DAGON (Spain - 2001; US release 2002) Directed by Stuart Gordon. Written by Dennis Paoli. Cast: Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal, Raquel Merono, Macarena Gomez, Uxia Blanco, Brendan Price, Birgit Bofarull, Ferran Lahoz, Joan Minguell, Alfredo Villa, Jose Lifante, Javier Sandoval, Victor Barreira. (R, 98 mins)
Going back to his days as the founder of the Organic Theater Company in Chicago in the late 1960s, Stuart Gordon has always been a versatile director of stage and screen. But it's his association with the works of H.P. Lovecraft that have cemented his place in horror film history. Beginning in 1985 with the Empire Pictures cult classic RE-ANIMATOR, Gordon, along with screenwriter Dennis Paoli, and (with one exception) producer Brian Yuzna, created a quartet of Lovecraft adaptations that, while not completely faithful to the source, nevertheless generated a renewed interest in the influential horror writer whose work was never really discovered until after his death in 1937. Gordon's Lovecraft projects updated the settings and were very much the works of their maker, but RE-ANIMATOR and 1986's FROM BEYOND managed to brilliantly convey the essence of Lovecraft in spite of the liberties taken. Gordon moved away from Lovecraft for a number of years, directing 1987's DOLLS and a pair of sci-fi films with 1990's ROBOT JOX and 1993's FORTRESS, in addition to scripting Abel Ferrara's 1993 sci-fi/horror outing BODY SNATCHERS. He probably got his biggest commercial payday by creating, with Yuzna and their DOLLS screenwriter Ed Naha, the storyline behind the 1989 Disney hit HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS. Their script (originally titled TEENY WEENIES) was ultimately rewritten by Naha and Tom Schulman (DEAD POETS SOCIETY), and Gordon was replaced as director by Joe Johnston, but his "story by" credit remained and the film spawned two sequels, a TV spinoff, and a Disney theme park attraction.
Empire eventually folded by the end of the 1980s and was more or less reborn as Charles Band's Full Moon Productions, whose signature franchise remains the PUPPET MASTER series. Gordon and Paoli collaborated on Full Moon's 1991 Poesploitation entry THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM and would eventually revisit the Lovecraft universe for Full Moon with 1995's CASTLE FREAK (based on the short story "The Outsider"), which also reunited RE-ANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Yuzna, meanwhile, directed the 1989 cult classic SOCIETY and kept the RE-ANIMATOR series going on his own by directing 1990's BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR and, much later, 2003's BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR. He also helmed 1991's SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 4: INITIATION and 1993's RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3, along with a pair of Corbin Bernsen video store staples with 1996's THE DENTIST, co-written by Gordon, and its 1998 sequel THE DENTIST 2. By 2000, Yuzna set up shop in Barcelona, working with Spanish producer Julio Fernandez's company Filmax, creating a horror-focused subsidiary division called Fantastic Factory. Yuzna reconnected with Gordon and Paoli and Fernandez agreed to produce DAGON, the last (so far) of Gordon's Lovecraft feature film adaptations.
Based only partly on "Dagon" and more on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," DAGON opens with young stock market wunderkind and Miskatonic University grad Paul Marsh (Ezra Godden) and his girlfriend Barbara (Raquel Merono) on a yacht with his business partner Howard (Brendan Price) and his wife Vicki (Birgit Bofarull). A powerful storm brews and the boat crashes into some rocks, sinking off off the coast of the nearly abandoned fishing village Imboca. Paul and Barbara make it to the shore and get help from a strange priest (Ferran Lahoz) with webbed fingers, who has two hooded men take Paul to what's left of the yacht. Howard and Vicki have disappeared, and when he returns to the village, Barbara is missing as well. The priest puts him up in a decrepit, filthy hotel where the desk clerk (Jose Lifante) has visible gills. The Imbocan villagers begin pursuing Paul through the hotel and the town, and he finds an unlikely ally in elderly vagrant Ezequiel (veteran character actor Francisco Rabal in one of his final films; he died before it was released). Ezequiel tells Paul of the dark secret of Imboca: it was once a poor Christian village ("Imboca" meaning "town of God") during his childhood until evil Capt. Camborra (Alfredo Villa) brought a curse on the residents, swaying them to worship "the great god Dagon," convincing them to turn their backs on Christianity and in exchange, Imboca prospered with an endless supply of fish and the discovery of gold in the surrounding sea. But the riches have a price, and Imbocans must pay in the form of blood sacrifices to Dagon, a hideous monster whose forced couplings with Imbocan women propagates a species that's half-human and half-sea creature.
Francisco Rabal (1926-2001)
There's a twist in the tale that comes much later, and it's not exactly stealthily foreshadowed by Paul's recurring dreams--even before the yacht sinks--of being underwater and seduced by a mermaid (Macarena Gomez) who turns into a monster or a strange formation of birthmarks visible around his ribcage ("Your dreams brought you here...every dream is a wish," he's told). After a slow build, DAGON has moments that are quite terrifying, especially in the way the relentless Imbocans never stop pursuing Paul no matter how fast he runs or how desperately he tries to hide. They're deformed but look mostly human, and move like aquatic beasts on land, shambling and slithering about in the background. Paul's tentative friendship with Ezequiel, who will eventually sacrifice himself in an attempt to save Paul, provides some legitimate emotion, especially in an unexpectedly moving scene where the Dagon-worshipping Imbocans are torturing the frail Ezequiel by skinning him alive as he defiantly shouts Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd...") in Spanish and is soon joined in English by Paul. Setting aside some CGI that's primitive in that distinctly "early 2000s" sort-of-way, Rabal is simultaneously the best and most problematic aspect of DAGON. Gordon gives reams of vital exposition to the actor, but a combination of the character being barely literate and Rabal's English being largely garbled and unintelligible is frustrating if you don't turn on the subtitles. At the same time, Rabal makes Ezequiel such a terrific character that, for a while, he becomes the heart and soul of DAGON, which helps make the Psalm 23 scene so powerful. The film closes with a heartfelt dedication to Rabal, "a wonderful actor and an even better human being."
DAGON went straight-to-video in the US in 2002, shortly before Gordon briefly reinvented himself as a bit of an indie auteur with 2004's bizarre oddity KING OF THE ANTS and 2006's EDMOND, a collaboration with David Mamet. Now 70, Gordon's last film to date is 2008's excellent black comedy STUCK, with white trash nurse Mena Suvari plowing into homeless Stephen Rea and promptly driving home and parking in her garage...with Rea still stuck in the windshield and bleeding out. Gordon did revisit Lovecraft once more, with DAGON star Godden, a British actor who briefly became the director's go-to Jeffrey Combs-alike, for "Dreams in the Witch-House" a 2005 episode of the Showtime series MASTERS OF HORROR. Just out on Blu-ray from Lionsgate's "Vestron Collector's Series," even though Vestron Video was long gone by 2002 (I guess it's "Vestron" in spirit), DAGON isn't the best of Gordon's Lovecraft works (that would be RE-ANIMATOR), but it's perhaps the most effective at capturing the vividly unique, nightmarish quality of Lovecraft's writing.
THE WITCHES (Italy/France - 1967; US release 1969) Directed by Luchino Visconti, Mauro Bolognini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Rossi and Vittorio De Sica. Written by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi, Cesare Zavattini, Age-Scarpelli, Bernardino Zapponi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fabio Capri and Enzo Muzzi. Cast: Silvana Mangano, Clint Eastwood, Alberto Sordi, Toto, Annie Girardot, Francisco Rabal, Massimo Girotti, Ninetto Davoli, Veronique Vendell, Elsa Albani, Leslie French, Clara Calamai, Marilu Tolo, Dino Mele, Helmut Berger, Laura Betti. (Unrated, 111 mins; US version 104 mins)
Whether it was horror films like TALES OF TERROR, BLACK SABBATH, and DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS or international non-horror offerings like BOCCACCIO '70, YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW, WOMAN TIMES SEVEN, and SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, anthology films were popular box office draws throughout the 1960s. The concept was enthusiastically embraced by Italian and French directors, and these projects would often be a summit of legendary filmmaking talent: BOCCACCIO '70 featured segments from Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, and Mario Monicelli, ROGOPAG assembled Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and relative historical footnote Ugo Gregoretti, while SPIRITS OF THE DEAD drew Fellini, Louis Malle, and Roger Vadim. De Sica was a particular fan of the format, directing all three segments of the Oscar-winning YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW and all seven stories in the Shirley MacLaine-starring WOMAN TIMES SEVEN. Along with Visconti, Pasolini, Mauro Bolognini, and Franco Rossi, De Sica was also involved in the five-part anthology THE WITCHES, a Dino De Laurentiis production designed as a showcase for his wife, Italian actress Silvana Mangano. Making her mark when she was just 19 years old in Giuseppe De Santis' 1949 neo-realist classic BITTER RICE, Mangano was one of Italy's busiest actresses throughout the '50s and '60s, but she never broke out into international stardom like perceived rival Sophia Loren, the wife of Carlo Ponti, another big-time Italian mogul. Mangano starred in major Italian productions like 1959's TEMPEST and 1961's BARABBAS, but despite being married to one of the biggest producers in the world, she never appeared in a Hollywood movie until she emerged from a decade-long retirement in 1984 to play Reverend Mother Ramallo in David Lynch's DUNE.
THE WITCHES gives Mangano plenty of opportunities to show her range but ultimately, it's a disastrous vanity project with very little to recommend it, with the segments ranging from tolerable at best to excruciating endurance tests at worst. Visconti directs the first segment, "The Witch Burned Alive," a shrill and grating look at the trials and tribulations of stardom with Mangano as Gloria, a famous actress attending the ten-year anniversary party of her friend Valeria (Annie Girardot) and her philandering husband Paolo (Francisco Rabal). She gets drunk as the other partygoers revel in her embarrassing predicament, removing her makeup and some of her clothing while she's passed out and when she comes to, she's nearly seduced by Paolo before getting into an argument with her agent on the phone. Taking up an unacceptably indulgent 40 minutes (Visconti clashed with De Laurentiis over the segment and wanted to expand it to feature length), "The Witch Burned Alive" might be trying to say something about the sycophancy of fandom and the eagerness to take down celebrities, and as such, it's a potentially interesting precursor to the era of message boards and social media, but the execution is just painful. Bolognini directs the second segment, "Civic Spirit," with Mangano stuck in a traffic jam because of a car crash and offering to take the injured and profusely bleeding accident victim (Alberto Sordi) to the hospital. She passes several hospitals and clinics along the way and ultimately drops him off in the middle of the street when she arrives at her destination, having simply used him as an excuse to get where she was going a little quicker. The segment runs just five minutes and feels like a half-baked SNL skit, but it's amusing in a CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM sort of way, reminiscent of the episode where Larry picks up a prostitute in order to have the bare minimum number of passengers in his car to use the faster-moving carpool lane.
Even worse than Visconti's segment is Pasolini's "The Earth Seen From the Moon," with Mangano as a green-haired, deaf-mute beauty named Absurdity who becomes the object of affection for widower Ciancicato Miao (beloved Italian comic Toto in a Larry Fine wig/bald cap combo) and his orange-pompadoured son Baciu (Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli). Ciancicato and Absurdity eventually marry and he carries her off to his shack in the dilapidated shantytown he calls home. Pasolini seems to be going for a garish Fellini vibe here, but there's also a pronounced element of slapstick, with some sped-up Benny Hill-type running, the generally clownish performances and endless, shameless mugging of Toto and Davoli, along with a framed portrait of Chaplin that foreshadows Davoli's homage to the Little Tramp in Pasolini's 1972 film THE CANTERBURY TALES. Regardless of the intent, "The Earth Seen From the Moon" is Pasolini at his most insufferably self-indulgent. Things pick up with Rossi's "The Sicilian Belle," where Mangano has her heart broken, setting off a chain reaction of escalating revenge and shotgun deaths in her small village. It's basically a bunch of guys getting blown away, but like Bolognini's story, it benefits from running around five minutes, thus rendering it incapable of wearing out its welcome.
THE WITCHES was shot in late 1965 and early 1966 but wasn't released in Italy until 1967, and it would be another two years before it was picked up by United Artists, dubbed in English, and relegated to their short-lived foreign acquisition division Lopert for a very brief NYC run in the spring of 1969. It was quickly withdrawn and didn't resurface until 1979, when UA included the shortened English-dubbed version (104 minutes compared to the 111-minute European cut) in a late-night TV syndication package, but even then, it wasn't in regular rotation and remained extremely difficult to see. The only reason THE WITCHES is ever mentioned today is thanks to the unlikely appearance of Clint Eastwood in the final segment, the De Sica-directed "An Evening Like the Others." Eastwood is Carlo ("Charlie" in the US version), the buttoned-down, conservative bank executive husband of Mangano's bored housewife Giovanna. He's preoccupied with work and doesn't pay attention to her like he once did, and would rather stay in and go to sleep than take her to a movie. Giovanna drifts into Fellini-esque fantasy worlds where she's desired by other men and makes Carlo pay for not appreciating her. In the fantasy side of the segment, she ultimately leads a mob of men to a massive arena in Rome, where she does a striptease to emasculate a hapless Carlo. Other than the novelty of seeing Eastwood in such an unusual setting in the most obscure film of his career, the closing segment is another dud. Mangano is fine, but broad comedy is not Eastwood's specialty and he appears to be in physical pain stuck in a suit and black-rimmed reading glasses that serve as an unintentional early look at one of his FIREFOX disguises. Eastwood, who was paid $20,000 with a Ferrari thrown in, shot his segment in between FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. At this time, he was a major star in Europe, but when THE WITCHES was filmed, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was still over a year away from its belated 1967 US release. Eastwood was still a relative nobody stateside, best known as a TV star thanks to his time on RAWHIDE, which was cancelled in 1965. In Italy, however, he was already an established pop culture phenomenon, with De Sica poking fun at his "Man With No Name" image by having Carlo in gunslinger garb in one of Giovanna's fantasies and then sighing in disinterest at the meta notion of taking Giovanna to see A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.
Silvana Mangano (1930-1989)
Over 1967 and 1968, United Artists distributed all three of Eastwood's Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns in the States, as well as HANG 'EM HIGH, his American debut as a lead on the big screen. All were smash hits, and as a result, UA effectively (and understandably) buried THE WITCHES despite showing Eastwood in a cowboy hat on the US poster art. Eastwood doesn't even appear until around 80 minutes in, but as bad as this is is, at least the final segment serves as required viewing for Clint completists. Just out on Blu-ray from Arrow Video's "Arrow Academy" prestige line (with both the Italian-language European cut and the English-dubbed US version), THE WITCHES flopped hard in Italy, but that didn't deter De Laurentiis from producing another Mangano-focused anthology film--with returning directors Bolognini and Pasolini, and cast members Toto and Davoli joined by Italian comics Franco and Ciccio--with 1968's CAPRICCIO ALL'ITALIANA, which was an even bigger box office bomb, and without a Clint Eastwood onboard, was never even released in America. THE WITCHES and CAPRICCIO ALL'ITALIANA failed to make Mangano the international star that Sophia Loren was, and the colossal failure of both films effectively ended her career as a leading lady. Mangano stayed busy in supporting roles in Visconti's DEATH IN VENICE, LUDWIG, and CONVERSATION PIECE, but after ending her acting sabbatical with DUNE, she only appeared in one more film, the 1987 Marcello Mastroianni drama DARK EYES. She and De Laurentiis divorced in 1988 after he became involved with longtime producing partner Martha Schumacher (FIRESTARTER, CAT'S EYE, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE). The grandmother of popular celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis, Mangano was only 59 when she died of lung cancer in 1989, an iconic figure in Italian cinema who just never managed to find success outside of her homeland like the Sophia Lorens, the Gina Lollobrigidas, or the Claudia Cardinales of her day.
COUNSELOR AT CRIME aka THE COUNSELLOR (Spain/Italy - 1973; US release 1975) Directed by Alberto De Martino. Written by Adriano Bolzoni, Vincenzo Flamini (Vincenzo Mannino), Leonardo Martin and Alberto De Martino. Cast: Martin Balsam, Tomas Milian, Francisco Rabal, John Anderson, Dagmar Lassander, Carlo Tamberlani, Manuel Zarzo, Eduardo Fajardo, George Rigaud, Franco Angrisano, Giovanni Carbone, Fortunato Arena, Carla Mancini, Lorenzo Piani, Sacheen Littlefeather, Nello Pazzafini. (R, 102 mins) While most films in the polziotteschi subgenre of politically-charged Italian crime movies of the 1970s took place in Rome, Naples, and Sicily, COUNSELOR AT CRIME is a bit of an outlier in that it's set almost entirely in America. Journeyman director and co-writer Alberto De Martino (whose later credits included the EXORCIST ripoff THE ANTICHRIST, the OMEN ripoff HOLOCAUST 2000, and the MST3K favorite THE PUMAMAN) fashions COUNSELOR as a pretty blatant, albeit contemporary GODFATHER knockoff. Shot largely in San Francisco and Albuquerque in January and February of 1973, COUNSELOR AT CRIME (or, as it was known in Italy, IL CONSIGLIORI) hits everything on the GODFATHER checklist: Sonny-at-the-causeway-like ambushes; a treacherous, Sollozzo-like troublemaker trying to make a name for himself by eliminating a powerful Don; an unexpected sojourn to Sicily when things get too hot at home in the States; and someone is even handed the severed head of a fish, a clever way to knock two things off the checklist by combining "sleeps with the fishes" with the horse's head in the movie mogul's bed. IL CONSIGLIORI was released in Europe in the summer of 1973 but didn't make its way to the US until 1975, when low-grade exploitation outfit Joseph Green Pictures picked it up and retitled it COUNSELOR AT CRIME. It's a largely by-the-numbers gangster picture that goes out of its way to look as American as possible, spotlighting the San Francisco locations where De Martino valiantly attempts to keep the Golden Gate Bridge visible as often as possible (there's even a sequence taking place at the same exit ramp where a pimp is killed in the same year's Dirty Harry movie MAGNUM FORCE), with Riz Ortolani's score having a definite "'70s cop show" sound to it when the composer isn't straight-up borrowing a key theme from his VALACHI PAPERS score from the previous year.
A low-level, syphilitic gangster loses his shit in a bowling alley, setting in motion a chain of events that sees underboss Garofalo (played by a backup Michael Ansara toupee planted on the head of Francisco Rabal) make a ballsy power play to take over the San Francisco organization ruled by Don Antonio Magadino (Martin Balsam). Magadino's mind is elsewhere since his godson and consigliere Thomas Accardo (Tomas Milian) is being paroled after serving a stretch for jury tampering in Santa Fe State Prison in New Mexico, the same joint that houses incarcerated Boss of Bosses Don Vito Albanese (American character actor John Anderson, dubbed by Robert Spafford). Accardo is welcomed back to the organization by Don Antonio, who raised him as his own son after he was orphaned as a child (a character trait in no way influenced by Robert Duvall's Tom Hagen in THE GODFATHER), but Accardo has other plans. He continued his legal studies while in prison, and fell in love with Laura Murchison (Dagmar Lassander), a professor at the University of New Mexico. He wants to leave the Family, marry Laura, and live a normal life away from the Mafia. Don Antonio grants him his wish, despite the ironclad rule that no one leaves, which enrages Garofalo, who then plots to whack Accardo so he doesn't talk, and Don Antonio over his flagrant disregard of their sacred Mafia oath.
COUNSELOR AT CRIME offers one bit of interesting trivia that tangentially connects it to THE GODFATHER: it's one of the very few movie appearances of Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather, best known for taking the stage at the 1973 Oscars to refuse Marlon Brando's GODFATHER Oscar for him, and seen here in a brief bit as a hooker. Beyond that, it also offers one of the most low-key performances of Milian's career, a real surprise considering his string of flamboyantly over-the-top psycho characters in Umberto Lenzi classics like ALMOST HUMAN (1974) and ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH (1976). Rabal is dubbed by the gruff Ed Mannix but definitely looks the part as the arrogant, untrustworthy Garofalo, and Balsam is a solid pro as the stern and paternal Don Antonio, and while he may not ooze the charismatic charm of Brando's Vito Corleone, it's superb casting, and De Martino even lets him take part in some action sequences and shootouts. Balsam was in the early years of a relentlessly busy decade that found the Oscar-winning actor (1965's A THOUSAND CLOWNS) alternating between supporting roles in A-list Hollywood projects (SUMMER WISHES WINTER DREAMS, THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN) and starring roles in Italian crime films (CONFESSIONS OF A POLICE CAPTAIN, CHRONICLE OF A HOMICIDE, MEET HIM AND DIE, DEATH RAGE), and his presence here definitely helps sell the idea of making it look like an American gangster movie, and he fares much better than the miscast Anderson, whose two scenes were actually shot inside Santa Fe State Prison, complete with several inmates in the chow line turning to look straight into the camera.
It's a mostly routine post-GODFATHER mob movie until a surprisingly strong finale where both Balsam and Milian really get to show some chops without saying much at all. And it's in the finale where COUNSELOR AT CRIME makes its only real attempt to branch off from THE GODFATHER with the notion that it's not the aging mob bosses who hand off the power to the next generation, but rather, it's the older generation that's still around to pick up the pieces when their dealings and grudges end up sacrificing that next, doomed generation. It's an interesting perspective that should've been explored in a more in-depth fashion by the script, which was written by De Martino with three other writers (including frequent collaborator Vincenzo Mannino) before being translated into English and reworked by an uncredited Michael V. Gazzo, the raspy-voiced playwright and sometime actor who would get an Oscar nomination for his performance as bitter mob informant Frankie Pentangeli in 1974's THE GODFATHER PART II.
TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS (US/Spain - 1983) Directed by Ferdinando Baldi. Written by Lloyd Battista, Jim Bryce, and Jerry Lazarus. Cast: Tony Anthony, Ana Obregon, Gene Quintano, Jerry Lazarus, Francisco Rabal, Emiliano Redondo, Francisco Villena, Lewis Gordon. (PG, 101 mins)
When 1983's TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS aired on The Movie Channel's JOE BOB'S DRIVE IN-THEATER back in the late '80s, host Joe Bob Briggs remarked that it was "the first hit in a series of one" for producer/star Tony Anthony. A funny line, yes, but not exactly true. Though he enjoyed some minor success and his COMIN' AT YA! was a surprise hit in 1981, he is, for the most part, an almost completely-forgotten C-lister as far as mainstream audiences are concerned. But the long, strange journey of Tony Anthony is the kind of oddball story that should be made into a movie. He wanted to run his career his own way, and like most independent-minded mavericks, his career achievements, such as they were, came about from ingenuity, perseverance, salesmanship, and having some good friends in unexpected places.
Anthony was born Roger Anthony Pettito in West Virginia in 1937. He broke into movies with his buddy Saul Swimmer (1936-2007) with their 1961 Miami-shot indie FORCE OF IMPULSE. Anthony and Swimmer wrote the script, Swimmer directed, and Anthony co-starred with a decidedly odd cast that featured Robert Alda, J. Carrol Naish, and jazz great Lionel Hampton. Anthony played a poor high-school student trying to woo a rich girl, so he robs his father's grocery store with tragic results. FORCE OF IMPULSE was barely released and probably hasn't been seen in decades, but Anthony and Swimmer kept at it with the 1962 circus drama WITHOUT EACH OTHER. Anthony and Swimmer briefly went their own ways, with Anthony going to Europe and finding work in some Italian films and Swimmer heading to London. As the spaghetti western genre exploded following 1964's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, which wasn't released in the US until 1967, producers were scrambling to find the next Clint Eastwood, and Anthony would soon parlay what little notoriety he had into a series of "Man with No Name" knockoffs as "The Stranger." A STRANGER IN TOWN (1967), THE STRANGER RETURNS (1967), and THE SILENT STRANGER (shot in 1968, shelved until 1975) has varying degrees of success in America and Anthony took on more creative control as the series went on. Swimmer, meanwhile, directed the 1968 Herman's Hermits movie MRS. BROWN, YOU'VE GOT A LOVELY DAUGHTER and, through his friendship with Abkco Records chief and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein, would eventually be part of the Beatles' inner circle once Klein took over managing the band after Brian Epstein's death in 1967. Swimmer co-produced the Beatles' 1970 documentary LET IT BE and would later direct George Harrison's THE CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH (1972). Anthony would eventually be pulled into the Beatles' orbit via his old friend Swimmer, and the pair wrote the post-EASY RIDER road movie COME TOGETHER (1971), starring Anthony, directed by Swimmer and produced by the pair with Ringo Starr. Starr and Anthony hit it off, and after COME TOGETHER, Starr co-starred in Anthony's next film, 1971's BLINDMAN, co-produced by Klein and directed by Italian journeyman Ferdinando Baldi. Due mostly to the novelty of seeing a former Beatle playing a bad guy in a spaghetti western, BLINDMAN was, to that point, Anthony's most significant success with American audiences. In 1972, he starred in the Italian gangster film 1931: ONCE UPON A TIME IN NEW YORK, unfortunately retitled PETE, PEARL AND THE POLE for its US release, one of the last titles handled by National General Pictures. In 1975, he and Baldi made GET MEAN, the fourth and final "Stranger" outing. Anthony appeared in just 12 films from 1961 to 1975, and other than BLINDMAN and whatever cult status his spaghetti obscurities have, his career appeared stalled and he didn't even pursue hired-gun acting gigs.
Anthony had other things in mind and it would be six years before the world heard from him again. Teaming with American producers Gene Quintano and Marshall Lupo, Anthony formed a new production company and found his true calling: he was bringing 3-D back in a big way. The process had been used only sparingly since its flash-in-the-pan craze from 1953 to 1954. Anthony recruited his BLINDMAN and GET MEAN director Baldi for COMIN' AT YA!, a violent, R-rated, 3-D spaghetti western throwback that became a sleeper hit for Filmways in 1981. Anthony and his collaborators had one goal: throw everything at the screen. Audiences loved it, though obviously because of the novelty of 3-D rather than the inanities of Anthony's script. COMIN' AT YA! was enough of a success that the same creative personnel--Anthony, Quintano, Lupo, and Baldi--moved on to their next 3-D outing, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, a modernized but still quite blatant ripoff of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Anthony and Quintano conceived the story, which was scripted by frequent Anthony collaborator Lloyd Battista, Jim Bryce, and co-star Jerry Lazarus. Shot in Spain with American and Spanish actors and an Italian crew, with music by none other than Ennio Morricone, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS was acquired by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus and released by Cannon in US theaters on January 21, 1983. By this time, the second big 3-D craze was underway with the previous year's FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 and PARASITE, and, later in 1983, films like JAWS 3-D, AMITYVILLE 3-D, METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN, and SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. Additionally, 3-D classics from the first wave like 1953's HOUSE OF WAX and 1954's DIAL M FOR MURDER were given nationwide re-releases to capitalize on the trend. To the surprise of no one, the fad fizzled as quickly as it did 30 years earlier, but the renewed enthusiasm, however brief, can largely be credited to Tony Anthony and COMIN' AT YA!
While today's digital 3-D primarily adds depth, texture, and detail, the old-school 3-D films were about having things pop out of the screen, and few understood this as well as Tony Anthony. After an opening crawl in no way inspired by STAR WARS, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS commences with a 20-minute prologue as soldier-of-fortune J.T. Striker (Anthony, of course) searches for a hidden key inside a haunted castle. Over the course of those 20 minutes, Baldi and Anthony throw bats, buzzards, snakes, dogs, glass, spears, ropes, arrows, swords, cigarettes, and fireballs at the viewer. Anthony does everything short of unzipping his fly and showing the goods in his non-stop quest to just constantly dangle things in the audience's face. Virtually every scene--even boring exposition--features awkwardly-staged shots of people just sticking things in front of the camera. Usually, you can clearly see the strings pulling the items. Audiences ate it up, and while FOUR CROWNS is a sentimental favorite to those of a certain age thanks to it seemingly being aired on a constant loop on cable in the '80s, it really doesn't play well flat. Time and again, things come to a dead halt when an actor has to stop the flow of a scene to hold something--a pen, a piece of paper, a key--in front of the camera for an absurd amount of time. And the story is utter nonsense: Striker is hired by an aging professor (Francisco Villena) and money man Ed (Quintano, a terrible actor) to seek out the remaining two of four mystical, supernatural crowns with otherworldly powers. Striker assembles his team: Ed, "90 proof courage" alcoholic Rick (Lazarus), and father-daughter acrobatic pair Socrates (Francisco Rabal) and Liz (Ana Obregon) to infiltrate the impenetrable fortress of crazed cult leader Brother Jonas (Emiliano Redondo), who has the Crowns hidden in a booby-trapped lair inside.
While its set-up owes pretty much everything to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, right down to Striker being chased by a boulder, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS becomes more of a goofy heist movie. And it's never goofier than in the bonkers climax, which makes the whole tedious affair worthwhile. Striker finds the remaining two Crowns and the jewels inside cause him to be possessed by an otherworldly entitiy. His head spins around EXORCIST-style and his face mutates before he starts wiping out Jonas' army of followers by shooting fire from his hands. That's capped off by a nonsensical appearance by a disgusting lizard creature that seemingly there to set up a sequel that we're still waiting to see.
Sweating profusely throughout and looking like Christopher Hitchens with a bad case of heartburn, Anthony has absolutely no charisma and zero screen presence, making you appreciate Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones, David Warbeck in some of Antonio Margheriti's Italian RAIDERS knockoffs, and Richard Chamberlain's affable Allan Quatermain in Cannon's KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1985) even more. Anthony had his biggest box office hits with COMIN' AT YA and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, and that must've made him happy: after his triumphant turn as J.T. Striker, Anthony retired from acting and shows no signs of making a comeback. He continued producing movies with Quintano, like 1990's HONEYMOON ACADEMY and the popular 1998 TNT western DOLLAR FOR THE DEAD. Anthony also co-produced the Zalman King late-night cable favorite WILD ORCHID (1990), while Quintano went on to write the aforementioned KING SOLOMON'S MINES, as well as POLICE ACADEMY 3: BACK IN TRAINING (1985) and POLICE ACADEMY 4: CITIZENS ON PATROL (1987), and direct the instantly forgotten Christophers Lambert & Lloyd heist comedy WHY ME? (1990) and NATIONAL LAMPOON'S LOADED WEAPON 1 (1993).
Tony Anthony doing a Q&A
at a 2012 screening of
COMIN' AT YA!
Now 76, Anthony has been inactive in movies since his producing credit on DOLLAR FOR THE DEAD, but he occupied his time owning and operating a successful optical supply company that stemmed from his longstanding interest in camera and projection equipment (he designed a special lens around the time of COMIN' AT YA! that was used by studios and theater chains in the subsequent early '80s 3-D craze). He briefly returned from his self-imposed exile in 2011 when he converted COMIN' AT YA! to digital 3-D and it was re-released on an Alamo Drafthouse tour. TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, meanwhile, has finally been released on DVD as part of a Shout! Factory "Action Adventure Movie Marathon" four-film set, with I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND (1973), THE FINAL OPTION (1983), and SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (1959). I wish the news was better, but Shout!'s presentation of FOUR CROWNS is one of the worst DVD transfers in the history of the medium, barely sub-YouTube in quality, cropped from 2.35 to 1.33, and riddled with extensive scratches and debris, inconsistent color, and significant print damage, rendering it an almost-unwatchable travesty. Yes, the four-film set retails at $9.99, but the picture quality is shockingly bad for a company of Shout!'s reputation. I get that it's the only print they had access to, but you could find a 30-year-old VHS tape at a flea market and the picture quality would be better. It does offer a pleasant and enthusiastic commentary track by "pop culture historian" and TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS superfan Russell Dyball, but a sentimental cult favorite like this deserves something a little more than what Shout! has given it.
