There's usually something going on here in Salt Flat.
Midway between his dip into the giallo at the start of the decade and his headlong plunge into horror at the end of it, Lucio Fulci directed 1975's Four of the Apocalypse, one of the handful of spaghetti westerns he made during his long career. Set in Utah in the year 1873, it opens with its apocalyptic quartet -- card sharp Stubby Preston (Fabio Testi), pregnant prostitute Bunny (Lynne Frederick, soon to be Mrs. Peter Sellers), falling-down drunk Clem (Michael J. Pollard), and halfwit gravedigger Bud (Harry Baird) -- being locked up in the same jail cell to keep them out of the way while the Citizens Committee of Salt Flat dons white hoods to rid their frontier town of social undesirables and the sheriff sits idly by, letting it happen. The next morning, he provides the four of them with safe passage out of town for the nominal fee of $1,000, giving them two horses and a beat-up wagon that Stubby hopes will take them the 200 miles south to the enticingly named Sand City. Along the way, though, they run afoul of sadistic gunslinger Chaco (Tomas Milian), who imposes himself on the group and sticks around long enough to shoot some game, distribute some peyote, treat Clem like a dog, ravish Bunny while she's unconscious, and leave the others tied up to die of exposure in the desert. But before Chaco departs, Stubby vows to kill him if it's the last thing he does, and it is since Fulci and screenwriter Ennio De Concini have a few detours to send their characters down before all is said and done.
Brutal and bloody as it is, Four of the Apocalypse benefits from an off-kilter approach to story and character development that prevents it from descending into pure nihilism. Other than the fact that they're thrown together at the start, there's little reason why a smart cookie like Stubby, a hysterical hooker like Bunny, a hopeless drunk like Clem, and a certifiable nutcase like Bud (who claims he sees dead people) would stick together as long as they do, but their loyalty to each other is ultimately what makes them endearing as individuals. (Well, maybe not Bud, who either doesn't notice or doesn't mind that everyone in the English dub seems to call him "Butt." Also, Bud's a cannibal. Not cool, Bud.) One thing that does bring the whole enterprise down a notch or two, though, is the soundtrack, which leans hard on bland country-rock songs featuring some of the most painfully literal lyrics ever written for a film. At least it served as Fulci's introduction to Fabio Frizzi, then working as part of a trio with Franco Bixio and Vince Tempera, who would go on to be a key collaborator on some of his more well-known films. Here's one, though, that deserves to be less obscure.