Tacky low-budget SEVEN SAMURAI/MAGNIFICENT SEVEN rip-off (THE PASSABLY ENGAGING FOUR?), has Jack Palance & Aldo Ray (+ two) hired to defend a Chinese coastal town with a fortune in shipwrecked nitroglycerine from shady salvage operator Fernando Lamas and his gang of disposable bad guys. Yet the three leads, all in underwater career mode (Palance alone to buoy back up), have fun with this damp squib made for quick sale to international markets under busy second-unit director Michael D. Moore, briefly stepping into the top spot and taking advantage of Hong Kong locations in backstreet inner-city chases and some more than respectable action set pieces. Even generating real suspense with a townie ‘bucket-brigade’ to move those boxes of ultra-explosive nitro. (Moore’s handful of directing gigs started the year before with, of all things, an ELVIS pic: PARADISE, HAWAIIAN STYLE/’66. But after this, back to second-unit for the likes of Spielberg, Pollack, Huston, etc.) Interest lags in the third act when an honor-among-thieves relationship between Palance & Lamas blurs the edges, but you’ve seen worse Saturday matinee fare.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Aldo Ray must be the only scratchy-voice actor whose voice grew less scratchy as he got older. He looks a wreck (beet red), but retains the same inexplicable charm.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A decent music score could have helped. But it’d be a shame to lose the nutty title song, sung over the credits by a small group who keep falling off pitch.
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