Director: Primo Zeglio
Cast: Adam West, Robert Hundar, Howard Ross, Raf Baldassarre

When you read this review, whether on its day of publication or several years down the road, there is probably one specific thing that you will agree with me, and that is employment in your country is bad and it's difficult for many people to find and get a good job. I've experienced that personally sometimes, and it sure isn't a laughing matter. But over the years, I have learned that often if food is low in your pond, you can make a swim to another pond and find what you need there. This of course includes the quest for employment. What I'm talking about is travelling to another country to find a job. That's something that I did once, leaving my country and taking a flight over the Pacific Ocean to South Korea, where I taught English for a year and made a considerable whack of money in the process. But there are more than just teaching jobs overseas to choose from - there are a whole bunch of foreign jobs that people in my continent could choose from if they wanted to. For example, in Japan many westerners could land the role of an exotic dancer, whether they are male or female. Another choice would be to travel to China where you can be what is referred to there as a "white monkey job". They are jobs where various Chinese companies hire just about any westerner to act as experts (even if they are not) or spokespeople for various Chinese products and services, to give those things an air of being accepted in the world market. If going to Asia doesn't float your boat, you might want to think about going to Mexico should you have training in the armed forces. From what I've heard, anywhere you settle in Mexico, the underground drug cartels will soon learn of your past military training, and they will come to you with an offer to work for them that you can't possibly refuse... or else.

The job opportunities in other countries are almost endless, no matter what your education or your past work experience might have been. Sure, some of the jobs you may qualify for might not be your first choice, but you might be able to bite the bullet if you are desperate for work. On the opposite side of the fence, there are job opportunities that mostly or completely seem like dream jobs. If you happen to have training in the performance arts, there are such foreign jobs in that field, and that includes acting in foreign movies, especially if you are an actor with some kind of name from past work. Why would any actor or actress want to uproot from their country to appear in foreign movies? Plenty of reasons, as it turns out. Certainly, the money can be very good. Many foreign producers desire to sell their movies not just domestically, but in other countries to make more money, so having a foreign actor can unlock the door to another country - so the producers will often promise a good salary. Another reason that an actor might want to go to another country is that even if they are not superstars at home, they might become superstars in that foreign country. Take a look at Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef - they went overseas for acting opportunities, and not only did they become superstars in Europe, they became superstars around the world when their movies were released in other territories. It's like me not caring where any of my readers of my website come from, I enjoy their acknowledgment. A third reason is that sometimes your background can make you qualify for roles homegrown actors in the foreign country can't fill. In every country, somebody needs to play foreign criminals or other foreign characters. Who better to play a foreign person than a real foreigner?

There are potential downsides to leaving your home country to act in a movie made in another country. For example, although I said that there's often a demand for foreign actors in movies from other countries, many of these roles are often kind of stereotypes. As North American filmmakers stereotype certain ethnic groups like Asians and Arabs in our movies, foreign movies often just depict foreigners as stereotypical and as villains. Also, once you leave your country to act in foreign movies, quite often your prestige in your home country's film industry will drop like a rock. For example, when Cameron Mitchell (The Klansman) left Hollywood in the early '60s to appear in a number of European productions in order to pay alimony and child support bills, once he came home he found it really hard to be cast in high quality Hollywood productions right up to his dying day. The results of working in foreign movies vary from actor to actor. One Hollywood actor who decided to work in a foreign movie was Adam West of Batman fame. Before he became famous on that TV show, he decided to travel to Rome and try his hand at being in a spaghetti western, The Relentless Four, where he was cast in the lead role. The movie was a big hit in Europe, and West subsequently got offers to appear in other spaghetti westerns, which greatly tempted West, since he had a great time making the movie and made some good money in the process. But then his agent told him about the Batman TV project... and the rest is history. Anyway, I was curious about seeing West pre-fame, especially since to date, the movie is almost unheard of in North America (no North American video release as of 2026, and rare airings on television and streaming services.) In the movie, West plays a Texas Ranger in the wild west named Sam Garrett who at the beginning of the movie is tracking down one of two people fleeing in the desert, but not to kill or arrest the particular man in the duo. The man in question was accused of being a criminal and fled from the law, but later it was revealed that he was actually innocent. Just before Garrett catches up to the two men, the formally accused man is killed by four bounty hunters. When Garrett tells the bounty hunters that the killed man was innocent, they try all the same to collect the bounty that was placed on the ex-fugitive, but Garrett manages to stop this from happening. Angry about losing a big payday, the four bounty hunters decide to get revenge by framing Garrett for the murder of a local cattle baron (Roberto Camardiel, Mr. Superinvisible). Their plan works, and then Garrett has to prove his own innocence while the widow of the cattle baron hires the four bounty hunters to track down Garrett so he can be hanged.

With the knowledge of the majority of the hundreds of spaghetti westerns that were made in the 1960s and 1970 concerning the basic ideas of either revenge or searching for a hidden fortune, you can see that the core plot of The Relentless Four leans more towards doing something different, so it definitely gets points for that. However, the screenplay definitely manages to accomplish more than that. The movie gets to an interesting start, not giving us all the details about who is who and what is happening, but never in a confusing manner; we sense all will become clear soon. Also, once everything is explained, the story continues for a while to be pretty brisk in its pacing, with every scene quickly proving its purpose and then allowing the next scene to come up immediately afterwards. Also, there are some really original touches throughout, like an escape plan from a jail that's unlike any I've seen in other movies before. However, despite occasional originality like that, I do have to admit that about halfway though, the once evolving story does slow down considerably, and the focus is then on Garrett continually fleeing in order to reach his headquarters. I'm not saying that all this fleeing is boring - it definitely isn't - but it's a little letdown after starting off with more focus on the plot than anything else. Though in the first half of the movie there are still a few weaknesses, weaknesses that also pop up in the movie's second half. There are questions like how Garrett managed wake up in his hotel room after having (some distance out of town) booze poured down his throat and then him placed on his horse, how more than once characters manage to catch up so quickly to other characters despite the originally in lead characters having a considerable head start, and that a fugitive Garrett twice has the option of grabbing someone's horse yet decides instead to keep fleeing on foot.

Also, the subplot concerning the cattle baron's widow (Paola Barbara of A Man Called Sledge) and her adult daughter (Dina Loy) out for revenge suddenly disappears as soon as it comes up, and doesn't come back until the movie is near its conclusion. You would think that the movie's four credited screenwriters, which included the movie's director Primo Zeglio (Killer, Adios) would have found during their collaboration there were some unfinished aspects. Fortunately, Zeglio in the director's chair does offer ample compensation. It's clear he had somewhat more of a budget than many other spaghetti westerns. With ample funds, Zeglio gives the movie a good look. The movie is well shot, and the locations look less generic. He also populates, when appropriate, many extras in the background, giving more of a feeling of a community rather than a near ghost town like many other spaghetti westerns. All these extras also contribute many times a good feeling of this particular wild west universe. The bloodthirsty extras in the courthouse scene, for example, make you feel the sensation of the rope Garrett is imagining around his neck. Some other good touches Zeglio puts in include how he manages to make the scheme of the four bounty hunters to frame Garrett plausible when in other hands it would come off as contrived, as well as the inevitable action sequences. Some viewers may be surprised by the fact that there is somewhat less action here than what you would expect from a spaghetti western, but what action does pop up along the way makes it worth waiting for. The fisticuffs have a real feel of struggle as well as rapid exhaustion by the participants, and the gunplay has a lot of punch, albeit a different kind of punch than what's found in those fisticuffs.

With the quality action and the occasional quirks in the screenplay, you can understand why actor Adam West later recalled his experience with The Relentless Four with a lot of fondness. Which in a way is odd, because a lot of his performance suggests otherwise. He does throw himself well into the moments of action, but during the quieter moments he doesn't seem terribly enthusiastic. He comes across as kind of stiff and bland, from his posturing to the unmemorable looks on his face. This probably explains why the movie at times almost makes him come across as a supporting player rather than someone up front and close with ample charisma, like what Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef brought to their spaghetti westerns. Speaking of unsatisfying characters, I should bring up West's adversaries in the movie, the four bounty hunters. They are the really weakest part of The Relentless Four. Oh sure, they are mean, they kill, and make dirty schemes to benefit them all or for personal ulterior motives. But despite all that, they come across as extremely generic. There's pretty much nothing about them that you haven't seen many times before in a spaghetti western, and making things worse is that they are completely interchangeable with each other. We don't even learn all of their names until more than half of the movie has gone by! If the flaws concerning the villains had alone been fixed, The Relentless Four might have been able to at least been an above average spaghetti western. I'm not saying that as it is, this flaw and the other flaws in The Relentless Four drag it down to "not recommended" status. I found enough here to satisfy me, though as you probably know, I am a big spaghetti western fan. Your enjoyment of the movie will depend on your love of the spaghetti western... and maybe also if like me you didn't have to lift much of a finger to find it on a slow day.

(Posted June 11, 2026)