Lucio Fulci
I Quattro dell'Apocalisse

Stubby Preston (Fabio Testi) is a professional gambler. A cheat. When he sets foot in Salt Flat, the local sheriff, a tough guy, wastes no time in taking away his tools of the trade and throwing him in jail.
Salt Flat is a godforsaken place. "The dirtiest city in all of America." One of those places where "The law is a joke, and death is a way of life." But the sheriff decides to clean up the town and eliminate those he doesn't like. During the night, Salt Flat is ravaged by a band of hooded killers. It'll be a massacre. Stubby has a few dollars saved up and manages to survive with his new companions. The pregnant prostitute "Bunny" (the beautiful and damned Lynne Frederick), Clem the drunkard (Michael J. Pollard), and Bud the undertaker (Harry Baird). A completely crazed black man who claims to be friends with the dead.
The four, led by Stubby, leave Salt Flat behind and set out into the desert toward their destiny.

The destiny of the four is named Chaco. Chaco, an extraordinary Tomas Millian in what might be one of his greatest performances ever, is a bandit. He claims to have been robbed and asks (imposes) the four to join him. He's a great hunter and quickly gains the trust of his new and unlucky travel companions. But soon he will reveal his true nature. Chaco is a bastard and a sadistic killer. He skins people alive, kills women and children, and uses peyote.
Chaco introduces his four travel companions to peyote. Then he rapes Bunny and shoots Clem in the leg, while Stubby, who was tied up by the bandit and always showed distrust towards him, vows to kill him.
The four resume their journey. Clem dies. Bud completely loses his mind. Maybe he still roams some ghost town in the States. Stubby and Bunny, however, reach a mining town, where the girl finally gives birth to her child. But she dies in childbirth. Stubby then embarks on a quest for Chaco. For his revenge.

Lucio Fulci is a genius. As a young man, he saved a penalty from Mazzola (Valentino) and is universally recognized as one of the masters of horror and splatter. In 1975, the year "I quattro dell'Apocalisse" was released in theaters, he had stopped making comedies and musical films. "I quattro dell'Apocalisse" is an spaghetti western (Lucio Fulci had already directed the bloody "Le colt cantarono la morte e fu... tempo di massacro" with Franco Nero, who, for the occasion, dressed in the "vestments" of the "blond" Clint Eastwood). The screenplay is by Ennio De Concini and is based on four stories by Francis Brett Harte. Guns, deserts, mining villages, and ghost towns. Whores, drunkards. Reverends playing poker and the usual, inevitable, Mormons (or rather "the happy church of the living Christ") from Switzerland. But in 1975, the genre was dying, and Lucio Fulci, who considered himself a "genre terrorist," decided to enrich the plot with his very personal style.
"One of only three westerns ever produced in the world that is banned for those under 18 for its dramatic, fierce violence." So read the promotional tagline. The age limit was later lowered to 14. But some scenes were cut. Marco Giusti, a television author and film critic who curated the 2007 retrospective dedicated to Italian westerns at the Venice Film Festival, called it a "sadistic western". It is a sadistic western and a hallucinatory and psychedelic road movie. The protagonists are four losers. A cheat, a whore, a drunk, and a madman traveling through the desert. Like Captain Willard going up the Nung River to Cambodia. Like Captain America and Billy traveling across the United States on their motorcycles. Chaco is dressed like a Woodstock hippie. And the beautiful music - featuring percussion by Tony Esposito - by Bixio, Frizzi (Fabio), and Vince Tempera plays a fundamental role in the story dynamics. Tomas Millian, in what is and will remain his last western, is perfect as Chaco and later stated that he was inspired, in characterizing his cruel character, by the American serial killer Charles Manson. Fabio Testi is still an actor.

"I quattro dell'Apocalisse" is a violent film. There are masked avengers who commit massacres. Corrupt sheriffs and sheriffs skinned alive. Rapes and bandits who use peyote. Cannibalism. And revenge with a taste of shaving foam.