The Fourth Horseman

Keoma returns to ride: announced the filming of "The Fourth Horseman", the new film by Enzo G. Castellari and Franco Nero

CinecittàNews

2/20/2019

On the Facebook page of German producer of Dreamfilms GmbH published the poster of a western entitled “The Fourth Horseman”, accompanying the text "very soon". Starring the figure of Franco Nero pointing a revolver, the poster indicates that it is a film by Enzo G. Castellari in which Nero will play his iconic character Keoma. It was confirmed a few minutes later when the veteran filmmaker shared the publication in his profile on the popular social network.

In view of the above, it is not very difficult to guess that “The Fourth Horseman” is the project that for a long time has been known as "Keoma Rises", that is, the long awaited sequel to the classic that in 1976 Nero and Castellari filmed and which is considered to be the spaghetti-western epitaph. The realization of this new film was advanced somehow by Castellari himself in the interview we did at the end of last year on the occasion of the "Calabrian Island Honor Prize 2018" with which this Canarian festival honored him for his career. In it, the Italian commented that "the next movie that I am going to shoot will be a western filmed in Almería with Franco Nero as the protagonist". On the possibility that it was the project then known as "Keoma Rises" replied "the character is Keoma, but the story is fantastic", promising that "it will be a movie that will give many emotions to all the people who love cinema".

Leaving aside the theoretical possibility that the film, in fact, will be shot in Almería, in the section dedicated to The Fourth Horseman on the website of Dreamfilms GmbH, a small plot of the film can be read. It goes like this: "Chief Tawanka tells Keoma to take his grandson Little Elk to Burning Cross. Only the young Lakota is able to lift the curse that weighs on the city that was built on the tombs of their ancestors. The dark past is being relieved and Keoma joins the boy with his mother. All obstacles, such as bandits and bounty hunters, will be eliminated." Along with it we can find several photographs with the future cast, composed of an authentic plethora of names of the seventh art, with special appearances of those linked to the so-called cine-bis. Claudia Cardinale, Caroline Munro, Joe Dante, John Landis, Lou Ferrigno, Alex Cox, Ruggero Deodato, Rutger Hauer, Fred Williamson, Danny Trejo or Robert Englund are just some of the members of the long list of personalities announced, which are to add to three of the most emblematic faces of the Euro western, with the permission of Franco Nero himself: Fabio Testi, Gianni Garko and George Hilton. The most curious thing is that none of the characters that are indicated next to the name of these actors corresponds to the names of those that appear in the synopsis ...

As for Dreamfilms GmbH, the company responsible for financing the future film, it is a modest production company founded in 2003 by Willi Kamarad. Although the company started filming music videos and short films, it finally began producing feature films, among which are the horror film “Bunker of the Dead” (2015), announced as the first film "filmed completely in stereoscopic 3D with a continuous perspective of First Person Shooter ", or the thriller “Der falsche Mann” (2011). Among his next projects are “Frankenstein Rec”, which brings the immortal novel by Mary Shelley to a current setting and is currently filming, or “The Jester from Transylvania”, another horror project in the post-production phase that has the participation of Michael Ironside and Franco Nero himself. In any case, there is no doubt that “The Fourth Horseman” is the most ambitious project undertaken by the German production company to date.