Pulp International - Italian poster for the spaghetti western The Unholy Four

Mar 11 2017

Been through the desert on a horse with no name.

It isn't the horse that has no name in the spaghetti western Ciakmull—L'uomo della vendetta, but the man. Probably that's true in the song too, though we've never given it serious thought. In any case, above you see a beautiful Rodolfo Gasparri promotional poster for the movie, which premiered in Italy today in 1970. The title means “Ciakmull—Man of Revenge,” but it was changed to The Unholy Four for the movie's English language release.

And what's unholy about the four characters referenced by the title? They're all lunatics to one degree or another, freed from a mental asylum when it was burned down by robbers as a diversion during a gold heist. The four nutjobs band together and what follows is formless Cormac McCarthyesque wandering until Ciakmull, who's amnesiac hence nameless, collides with his former life.

He learns he's actually Chuck Mool, a real bad hombre, and he has some scores to settle. You're thinking, Mool? Like from the Reno Mools? The Abilene Mools? What the hell kind of last name is that? Well, it isn't his last name. But he has one of those, and when it's revealed everything finally becomes clear. Or at least it's clear only if he's been told the truth. But what if somebody has lied to him about his identity? Well then all bets are off.

On the whole Ciakmull—L'uomo della vendetta is a pretty good spaghetti western, but maybe not a good movie. That's okay, though. Spaghetti westerns aren't supposed to be good. If they were, they'd have called them strangozzi al tartufo nero westerns. The movie slots into the genre perfectly—which is to say it's filled with gunplay, dust, horses, hard sun, five o'clock shadows, and lots of steely eyed glares. Give it a watch with cheesiness foremost in your mind and you may like it.