Four Candles for My Colt / Un colt por cuatro cirios (Ignacio F. Iquino, 1971)

Spaghetti Westerns 🎬
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www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Mia_Colt_ti_cerca
_4_ceri_ti_aspettano%2C_La

(OOPS - SPOILER ALERT)

A promising start, you’d think – anything I’ve seen recently with Robert Woods in has been on the better side of marvellous – building up from Gatling Gun (1968), My Name is Pecos (1966), through Black Jack (1968) to the sublime El Puro (1969). (All films from the Golden Age of spaghettis - although this order is my own preference and not chronological.)
And here’s his name again, but a least a couple of years have past and maybe the genre is tiring out or losing direction. Certainly, in this fan’s point of view, this seems to be the case.
Anyway – a good rousing spaghetti trumpet and military drumbeat to get us started, a robbing of a chunk of dollars (300,000 in fact – so that’d do) and some double-crossing dealings in the backroom of the whorehouse – sorry, saloon.
Fanny and the new girls are entertaining, whilst Ahona, the long-legged lady-of-colour with one of those trays on a ribbon around her neck (you know – Betty Boop, hat-check style) looks after the backroom boys. (We’ll be back to her later.)
Organiser and boss Mr. Oswald is robbed of his previous thieving by one of his boys and without giving too much away, this leads to everybody out to try and get the dosh, whilst the sheriff (Woods) tries to get to the bottom of the crimes (and the half-breed squeeze-interest). Complicated relationships – stepmother; half (actually quarter) breed stepdaughter; a murdered father, a nearly to be brother-in-law to the Woods character who’s forever in fisticuffs with Woods, and then there’s a gang of ne’er-do-wells that Wood’s has got it in for as well. Sounds alright?
Well actually – it’s all a bit jumbled and incoherent. I reckon if I saw the first half of this with no sound I’d believe it to be a comedy. Besides the clichĂ©d old drunk scrote coffin maker who stumbles about in his long-johns, there’s Woods himself who is overacting in the extreme, and I quote Weisser here 

“Woods gives an amazingly animated performance 
. Constantly touching or hitting everything and everybody. He has a crazed semblance, as if he might start tearing apart the scenery at any moment, without notice. A very strange sheriff.”
A bloody strange film!
It’s almost pantomime with this level of animation. Half the film seems to consist of fisticuffs, slaps and grabbing of lapels and finger poking. It’s almost as if they’d forgotten where they’d got to in the script and kept starting again with a poke in the chest or somesuch. I would actually have believed that they made it up as they went along, except it is meant to be based on an actual book – so some structure does/should exist.
The second half looks more promising 
 for a while – there are some good bits and it seems to come together with the violence becoming nastier and more relevant. There’s a good catfight, as Silver has previously mentioned, betwixt step-mum and the ‘half-breed’. Woods gets seven bells knocked out of him and there’s some good choreographed shooting (Scherpy’s right here as well, when he referred to Wood’s ability to do his own gun stunts) – so all looks well.
But then it gets silly again and the film doesn’t know when to stop.
Besides this, Ahona (remember her?) keeps appearing – no matter where she is, out at the hideout for instance) still in evening whore wear – stockings garters and corset-thingy, still with a fuckin’ tray of drinks and cigars around her neck!
This leads me to mention an unhealthy dose of misogyny that permeates this film, which isn’t ironic. We’ve a terrified whore and a compliant Ahona, a catfight, and the ‘half-breed’ who is won over by a spanking and being called a bitch by Woods. In fact everybody is a bitch, a son of a bitch or a bastard in this. (Now I’m not getting all ‘right-on P.C.’ here – I just thought I’d mention it.)
And more silliness 

Woods (who tells us he’s got a broken rib and (left) arm) and his girlie (who’s now been shot in her right shoulder) go after the bad guys – fisticuffs a plenty abound – Woods throwing haymakers with both arms 
 and it goes on, and on , and 

on 
and 
on 

(and then on a bit more).
After all this nonsense Woods then lets the bad guy go back to town to give himself up?? He’s only guilty of murder and will hang. Of course you would. Wouldn’t you ??? Or will you go and do some more damage – whad’ya reckon?
It all ends with the cavalry (what the f
?) coming to the rescue - and why on earth they spent money on this bit I don’t know. Woods kindly offers his (good) arm out to his floor-bound squeeze – who’s hauled up by her bad arm – but it don’t matter cos they’re in love and it’ll all end happily ever after.
I’m scarred!

Best dialogue 

Old Scrote: “whisper, whisper” (in Woods’ ear)
Woods: “You tell anybody else about this?”
Old Scrote: “No, I’m silent as a tomb.”
Woods: “Phweeew – you smell like one too!”

Does anybody know where four candles come into it?

Anyway I gather it was the inspiration for this 

"Four Candles" - YouTube :smiley:

1 Like
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I’ve not seen it for so long i can’t really remember it at all, i’ll have to give it a revisit soon.

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It doesn’t sound up to much does it?

However, as a completist, i will try & track it down for my collection.

Nice little review Rev.

:slight_smile:

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This one looks nice! I didn’t read Rev’s review yet because of the spoiler warning (thanks for that :)!).

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Silence, I thought you’d gone on holiday.
Did your computer drag you back? :smiley:

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I liked the charactre of Woods in this film. Heroes in sw’s aren’t usually sheriffs who are often portrayed as drunks, wimps or corrupted. Here Woods plays it in a good tough cop way. Maybe it was already influenced by Dirty Harry.

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Watched this one this morning and my feelings are well summed up by the Rev’s review above. A bit of a mishmash which is promising in parts, disorganised in others.

As for the candles, I caught a glimpse of them set out in a room at Farley’s ranch. If you blink you’ll miss them but they can clearly be seen when Farley’s harlot wife goes back to the house just before she gets strangled by Rogers. They are big candlesticks set out on the floor and one of them has been knocked over. I can only assume they were in a previous scene which wound up getting cut.

I also think the cavalry thing was spliced in using footage from another picture. Maybe 4 Dollars for Revenge? It looks like different film stock and you never see Woods and the soldiers in the same shot. This leads me to wonder how much of this film is made up of reused footage and how much other stuff was cut out. Maybe this would explain the bizarre appearance of the cigar selling girl the Rev refers to above turning up in a house miles out of town. I doubt we’ll ever really know.

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I also noticed our database page has incorrect actors assigned to roles.
The town boss villain was definitely played by Chris Huerta, not Vidal Molina. Molina, I believe played the part of Rogers. Not sure who put those up. Even Weisser gets it right :o

I’ll change it now. But I think it is a good practice for everyone when they have just watched a film to check it’s database page for any obvious errors. It is surprising how many still appear.

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I like Robert Woods movies, but this ended up being a major bust in my opinion
 Is it me or did this film just have a weird feel to it? I guess it came from the camera/editing and the god awful soundtrack I suppose. Well, I can’t say too much because I only watched 15 minutes of it, then skipped up the chapters and watched about 5 seconds of each
 then I took it out of my DVD player! I couldn’t stand this film! I hated Starblack too and that film is like a million bucks compared to this. There are very few SWs that I couldn’t bare to watch (White Commache, Price of Power, My Name is Trinity, Trinity is Still My Name being the others,) and this is one of them. Sorry Mr. Woods!

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Re watched this one in a better version from last time. Forgot how moody Woods is in this one. In fact he seems to make everyone around him a little pissed off. Woods also apears taller in this than some of his earlier westerns. Maybe it’s his clothes or the sets. Spotted the four candles this time round, but still do not know what they mean. Woods says some lines that made me chuckle with the best being " If I knew you better I would spank your arse ". Not bad catfight in the film. A mystery western for me most of the time, but not as much as a later Woods western
Kill The Poker Player. Surprised to see Chris Huerta in a non comedy type role, but makes no difference for me as I only have to look at his face and I chuckle.

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Chris Huerta was in this in this film? Never noticed him.

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I did not notice him first time I viewed the film. He looks a little different without his beard though.

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Gave this one a rewatch. Pretty good film, not great but at least not boring.

As fo the four candles Ennioo, could it have something to do with the advent candles?

This could be the funniest preformance by Huerta by the way ;D!

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You never know.

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La mia Colt ti cerca, 4 ceri ti aspettano = My Colt is looking for you, four funeral candles are waiting for you

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Ah! sorted. Thanks for that JC. Surprised Scherpy didn’t pick up on that though.

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Never seen the movie, it’s a bit hard to find (a good copy), never noticed the question

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Didn’t like this Robert Woods Spaghetti, it had a real low- budget feel to it, like it was shot for a hundred bucks. What we have here is (Woods) as an angry sheriff with an attitude, a Fatso for a gang boss, bad acting, bad dialog, awful fistfights and numerous scenes that didn’t make much sense. Don’t think i’ll ever watch this one again. 4/10

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