Bet that title caught your eye! So, when I was a teenager, back in the 80's, my mother decided to rent this movie from the video store. She had probably THE worst luck ever when it came to picking out movies! She would read the back of the VHS boxes and if it sounded good then she'd rent it. I sat through more awful movies back then than probably at any other point in my life, but Treasure of the Four Crowns HAS to be the most memorable of all the terrible movies that my mother had the ill fortune of having rented. Needless to say, after a good while my mother started telling ME to pick out the movies instead, since I actually had good luck when it came to that kind of thing. For instance, I picked out Conan the Barbarian, Highlander, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Beastmaster and other awesome movies! And we would have a great time watching those. If Treasure of the Four Crowns is memorable to me today, it is for all the wrong reasons. It was, without a doubt, one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my entire life. Given I will be fifty this coming March, I've seen a LOT of movies in my lifetime too. Here begins my honest review of this movie, if one can all it a movie at all. At any rate...
It stars a man named Tony Anthony and boy did we have fun making fun of THAT back in the day given it's just basically the same name twice. It's like someone being named Steve Stephens, it just begs to be made fun of! Tony plays what can be best summed up as a sort of poor man's Indiana Jones. Pretty much everything that is cool about Indy... this guy is lacking ALL of that. He looks like someone's dad... if their dad was a deadbeat who skipped out in order to search for treasure in weird places. Which is where this movie begins! He is in what I swear must have been someone's basement made to appear like a castle dungeon or something, looking for treasure. He ends up encountering "walking" skeletons who are just being pulled about on strings, like pretty much anything else animate in this movie except for the people. Now THAT would have made things better! Pulling Tony's character about on strings for our entertainment. Sadly, this movie never gets that fun. He ends up diving out of the place, and the next thing we know we're in some guy's office who is telling him the legend of the Four Crowns and why they must never fall into the hands of evildoers. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Not the boring way this guy explains it! Also... the fourth crown was destroyed when some morons tried to open it way, way back in history. But we are meant to assume even three crowns are dangerous! So, our heroes, such as they are, have one of them... they open it, and all is cool. Stuff gets thrown around, on strings of course, and it's supposed to be creepy but totally isn't. The last two crowns are being held by a religious cult leader who is into the occult, and Tony is called upon to steal them back from him. He assembles a team of incompetent fools that are like the idiot's version of the Suicide Squad. Which includes, of all things, a retired clown with a heart condition and his hot daughter who (of course!) is an acrobat. What else would a movie circus do with a hot looking woman? Never mind what I would do with her! But I digress... the Circus Squad decides to infiltrate the bad guy's castle and there we learn he is actually a charlatan faith healer who seems to have zero interest in actually using the crowns for anything. I kid you not! They could have left him with the crowns and the world would be safe... he rants like a madman, but Brother Evil really just likes to put on silly faith healing routines for kicks. One can only assume, he only founded a cult to get chicks, and the exchange between him and a phony "possessed" woman shows he's a total con artist. The clown has a heart attack, as anyone with a brain could see coming, and the rest of the Circus Squad bites the dust pretty hard and pretty fast. I cheered at their deaths! Am I evil? Yes, but that is totally beside the point. Tony and the hot babe survive, of course, and Tony gets the last two crowns and decides to go nuts with them and kill every living thing in sight. He turns into what I can only describe as low budget Two Face from Batman crossed with Linda Blair's character from the Exorcist when get got possessed. Somehow, this sounds cooler than it actually looks! It's dorky, just like Tony's entire performance in this movie. I blame the writers, if they even had writers as such! I swear, this movie's script had to have been written by political prisoners held at gunpoint and told to come up with something on the fly... it's that insane and wacky. Like someone was just making all this up as they went along. So, Two Face demonic Tony suddenly has flamethrowers up his sleeves, and he uses them to blast the cultists into running away because they were too cheap to film their gruesome deaths... but they DID film the cult leader's death and it is silly. They appear to have just taken a max mockup of his face with a fake looking skull under it and melted it with ketchup squirting out of it here and there. With fire behind it, to make us think that his face is being melted by the flames Tony is shooting like some crazy arsonist from heck. The cult leader's bones fall to the floor, and Tony has to stop himself from killing the hot babe because yeah... he's possessed... and the cavalry comes to save the day and presumably arrest the remaining cultists whose only crime as far as I can see is that they were running a fake faith healing act. Good one Tony! All for two crowns that the bad guys had no use for. Tony gets the girl, and we hear the cult leader's voice as we get a dumb closeup on his skeleton. Next thing we know, we see a swamp and a... thing... rises up out of it, and out of the thing pops a snake head. Weirdest sequel tease ever! Zero context, zero explanation, and zero point. In my head canon I like to think the snake was the Devil who was just mad because he couldn't possess Tony and drive him to become the world's ugliest arsonist. And... that's the movie!
One of my cousins did not believe us when my mother and I told her how bad this movie was... so my grandmother had her watch it. After that, my grandmother said that if any of the kids in the family did not behave... they'd be forced to watch Treasure of the Four Crowns as punishment. Forget about spankings or being sent to your room... or being grounded for a week... THIS is truly an inhuman punishment! They could easily use this movie as a form of torture in Gitmo, that is how bad it truly, and most definitely, is. Well, that and the theme from Barney the purple dinosaur. If that combination doesn't get someone to crack, then nothing will! Wanna know the sad part? I HAVE seen worse movies than Treasure of the Four Crowns... but for the sake of human sanity, I will refrain from mentioning them here. Ta for now!
It stars a man named Tony Anthony and boy did we have fun making fun of THAT back in the day given it's just basically the same name twice. It's like someone being named Steve Stephens, it just begs to be made fun of! Tony plays what can be best summed up as a sort of poor man's Indiana Jones. Pretty much everything that is cool about Indy... this guy is lacking ALL of that. He looks like someone's dad... if their dad was a deadbeat who skipped out in order to search for treasure in weird places. Which is where this movie begins! He is in what I swear must have been someone's basement made to appear like a castle dungeon or something, looking for treasure. He ends up encountering "walking" skeletons who are just being pulled about on strings, like pretty much anything else animate in this movie except for the people. Now THAT would have made things better! Pulling Tony's character about on strings for our entertainment. Sadly, this movie never gets that fun. He ends up diving out of the place, and the next thing we know we're in some guy's office who is telling him the legend of the Four Crowns and why they must never fall into the hands of evildoers. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Not the boring way this guy explains it! Also... the fourth crown was destroyed when some morons tried to open it way, way back in history. But we are meant to assume even three crowns are dangerous! So, our heroes, such as they are, have one of them... they open it, and all is cool. Stuff gets thrown around, on strings of course, and it's supposed to be creepy but totally isn't. The last two crowns are being held by a religious cult leader who is into the occult, and Tony is called upon to steal them back from him. He assembles a team of incompetent fools that are like the idiot's version of the Suicide Squad. Which includes, of all things, a retired clown with a heart condition and his hot daughter who (of course!) is an acrobat. What else would a movie circus do with a hot looking woman? Never mind what I would do with her! But I digress... the Circus Squad decides to infiltrate the bad guy's castle and there we learn he is actually a charlatan faith healer who seems to have zero interest in actually using the crowns for anything. I kid you not! They could have left him with the crowns and the world would be safe... he rants like a madman, but Brother Evil really just likes to put on silly faith healing routines for kicks. One can only assume, he only founded a cult to get chicks, and the exchange between him and a phony "possessed" woman shows he's a total con artist. The clown has a heart attack, as anyone with a brain could see coming, and the rest of the Circus Squad bites the dust pretty hard and pretty fast. I cheered at their deaths! Am I evil? Yes, but that is totally beside the point. Tony and the hot babe survive, of course, and Tony gets the last two crowns and decides to go nuts with them and kill every living thing in sight. He turns into what I can only describe as low budget Two Face from Batman crossed with Linda Blair's character from the Exorcist when get got possessed. Somehow, this sounds cooler than it actually looks! It's dorky, just like Tony's entire performance in this movie. I blame the writers, if they even had writers as such! I swear, this movie's script had to have been written by political prisoners held at gunpoint and told to come up with something on the fly... it's that insane and wacky. Like someone was just making all this up as they went along. So, Two Face demonic Tony suddenly has flamethrowers up his sleeves, and he uses them to blast the cultists into running away because they were too cheap to film their gruesome deaths... but they DID film the cult leader's death and it is silly. They appear to have just taken a max mockup of his face with a fake looking skull under it and melted it with ketchup squirting out of it here and there. With fire behind it, to make us think that his face is being melted by the flames Tony is shooting like some crazy arsonist from heck. The cult leader's bones fall to the floor, and Tony has to stop himself from killing the hot babe because yeah... he's possessed... and the cavalry comes to save the day and presumably arrest the remaining cultists whose only crime as far as I can see is that they were running a fake faith healing act. Good one Tony! All for two crowns that the bad guys had no use for. Tony gets the girl, and we hear the cult leader's voice as we get a dumb closeup on his skeleton. Next thing we know, we see a swamp and a... thing... rises up out of it, and out of the thing pops a snake head. Weirdest sequel tease ever! Zero context, zero explanation, and zero point. In my head canon I like to think the snake was the Devil who was just mad because he couldn't possess Tony and drive him to become the world's ugliest arsonist. And... that's the movie!
One of my cousins did not believe us when my mother and I told her how bad this movie was... so my grandmother had her watch it. After that, my grandmother said that if any of the kids in the family did not behave... they'd be forced to watch Treasure of the Four Crowns as punishment. Forget about spankings or being sent to your room... or being grounded for a week... THIS is truly an inhuman punishment! They could easily use this movie as a form of torture in Gitmo, that is how bad it truly, and most definitely, is. Well, that and the theme from Barney the purple dinosaur. If that combination doesn't get someone to crack, then nothing will! Wanna know the sad part? I HAVE seen worse movies than Treasure of the Four Crowns... but for the sake of human sanity, I will refrain from mentioning them here. Ta for now!