor, these Crowns hold the power to solve all the earthly issues like war, poverty, famine etc
only it's never really explained HOW. The evil Jones keeps the crowns in a hi-tech secured temple with laser alarm systems and deadly booby traps, so Stryker and his team of hired circus artists spend the majority of the film climbing walls and hurling on ceilings. There's plenty of action & stunts in the film, but it quickly gets really boring because it's always the same. Of course, it didn't help that wasn't wearing my 3-D goggles, but still, even then the action sequences would rapidly get repetitive. The last half hour is utterly atrocious and full of twists & turns that don't make the slightest bit of sense. Heroic characters die in the most ridiculous ways imaginable, faces get deformed and go back to normal and the fate of the titular crowns is inconclusive. The only truly great element is, as usual, Ennio Morricone's music.
Browsing through IMDb, I learned that director Baldi passed away very recently; on the 12th of November 2007. I wished I could have written better things about his movie, but it's simply not very good. Personally, I'll remember him for the aforementioned western "Blindman".
Browsing through IMDb, I learned that director Baldi passed away very recently; on the 12th of November 2007. I wished I could have written better things about his movie, but it's simply not very good. Personally, I'll remember him for the aforementioned western "Blindman".