Four Rode Out (1969)

Rating: ½
Age Recommendation: 15+* (see below)
I don't like being harsh on movies.  I really don't.  There are a lot of good movies out there, and even more decent ones, and yet even more half-decent ones.  Four Rode Out is none of the above.  It is a downright awful movie.  Granted, it is a B Movie, a low-budget "Spaghetti Western" (though apparently an American-Spanish collaboration) found in a set of 44 such films, but I really did try my hardest to see a hint of quality in this film.  It just wasn't there to be found.

The reason I chose to watch this film first of the 44 in my DVD set, was the cast.  Starring Leslie Nielsen and Pernell Roberts (Adam Cartwright on Bonanza), I was intrigued by the idea of pre-Airplane! Nielsen, let alone in a Western.  My unfortunate conclusion is that this film numbers among the worst I've ever seen.  It's not that it's too disturbing or too silly or too anything except maybe too boring.

Basically, a girl Myra (Sue Lyon) teams up with a U.S. Marshall (Pernell Roberts) and a very unsavory Pinkerton man, alias "Mr. Brown," (Leslie Nielsen) to track down her boyfriend, who has robbed a bank and run off into the desert.  Mr. Brown, who is set on killing the boyfriend Fernando (Julian Mateos) for a bounty, rapes Myra in a disturbing shot of his grinning face from her point of view.  Then, when the three find Fernando, a task that seems far too simple, the first thing he does is to shoot Fernando, despite having promised not to and despite having been disarmed by the Marshall--maybe the gun was in his bowler hat?

From there, the bickering, betrayal, and general "badness" escalates to the point that I actually found myself wishing the characters would just die.  In their stupidity, our trio didn't think to bring extra water or horses going into the desert.  I have no idea what their plan was, but this little matter of basic survival skills comes back to bite them in their butts as their horses die of exhaustion one by one.  I actually felt sorriest for the horses as they died--it looked frighteningly real.  To the characters' credit, I don't think anyone could have perceived that the return trip would take three times as long, horses or no.  The timeline just doesn't add up.

Eventually, after a painfully unromantic desert wedding between Myra and her now loathing new husband Fernando (a certain Marshall let slip about the rape... which Fernando blamed on Myra), performed because the possibly pregnant girl was going to give up and die otherwise, and a bunch of squabbling and griping about water, my wish does come true.

As though the screenwriter had run out of ideas, the newly wed Fernando and the detestable Mr. Brown (possibly actually Fernando's bank robbing partner?) drop dead one after the other, with no further dialogue.  The Marshall carries the presumed similarly deceased Myra back into town, then wanders off.  I guess he survived without water and was ready for his next stupid adventure because he's made of stronger stuff?  If the Marshall is our hero, he failed at everything he set out to do, including bringing Fernando in for questioning and protecting the damsel in distress... which leads me to the conclusion that the desert sun is the hero for killing every other obnoxious character off.

This film is 90% dialogue, 5% action, and 5% misplaced yet decent music; in other words, painfully dull.  The best parts were the sparsely placed songs and the strangely Airplane!-esque discussions between the Marshall and Mr. Brown.  For instance: "Have you ever been attacked by an injured animal?" and, "Do you like girls?" (Airplane!: "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?").  The acting isn't the problem; the story fundamentals are.

*I should note that the DVD version I have seemed to be censored.  In the film, Myra refers to her father beating her before calling her a whore and committing suicide.  Whenever she said "whore," the audio was censored, and the father never beat her that I saw in the opening sequence she is referring to.  He merely yelled at her and shot himself off-screen.  Perhaps some of the more graphic scenes such as the beating, suicide, and rape were edited out for the DVD, in which case my opinion may be based on a watered down version from the original.

Summary: This film is agony to watch.  The version I saw was essentially devoid of action.  It is full of bickering and despicable characters that are neither redeemed nor explained and you will find yourself rooting for the deaths of everyone except maybe the mild-mannered Marshall.  Even if you love the actors or the Western genre, I cannot recommend this film unless you want to take the Mystery Science Theater 3000 approach and turn awful movie-making into a source of mockery.  If you choose to watch it, good luck and I'm sorry, but I told you it was bad!


The Good: random songs
The Bad: all the painful silence in-between songs, dialogue
The Even Worse: detestable characters, unresolved plot-lines, too much talking