J.T. Striker (Tony Anthony) is an adventurer / fortune hunter hired by his associates Edmond (Gene Quintano) and Professor Montgomery (Francisco Villena) to get his hands on the legendary Four Crowns, which when obtained can make a person all powerful. This he has to do because diabolical religious cult leader Brother Jonas (Emiliano Redondo) is using them to control his mindless flock. To accomplish his task, J.T. gathers together a bunch of his old friends: the weary old Socrates (Francisco Rabal), the drunken Rick (Jerry Lazarus), and the super sexy Liz (Ana Obregon).
You know you're in trouble when the opening "Star Wars" style crawl is sorely lacking in any sort of punctuation. This basically amiable movie, rushed into production in order to cash in on the success of the previous Cannon Group 3-D feature, "Comin' at Ya!", is entertaining in spurts. Its extreme crudeness and cheesiness (one can clearly see the strings that are manipulating objects) could have been forgiven if only the movie had more energy. It moves along much too slowly, and there's overkill in terms of exposition. The acting from most of the cast is pretty bland. The filmmakers thrust as many objects into the camera as they can.
Helping to uplift "Treasure of the Four Crowns" (starting with that title, it's all too obvious which hit movie was a big influence on this one) to a degree are its WTF moments, its admittedly amusing opening set piece that goes on for over 20 minutes without dialogue, its absolutely priceless climax, and a wonderful, stirring Ennio Morricone music score that truly deserved a better movie.
This just isn't as much fun as this viewer would have liked.
Five out of 10.
You know you're in trouble when the opening "Star Wars" style crawl is sorely lacking in any sort of punctuation. This basically amiable movie, rushed into production in order to cash in on the success of the previous Cannon Group 3-D feature, "Comin' at Ya!", is entertaining in spurts. Its extreme crudeness and cheesiness (one can clearly see the strings that are manipulating objects) could have been forgiven if only the movie had more energy. It moves along much too slowly, and there's overkill in terms of exposition. The acting from most of the cast is pretty bland. The filmmakers thrust as many objects into the camera as they can.
Helping to uplift "Treasure of the Four Crowns" (starting with that title, it's all too obvious which hit movie was a big influence on this one) to a degree are its WTF moments, its admittedly amusing opening set piece that goes on for over 20 minutes without dialogue, its absolutely priceless climax, and a wonderful, stirring Ennio Morricone music score that truly deserved a better movie.
This just isn't as much fun as this viewer would have liked.
Five out of 10.