User reviews

J.T. Striker (Tony Anthony) is an adventurer / fortune hunter hired by his associates Edmond (Gene Quintano) and Professor Montgomery (Francisco Villena) to get his hands on the legendary Four Crowns, which when obtained can make a person all powerful. This he has to do because diabolical religious cult leader Brother Jonas (Emiliano Redondo) is using them to control his mindless flock. To accomplish his task, J.T. gathers together a bunch of his old friends: the weary old Socrates (Francisco Rabal), the drunken Rick (Jerry Lazarus), and the super sexy Liz (Ana Obregon).

You know you're in trouble when the opening "Star Wars" style crawl is sorely lacking in any sort of punctuation. This basically amiable movie, rushed into production in order to cash in on the success of the previous Cannon Group 3-D feature, "Comin' at Ya!", is entertaining in spurts. Its extreme crudeness and cheesiness (one can clearly see the strings that are manipulating objects) could have been forgiven if only the movie had more energy. It moves along much too slowly, and there's overkill in terms of exposition. The acting from most of the cast is pretty bland. The filmmakers thrust as many objects into the camera as they can.

Helping to uplift "Treasure of the Four Crowns" (starting with that title, it's all too obvious which hit movie was a big influence on this one) to a degree are its WTF moments, its admittedly amusing opening set piece that goes on for over 20 minutes without dialogue, its absolutely priceless climax, and a wonderful, stirring Ennio Morricone music score that truly deserved a better movie.

This just isn't as much fun as this viewer would have liked.

Five out of 10.

Treasure of the Four Crown in 3-D is the heartwarming story of a man suffering from impotency (Tony Anthony) who races through Southern California with the government closing in. A hypnotist (Ana Obregon) reluctantly helps in the daring plot. Gene Quintano disturbs in the role of fetishist "Edmond". While the performances are rather uneven overall, you won't forget Kate Levan in her breakout role as "Possessed Woman".

The film though cannot be fully appreciated unless viewed in 3-D. Only then do the strings attached to the "floating key" and the fact that there's only two crowns shown in the movie (though a third is briefly mentioned) truly jump out a come alive for the viewer.

When I was a kid, I saw this movie and I loved it. I thought it was one of the best movies I'd ever seen. Ten years later, I picked it up at the video store to take another look.

Ouch.

OUCH!

This is a bad movie! Really bad! Cheesy, badly dubbed, almost everything is done badly. Love those wires on the "floating" key! The climax is hilarious!

One good thing about the movie: Ever reliable Ennio Morricone gives the movie a good score.

This movie would have been a perfect feature for Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I saw this in the theater when it came out. I remember being really excited about getting to see a 3-D movie. I guess I was somewhere around 10 years old.

Even at 10, I thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I had ever seen. I did enjoy it though, as my friend and I sat in the nearly empty theater making fun of the movie, I enjoyed a real-life MST3K moment.

Serious scholars of horrible cinema should seek this movie

I could see the producers showing this to investors and saying "this is the future of movies". It's kind of overdone, like showing the most extreme examples of the 3D effect really getting in people's faces. That, seemingly, is the only reason for it's existence. It was part of a short revival of the 3D process, and i remember seeing it in a theater and thinking at the time how cool it was.

What's the plot? Well, a guy in a red windbreaker walks around and does some "treasure hnting" stuff, while things pop up at him (and us) in a vaguely surprising way. There really isn't any other plot than that. It could be argued that it was based on the popularity of "raiders of the lost ark", but you could actually argue just as convincingly that it's based on "the ghost and mr. Chicken". Recommended just for the flat out gimmicky-ness of it.

I remember this movie being shown endlessly on HBO on Saturday afternoons in the 80's. Clearly trying to cash in on "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the only thing this film had going for it was the 3D and this is sadly missing on the video version. Strings are completely visible, repititous scenes of objects being poked at the camera and bad dubbing make for a difficult watch. Too bad MST3K didn't get a hold on this one.

The Treasure of the 4 Crowns, a low budget Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoff, was part of a brief 3D revival in the early 80s; on video, shorn of the novelty of an extra dimension, the film loses any impact it once had and ends up a tedious and unexciting affair.

Tony Anthony, the rather piggy-faced star of Comin' at Ya! (another 80s 3D movie), stars as J. T. Stryker, a treasure hunter who gathers together a group of fellow adventurers to steal some mystical crowns from a heavily guarded fortress (owned by a strange cult).

Opening with a scene in a deserted castle, where J.T. faces deadly booby-traps in order to find a magical key, director Ferdinando Baldi makes known his intentions from the start: to steal liberally from Spielberg's movie whilst dangling everything possible into the foreground for maximum 3D effect.

The story is quite simply awful, the acting rather poor, and the special effects lousy. Scenes specially shot to make the most of the 3D technology look quite ridiculous, and the wires supporting many of the objects 'floating' in the foreground are clearly visible.

The finale, which sees J. T. and his team reaching the crowns and unleashing their 'awesome' power, is particularly confusing: J. T.'s head spins round and round, Exorcist style, and then he shoots flames from his hands. The main bad guy, cult leader Jonas, has his face sliced up by lasers and then gets roasted by J. T.'s flamethrowers. Bizarre.

And as if that wasn't enough, a final shot sees a strange snake-like creature leap out of a swamp, for no apparent reason.

On a positive note, Ennio Morricone's score is pretty good (well... far too good for this tripe, anyway!).

Even if Treasure of the 4 Crowns received a proper 3D release on DVD, I would still think twice about watching it again!

No matter how you put it, this movie was created to contain as many gimmicks as possible to exploit the 3D theme. And as such it succeeded beautifully.

I have seen this movie when I was 13, close to when it came out.

Little other movies of the 80s have made quite the same impact. No, it's not a good movie by normal standards. But Yes, this is probably the best 3D movie ever made, and as such is worth a couple of lines in someone's book.

I remember this movie coming on numerous times on HBO and Cinemax when I was a kid and I watched it every chance I could. I know now that it was a cheesy movie and if I watched it again it would probably be not as good as I remembered, but I did like it when I was a kid. Sure most 3-d movies do the hokey sticking stuff in your face routine, and this movie is no different, but I still enjoyed it. Even though during one scene of the movie you can see the string on the "flying" key. The parts I enjoyed most are the first and last parts of the movie. The lead guy in the first part has to get through various traps to retrieve this key thing. I always love boobey traps. The middle just consists of him recruiting people to help retrieve the two crowns. Then it is like a spy movie as they break into some cults palace that has numerous traps. And yes there were only three crowns, one only had paper, the other two had gems, the forth one supposedly was broken by someone who tried to open it without the key. I don't think this was in the original foriegn version. I think it was mentioned only because Treasure of the Three Crowns just doesn't have the same type of ring to it. In the end many of the characters die, and perhaps they get the stones or not...I would say but I don't want to spoil the really dumb ending.

My review was written in January 1983 after a screening on Manhattan's UES.

"Treasure of the Four Crowns" is topliner-producer Tony Anthony's failed attempt to emulate the adventure and fantasy of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 3-D format. Public interest in depth pictures (spurred by Anthony's previous "Comin' at Ya!" film) should assure good openings, but eye-taxing visuals and weak story values spell trouble in building a wider audience.

Sharing "Comin' at Ya!"'s problem in over-emphasizing gimmickry, "Treasure" often resembles a Silent Era trick film, stringing together 3-D gags art the expense of continuity and narrative. After the obligatory "Star Wars" serial-styled intro crawl, credits sequence presents the wording on a different plane from the action, creating focusing problems for the viewer. First 20 minute of the picture are sans dialog, as adventurer Stiker (Tony Anthony) undergoes an incoherent series of perils in a Spanish castle in order to fetch a magic key.

Delayed exposition establishes a quest byh Prof. Montgomery (Francisco Villena) to recover two ancient crowns containing golden balls that hold the powers of good and evil, fashioned by the visigoths. Striker organizes a "Mission: Impossible"crew to retrieve them from European relligious cult leader (hailing from Brooklyn) Brother Jonas (Emiliano Redondo): the prof's assistant Edmond (Gene Quintano), a drunken mountain climber Rick (Jerry Lazarus), circus strongman (now clown) Socrates (Francisco Rabal) and his trapeze artist daughter Liz (Ana Obregon).

Final 40 minutes of the picture detail the team's assault on Jonas's fortress, executed with fine physical action scenes, pyrotechnics and stunt work.

Problem is that the filmmakers include too frequent an array of negative parallax shots, that is, objects photographed to appear rapidly moving off the screen into theatre space. Combination of fast cutting and rapid movement of objects does not allow one's eyes to easily adjust to the changes in stereo convergence. Result is strain, fatigue and another setback in the effort to make 3-D a viable, standard filmmaking tool.

On the plus side, "Treasure" has effective sets and many pleasing depth shots amidst the flashy ones. Aerialists performing in a circus look good in 3-D, as do exploding miniatures and other fireworks. Hampered by inadequate dubbing the cast performs well physically, with no discernible doubles during the exciting hanging-from-the-ceiling caper to steal the crowns.

Special effects are hokey, with Anthony's spinning head and subsequent good/evil makeup when he gets the crowns' power proving to be laughable. Action is carried by solid sound effects and an alternately driving or romantic Ennio Morricone score.

Numerous raid on "Raiders" include Obregon's sassy intro to Anthony, which echoes Karen Allen's greeting to Harrison Ford, large flaming balls rolling after Anthony; a mist-filled trunk instead of ark holding the key and a silly finale with flamethrowers emanating from Anthoy's hands at the baddies. Instead of getting mad at this imitation, hopefully George Lucas and/or Steven Spielberg will make their own 3-D adventures and thereby validate the process.

J. T. Strike (Tony Anthony) is a soldier of fortune who has just returned from acquiring a special key for his client Professor Montgomery (Francisco Villena) from a booby trapped ridden castle guarded by unseen supernatural forces. Upon return, the professor enlists Striker's help once again in acquiring four magic crowns from charismatic cult leader Leo Greene aka Brother Jonas (Emillano Redondo), a former petty thief who has since gather legions of loyal followers and plans to use the crowns to further his reach. Reluctantly, Strike assembles a team to break into Brother Jonas' mountain top fortress where the crowns are held.

Treasure of the Four Crowns was the follow-up film from the makers of the 3-D Spaghetti Western Comin' at Ya!, which became a sleeper hit earning $12 million against its $2.5 million budget and signaled a very brief resurgence in 3-D from 1981 to 1983 with the format having largely died off during the 60s. With the momentum from the success of Comin' at Ya!, the team behind the film decided to apply the format to a pulp adventure setting as popularized by another 1981 re-release, Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. While the financial success of these films isn't easy to track down, per a 1983 Cinefantastique article with Tony Anthony, Treasure of the Four Crowns was supposedly successful enough that it's financiers Cannon Films were prepping a third film called Escape from Beyond that was going to be a space adventure, but the project appears to have been shelved largely due to Columbia's Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. Treasure of the Four Crowns is about what you'd expect when someone tries to copy Raiders with a fraction of the budget so you're basically watching a massively inferior knock-off of a better movie....but it's in 3-D!

In the simplest terms possible, Treasure of the Four Crowns is basically elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark grafted onto the format of a heist film but think less Topkapi and more the old Mission: Impossible TV series down to how little the characters are defined outside of their roles.

From the opening sequence that lasts a punishing long 20 minutes that follows Tony Anthony's J. T. Striker stumbling through a bunch of awkwardly staged traps and hazards that move very slowly and make few attempts to hide gaffes in the effects work (including multiple visible wires), the movie shows more focus on making things pop out of the screen than making sure those things actually look good. Now thanks to the good people at Kino Lorber I was able to see this movie on blu-ray in anaglyph 3-D so it's about as close to the theatrical experience as you can get in this day and age. The 3-D worked perfectly fine in conveying depth of field or objects in the foreground, but the image never really synced up when it involved objects rushing at the screen past a certain point. Full disclosure: I do have amblyopia so 3-D doesn't work as well for me as others, but I can still experience it and this is how it looked to me so kudos to Kino Lorber for managing to get the anaglyph 3-D down. But of course once you look past the 3-D the movie itself is a hollow exercise that stretches its 100 minute runtime with numerous protracted shots of ropes or harnesses dangling or holding out objects while the actual plot is either not that interesting or unintentionally funny. Emillano Redondo is memorable for all the wrong reasons as he gives an over the top performance as the Jim Jones inspired Brother Jonas and his hammed up deliveries as the character are very funny (even if they're not meant to be). We also have some nice sounding Ennio Morricone music that couldn't be more ill placed if you tried as the score with its softer more romantic melodies really conflicts with the tone of something that's trying to be an Indiana Jones type adventure.

Treasure of the Four Crowns is a bad movie, but at least the 3-D looks good. If we're talking objective quality, then Treasure of the Four Crowns falls well short of the mark. If however you want to see someone make an ass of themselves but in 3-D!, then here's your opportunity.

Needless to say that I have never actually heard about this 1983 movie titled "El Tesoro De Las Cuatro Coronas" (aka "Treasure of the Four Crowns") prior to stumbling upon it here in 2024- I saw that it was a fantasy movie, and thus I opted to give it a chance.

The first 20 minutes of the movie made zero sense. But sure, I guess it was entertaining back in the day to watch Tony Anthony run and jump around as he was dodging one trap after another, with a whole lot of items of strings coming towards the camera. And when the cast started to spontaneously explode, I was good and ready to turn off the movie.

But I stuck with it, hoping that the movie would become more of an actual movie and not just showcasing Tony Anthony avoiding ridiculous traps. But it never got better. Sure, writers Lloyd Battista, Jim Bryce, Jerry Lazarus, Tony Anthony and Gene Quintano added more contents to the storyline, but it just wasn't sufficient to make it an interesting movie.

I managed a staggering 40 minutes of painful watching, then I just gave up. When the scene with the flying key was over, I just had enough and tossed the towel in the ring.

Of course I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. However, I can't claim that I was particularly impressed with what I saw on the screen. Not that the acting performances were bad, not at all. I just wasn't impressed with the performances delivered in the movie, as they were rather forgettable.

I love how you clearly can see the strings holding up the various creatures and items as they come flying directly at the camera. But hey, the effect worked as intended, just a shame you can see the strings.

There is a lot, and I mean a lot, of things coming right at you on the screen, I guess it was because of the glorious 1980s 3D special effects that peaked for a bunch of movies, but never really working out all that well.

A lot of the scenes in the movie were seriously out of focus, which made it quite a struggle to sit through. I suppose it was the glorious 1980s 3D effects coming into play once again.

"El Tesoro De Las Cuatro Coronas" is a dumpster fire of a movie. And definitely not a movie that I will ever return to attempt finish watching.

My rating of director Ferdinando Baldi's 1983 movie lands on a two out of ten stars.

This film should not be this forgotten or hard to track down.

Thanks Electric Boogaloo for the "eureka" moment.

I've spent over 20 years trying to identify this film and to be fair it did not disappoint. There's a genuinely good film in here, an awful lot of silliness, and even more bad fx, but you know what unlike crap CGI crap practical fx have a real charm to them.

Acting isn't bad - very campy, but you know that's what they were aiming at. Dubbing is definitely a weak point.

Overall story is actually pretty good - and you'll see a lot of analogies to Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, The Ninth Gate - and if someone said Four Crowns or Crystal Skull, or Dial of Destiny - I'm going with Four Crowns, because it's fun - and it delivers exactly what it intended.

It's not 1/10 film - it knows what it is and has done a lot within it's budget constraints, and each film must be reviewed based on it's own personal merits and aims... this achieved a lot.

Not sure how they roped in Ennio Morricone but every time it soars up - it's a great bit of music.

Watching this movie in the theater as a teenager with my friends was great fun - we howled and made fun of the film all of the way through, which was okay because everyone in the room was doing the same thing. That should tell you just how bad this movie is: so bad it's good. The thing is, I think the people responsible for this trainwreck meant for it to be a serious action film. Well, they didn't succeed. Instead what we got was really fake-looking special effects, bad acting and a story that barely held together. Other than the fact that the film is laughable the only reason to watch it would be to see Anna Obregon, the Spanish beauty.

Ok this movie is a ripoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and yes it's a very cheap movie, filmed with the worst lens, and film stock they could find, and yes you can see the strings, and yes lots of things don't make sense, but if you just watch it and try not to take it seriously it's actually pretty good.

The first 22 minutes of the movie is a bizarre take on the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, filled with traps, birds, dogs, ghosts, and lots and lots of fire. Yes none of it makes sense, but it's also kinda awesome, and there isn't a single line of dialogue the whole time which makes it even better.

After that people do start talking and we are given the basics of the plot, where are protagonist, whose name is JT Striker, is tasked with retrieving two of these four crowns from an evil cult leader who plans on using them four evil. Then along with four other accomplices Striker infiltrates the cults castle compound.

Now the movie is actually acted fairly well, and as a heist movie it's pretty good, it's only with the supernatural stuff does the movie go really off the rails. But even where it gets weird and crazy it's enjoyable for the simple WTF factor. Things are flying at the screen, there's fire everywhere, and yes you can see all the strings but it's still awesome.

The movie is fun if you just let it be fun and not expect much out of an Italian knockoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I saw this movie in the Theatre when it first came out, I kept and still own the 3D glasses with the movies title and poster art printed on them. I thought it was a bit Campy at that time, but Raiders of the Lost Ark was and still is my favorite movie of all time , so I love that kind of picture. Still fun to watch after all these years. The 3D effects for this movie are a bit over the top. They make a bit too much emphasis on spears and arrows flying at the audience plus just ropes dangling down and leaves bring used to showcase 3D effects was a bit too much to bare at times. Still fun though.

I remember seeing this movie when I was 11 with my brother, 14. That was in 1982 and we still make fun of it and use it to make jokes. I remember only two crowns and no real purpose to the

3-D. This was just a bad movie. Not even good for a " bad movie night." Just stay away from it. Save that time in your life for something important, like cleaning lint form your bellybutton.

Was there a story line to this movie? It seemed everything in it was simply to have a 3-D FX for the viewer. 3-D pictures made a brief comeback in the early 80's and this was one of them. I couldn't even imagine watching this without the 3-D bit. MST3K should have latched on to this one.