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Memorable, crazy movie

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Four men embark on a mission to unearth a fortune in gold from a mine.The film is directed by Giorgio Capitani, who you have probably never heard of unless you're into obscure Italian films. It was produced by Luciano Ercoli who is a bit better known. And written by Fernando DiLeo (Slaughter Hotel), who is probably the best-known of the three. Really, the only reason to watch this is for Klaus Kinski, and even there it falls short because the dubbing just makes him sound silly.The copy I saw (on a double-disc with "Border Shootout") was pretty rough. If a negative could be found, I could see the film getting a nice polish and being a better western under all the dust. Sadly, if it was recorded the way many Italian films were, there is no original audio, so the way it is now is probably the way it always will be.

Fair prospector named Sam Cooper (good lead from Van Heflin) in search of gold in West find treachery , suspicion and greed . Sam is a man who has struck a rich vain of gold. The problem is one man can't get enough out and back, he needs a partner. Circumstances conspire to land him with three. Sam calls his pupil who he raised as his son called Manolo Sanchez (George Hilton) who is accompanied by a rare person , a forth partner named Brent the Blonde (played by Werner Herzog's Best Fiend Klaus Kinski) . Old prospector Sam Cooper meet up with a grizzled gunslinger named Mason (Gilbert Roland), a man who holds a grudge against Sam believing he double crossed him some years earlier and decides to join with them in search of gold in the desert . They form a quartet of unlikely mining pals ; both of whom match wills and wits and fight outlaws , elements and ambition among them . Through enormous difficulties, they eventually succeed in finding gold, but also bandits , elements, and most especially greed threaten to turn their success into disaster . As they struggle among themselves to unearth a fortune in gold from a remote Southwestern mine without falling prey to each other's bullets.Entertaining Spaghetti Western with shootouts , action ,violence and amusement . The story is similar to previous classic ¨The treasure of the Sierra Madre¨ but realized in Spaghetti style . The film contains action-Western , gun-play , fist-play and is pretty bemusing . Giorgio Capitani's spaghetti western, probably won't be making too many top ten lists, but its an agreeable flick . It's an exciting western that scrutinizes the greed and paranoia that afflicts a misfit group , including breathtaking showdown between protagonists and the enemies that stalk to them . The film blends violence , thrills , high body-count and it's fast moving and exciting . There is plenty of action in the movie , guaranteeing shootouts or stunts every few minutes , including a spectacular final confrontation . Although by many to be director Giorgio Capitani's finest film , this is a tale of fear , greed and murder , as four partners fall out over the gold they have clawed out of the inhospitable and bandit-ridden deserts and mountains . It also has probably the most brutal bar fight ever put on film along with Treasure of the Sierra Madre by John Huston . Overrated by some reviewers , but till interesting to watch . It above all things mostly also remains a real characters movie, in which the four main roles are the essentials. Their dynamic together is also great and is what mostly keeps this movie going. They are three totally different characters, which is the foremost reason why they work out so great together on film. Van Heflin is superbly believable and gives a nice portrait of an increasingly unhinged prospector , Gilbert Roland is very good as a cunning gunfighter and the strange couple formed by George Hilton and Klaus Kinski are pretty well . The musician Carlo Rustichelli composes a vibrant soundtrack and well conducted by Bruno Nicolai ; including a catching leitmotif and considered to be one of the best . Atmospheric scenario with barren outdoors , dirty landscapes under sunny exteriors and a glimmer sun and fine sets with striking cinematography by Sergio D'Offizi . The picture resulted to be shot entirely on location in Almeria , Spain , where in the 60s and 70s had been shot innumerable Ravioli/Paella Westerns .The motion picture was well directed by Giorgio Capitani . Giorgio is an expert on all of type of genres such as comedy : ¨Lobster for breakfast¨ (1982) , ¨I hate blondes¨ (1983) , ¨Sex Pot¨ (1975) , Musclemen tales : ¨Samson and his mighty challenge¨ or Western like this ¨Sam Cooper's gold¨ also titled ¨Each man for himself¨, Every man for himself¨ or ¨Each one for himself¨ . Rating : above average Spaghetti , superior Western that will appeal to aficionados .

Sam Cooper, (Van Heflin) was a gold prospector all his life and he finally found a good gold mine and one of his partners decided to kill him in order to keep it all for himself. However, Sam Cooper manages to blow up the mine and bury his partner instead, meaning that Sam Cooper had to hide the gold because it was too heavy to carry back by horseback through a desert area. Sam Cooper gets back in town and gathers up a group of guys, some he did not care to tag along. One guy was Mason, (Gilbert Roland) who knew Sam Cooper in past years and Sam figured he could trust him. There is one gal who appears in the town named Anna, (Sarah Ross) who is a sexy bar girl who gives Sam and eye full of her female charm. Brent the Blonde, (Klaus Kinski) is dressed up like a preacher but is a human rattlesnake who will give you one look and blow you away the next second. This film is very much like the Humphrey Bogart film, "Treasure of Sierra Madre", but this film is full of cruel evil men lusting for gold and gold only.

Although it doesn't rival director John Huston's legendary classic "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) with Humphrey Bogart, "The Ruthless Four" qualifies as a taunt, entertaining little Spaghetti western that ranks several Stetsons above its European competitors. Roughly speaking, for the sake of simplicity, Spaghetti westerns can be classified in three groups: the traditional Sergio Leone epics with bounty hunters galore in the arid Southwest, such as "For A Few Dollars More" (1965), while the non-traditional Spaghetti westerns varies the settings or protagonists, principally Sergio Corbucci's "The Big Silence" (1968) where the action occurred closer to the Canadian border than the dusty Mexican border as was the Leone custom. Corbucci's off-beat westerns steer clear of traditional elements, preferring to rearrange them, as exemplified in Corbucci's "Django" (1966) where the hero dragged around a coffin with a Gatling gun style machine gun in it. Mind you, Corbucci made westerns that accommodated all three groups, but his different westerns emerge with greater prominence. "Navajo Joe" (1966) with Burt Reynolds as the Native American protagonist qualified as another example of an out of the ordinary Corbucci oater. Similarly, director Lucio Fulci's "Four Gunmen of the Apocalypse" (1975) is another example of this different breed of European western. The third group is Corbucci inspired, too: the Mexican revolution westerns. Leone rode around this sub-genre until he helmed "Duck You Sucker" in 1973. These westerns usually featured a mercenary as the protagonist, such as Franco Nero in "The Mercenary" (1968) and "Companeros" (1970) who sold his services to the highest bidder during the war between the corrupt Mexican government and the poor peons at the dawn of the 20th century. Typically, however, he reformed by the finale to take sides with the peons. Marxist theorists would crave these yarns for their political ramifications. Admittedly, this analysis reduces the entire Spaghetti western genre to a single bullet in the cylinder of a Colt's .45 revolver."The Ruthless Four" fits into the second group of Spaghetti westerns in terms of its protagonists. Sam Cooper (Van Heflin of "Shane") excels as a crusty old prospector who strikes pay dirt with his partner at a remote mine carved out of a slope in the middle of nowhere. Cooper's partner double-crosses him and tries to kill him, but Cooper outsmarts his adversary and kills him in a mine explosion. Cooper barely survives the journey of hardship back to town. Along the way, human carrion steals his pack horses at gunpoint and leaves him stranded at a river with his goods strewn around him. Cooper gathers what little that he can carry, then does something that no other character has ever done before in any Spaghetti--much less an American--western; he pours out the gold that he cannot tote into the river! Sam Cooper has a moral compass that doesn't deviate from the right setting, and this explains his longevity. Once he reaches town, Cooper decides to wire a $100 dollars to a kid that he helped raise before he turned to prospecting. He realizes that he cannot trust a partner after his last experience, so he beckons for Manolo Sanchez (George Hilton of "Sartana's Coming, Get Your Coffins Ready") to join him. Unfortunately, Cooper doesn't realize that Manolo has grown into a man who is drastically different from the boy that Cooper raised. First, Manolo is a liar, a cardsharp, and cheat; second, Manolo is in cahoots with an enigmatic but evil hombre named 'Brent the Blond' (Klaus Kinski of "And God Said to Cain") who dresses like a preacher, drinks milk in the saloon, and proves as deadly as a rattlesnake. Later, after they reach the mine and we actually see them excavating rocks, Brent looks like death personified with a pick-ax instead of a scythe. He wears a cloak and the dust from their exertions covers his striking features so that he resembles the Grim Reaper. Manolo's inclusion of Brent surprises Cooper so much that he convinces a man with a grudge against him, Mason (the incomparable Gilbert Roland of "Any Gun Can Play") to come along with them as he tells the others "because four men can dig more gold than three." Earlier, Manolo had used this idea to justify Brent accompanying them. This uneasy quartet spends the rest of the movie keeping their suspicious eyeballs on each other. Mason blames Cooper for his incarnation in a Florida prison and his subsequent contraction of malaria.Director Giorgio Capitani stages a first-class gunfight at the ruins of a monastery as our heroes head off into the desert for the mine. The elaborate pretense that Mason and Brent engage in prior to the shoot-out is clever. They want to have their guns in hand without the villains noticing that they have drawn them. Inconspicuously, our protagonists rely on sleight of hand to remove each other's pistol without attracting attention. This way Mason and Brent can start blazing away a lot sooner at their ambushers. The unusual relationships that exist between the protagonists generate considerable tension throughout this 96-minute melodrama. The characters are more complex than in the usual Spaghetti. The Augusto ("Grand Slam") Caminito and Fernando Di Leo ("Mr. Scarface") screenplay makes the subtle implication that Manolo and Brent are homosexuals.'The Ruthless Four" differs from most Spaghetti westerns. First, the hero is not a bounty hunter. Second, the protagonist is the oldest of the quartet and he doesn't wield a six-gun like a wizard. Composer Carlo Rustichelli, who scored two Terrence Hill westerns—"Ace High" and "Boot Hill"—doesn't provide an operatic Ennio Morricone orchestral soundtrack. Fourth, "The Ruthless Four" is a realistic morality play; the good are rewarded for their virtue while the evil are punished with death for their perfidy. Meanwhile, this western shares some traits with the Leone western. Nobody is to be trusted. Greed is the central theme with paranoia rampant in the relationship among the quartet. Nobody gets out of this gritty oater without catching a bullet.