Scott LeBrun 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.

Woodyanders Diabolical cult leader Brother Jonas (a rabidly hammy portrayal by Emiliano Redondo) gains possession of a set of mystical artifacts that gives him the power to lord it over his mindless followers. It's up to devil-may-care mercenary J.T. Striker (blandly played with stunning blankness by Tony Anthony, who also co-produced) and his motley crew who include a drunken dude (insipid Jerry Lazarus), a strongman brute with a weak heart (brooding Francisco Rabal), and, naturally, a token feisty babe (fetching Ana Obregon) to retrieve said artifacts from Jonas's heavily guarded fortress. Boy, does this hilariously horrendous clunker possess all the so-wrong-that-they're-paradoxically-right stuff to qualify as a real four-star stinkeroonie: Ferdinando Baldi's ham-fisted (mis)direction, the plodding pace, a plethora of shoddy (far from) special effects (you can clearly see all the obvious strings that levitate various objects throughout the picture!), the cardboard characters, the maladroitly staged action set pieces, the laughably terrible acting, the ratty cinematography by Marcello Masciocchi and Giuseppe Ruzzolini, and the jaw-dropping outrageous climax all give this delectably dreadful doozy a considerable amount of lovably cruddy charm. Moreover, not only does this movie hurl every possible object at the camera (arrows, spears, snakes, birds, keys, flames, and much, much more!), but it also boasts more than enough explosions to make even Michael Bay green with envy. Only Ennio Morricone's robust majestic score manages to rise above the general unintentionally sidesplitting ineptitude. A tacky marvel.

john-m-osborne This movie was horrible and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves for ever having been associated with it. Having said that, there were a few aspects of this movie that appealed to me, namely that there was a history behind the crowns. I saw this a few years ago, so some of my details may be a little off, but you'll get the idea of just how horrible this movie is.The movie opens with J.T. Striker (Tony Anthony) approaching some old castle. We quickly learn that this castle is booby-trapped to the max and our hero has to dodge everything from darts and flying buzzards to ancient torture racks to reach his goal, which is the coffin of some long-dead king. Inside this coffin is his goal: a key. He collects the key and then escapes, as the entire castle starts to "come to life" and eventually explodes. Just where this explosion came from is a mystery.Back to the world goes our hero to meet up with Ed, who takes him to a museum where they hand over the key to Prof. Montgomery. Montgomery and Ed tell the story of the crowns, which they key will unlock. They actually have one of the crowns in their possession. I found this to be the best part of the movie and the only true attempt at meaningful dialog.Ed speaking, as the crown slides out of its container: "This is one of the Four Golden Crowns created by the Visigoths in the 6th Century some time after the conquest of Spain." Prof. Montgomery: "Legend held that the gold balls on top three of the four crowns contained secrets to unleashing incredible powers of good and evil. After a time they passed into the fabric of myth and legend." Ed: Until sometime in the late 1800's when they were discovered (somewhere in Spain).Prof. Montgomery: "But when the Arabs invaded Spain three of the four crowns disappeared. The fourth fell into the Arabs' hands and attempting to unlock its secrets without the key, they destroyed the gold ball. Three years ago I learned the location of the key, but saw no sense in retrieving it since the other crowns were missing until this crown, reportedly the one containing the scroll surfaced. I found it in the possession of a Sherpa mountain climber in Nepal and convinced him to sell it to me. And now, we shall see." The professor opens the crown and there is the scroll and now the enlist Striker to help them steal the remaining two crowns from a cult leader who uses them to control people (we are never told just how the crowns help him do this). Striker reluctantly agrees and assembles the team of Rick The Drunk, the dying old clown Socrates and his daughter Liz, and Ed.The hapless crew infiltrates the secure room where the crowns are kept and are very close to getting them without incident, but then a piece of equipment that is supposed to knock out the security systems, fails to function and J.T. decides to go for it anyway. What follows is a comical collection of deaths by each of the participants (except Liz and J.T.). First, Socrates has a heart attack (we were told earlier he had a heart condition). Rick is killed by arrows that shoot up from the floor. Ed is at first crushed by the arms of this statue that the crowns are sitting on and then a snake comes out of the statue and bites him on the cheek (leaving no fang marks). Before the entire ridiculousness of this scene can even be comprehended, J.T. who has been blinded by some steam that shot out of the statue (and set off the alarms), regains his feet and opens the crowns (I guess all of the security mechanisms had been exhausted at this point). The crowns (the green one evil, the gold one good) make breathing noises at him. He takes them in his hands and his head spins around a la The Exorcist and then his face is divided between good and evil, with the evil side corresponding to the hand he is holding the green ball in and the good corresponding with the had he is holding the gold ball in.Brother Jonas, the cult leader, has by this time burst into the room with his machine-gun toting, mask wearing followers and J.T. shoots fire out of the two crowns and kills them all. He snaps back out of it after they are all dead and he and Liz are lifted out of the room by the professor, but not before he throws the crowns into the fire.There is a final scene which makes no sense. We see this blob rise out of a swamp and snake-like thing shoots out. But I want to point out that there were THREE crowns shown in this movie. People seemed to forget about the one with the scroll.O.K., that's basically the movie. The 3D was horrible. Strings are visible everywhere, much of the 3D was wasted on things that didn't need it, and nothing was really explained about how the crowns could help mankind, even though this why they were all risking their lives for them.None of the characters were complicated or compelling. There was nothing that made you root for these guys to win. And the director seemed to just do whatever he wanted without thoughts to continuity or credibility. A shining example of this would be the fact that Striker escapes from the castle in the beginning by breaking through a stain-glass window that leads right outside. Why didn't he just go through that window in the first place instead of risking his life maneuvering through the booby-trapped castle? Hope this saves you a few bucks.

Coventry 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".