Part 5 - Treasure of the Four Crowns (El Tesoro des las Cuatro Coronas)

Well, I hope you’ve all prepared yourselves, because last, but certainly not least (and that’s no figure of speech this time; this is easily the best of the quintet that we’ve looked at, and that might not be saying much, but…), we have Ferdinando Baldi’s (responsible mainly for spaghetti westerns and sword & sandal/peplum films) Treasure of the Four Crowns.

Some of you reading this may actually be familiar with the title (or at least if I had to guess, I would assume that more of you had heard of it than any of the other films in our series), as Treasure is no ordinary Indiana Jones rip off, but rather an Indiana Jones rip off filmed with the world’s newest, most innovative jaw-dropping motion picture technology, Wonder-Vision 3-D (or is it SuperVision 3-D? The poster for the film lists both)!

Tony Anthony (also a writer and producer on the film, Anthony was behind the 1981 3-D western Comin’ At Ya! as well, which kick started the resurgence of 80’s 3-D films - Friday the 13th 3-D, Jaws 3-D, etc.) plays J.T. Striker, a world class thief and all around daring adventurer (thievery seems to be a pretty common theme in these movies, doesn’t it?), who is sent by Professor Montgomery and his assistant Ed (Gene Quintano, who was Anthony’s partner as writer and producer on both Treasure and Comin’ At Ya!) to retrieve an ancient, magical key from a trap-filled castle in an unidentified location. Said key, which he does return with, is reported to open the secret compartments on top of the four mythical golden crowns, which legend dictates hold immense power for those who unlock them.

The problem is, the Professor only holds one of the crowns, while the remaining two (the other is believed to be destroyed when the Arabs invaded Spain) are in the hands of the sinister cult leader Brother Jonas, who plans to use them for his own diabolical purposes. Can Striker and the team of acrobatically skilled associates he’s put together infiltrate Jonas’ virtually impenetrable mountain fortress and recover the crowns from their heavily guarded resting place, a vault complete with pressure sensitive walls where touching the floor is not even an option? How will they possibly pull off a job that seems for all intents and purposes impossible?

Since Treasure of the Four Crowns was to be the last of this series that I would watch/review, and given that it is the only one of the five films that I had seen before and I didn’t necessarily remember it as being outstandingly entertaining on its own, I decided that I wanted to do something special and try a little experiment. I figured if the film was made in 3-D, then it would most likely be much more enjoyable if viewed in 3-D, so I purchased a field sequential 3-D system and some LCD shutter glasses (more about field sequential/alternate-frame sequencing here) and decided to give it a shot.

So, was the movie any better in 3-D? Well, considering that the first 20 minutes consists of nothing more than a constant stream of things “popping out” toward the screen - arrows/darts/spears, snakes, dogs, swords, weird prehistoric looking bird/bat things, and a vast array of fireballs, just to name a few - and almost no dialogue at all, you could say that it at least held my attention more than it would have without the gimmick.

And that’s really essentially what the whole movie is - one giant gimmick. It’s really nothing more than a series of totally ridiculous visual fluff solely there for the purpose of accentuating the 3-D effect (think lots head on shots of people handing each other stuff) that makes absolutely no sense as far as the story is concerned.

In other words, exactly the kind of movie we’re looking for around here.

I mean, how can you not like a movie that has a mid-air heist orchestrated with ropes and pulleys right out of Mission Impossible, supernatural attacks by floating objects, people shooting jets of fire from their hands, an exploding castle, a two-headed demon-skull throne type thing that’s loaded with traps, a totally ridiculous but absolutely awesome Exorcist rip off head spinning scene…and I could keep going, but I don’t want to give away every detail. It’s all in there and it’s all mind numbingly silly, but undoubtedly boatloads of fun nonetheless, especially in 3-D.

A few small nerdily interesting facts before we’re done:

1. Apparently the title for this film in the Philippines was Crown in the Temple of Doom, no doubt released there after 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to cash in on its success

2. Gene Quintano, who played Ed and was also co-writer/co-producer, went on to write both of Indiana Jones inspired Allan Quatermain adventures, King Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold

3. As I stated, I watched a 3-D copy of the film for this review, which required me to buy a special version so that it would work with the field sequential system. It’s been ages since I saw the VHS release (I think I sold mine at a flea market a few years ago), but that print allegedly has a few scenes of Striker assembling his team that were not in the copy that I watched, in which some characters who we aren’t familiar with at all just appear in the next scene and we are forced to fill in the gaps on our own.

And now, the final checklist:

*- The boulders here aren’t so giant, only about waist high maybe, but I did say boulders, as in more than one. Plus, they’re flaming! That’s right, fully on fire!!