A fad that seemingly everyone around the world participated in during the early '80s, TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS (101 mins., 1983, PG) boasts a cool title, a neat poster, the use of “Super-Vision 3D” and...well, that pretty much wraps it up. In fact, I can safely rank this Cannon Group release at the very bottom of the 3-D movies released during the format's '80s revival.
It's not hard to see why, either: Tony Anthony plays J.T. Striker (as opposed to T.J. Hooker), an adventurer tasked with retrieving a magical artifact from a temple presided over by an insane cult leader. So far, so good – yet the “thrills” and excitement level never percolate under the tired direction of Ferdinando Baldi, with limp performances and a tedious script. That leaves 3D to save the day, but the movie's blurry cinematography even curtails the third dimension from making an appreciable impact – depth of field effects are poorly rendered, with the occasional “let's throw an object into the camera” effect being all we're left with. Even Ennio Morricone's score comes off like one of those “let's give them the cassettes I've stashed away for a rainy day” efforts, often at odds with the material playing out on-screen.
Give the 3-D Film Archive and Kino Lorber credit, at least, for restoring the picture. As with the Archive's last couple of releases, two versions have been struck: a 3D Blu-Ray polarized version and an old-style anaglyphic (red/cyan) version that's far superior to those old 3D renderings we'd see on local TV broadcasts back in the day. Still, the movie's fuzzy cinematography – which I assume is due to its inherent, original source materials – makes this notably less impressive than the Archive's outstanding presentation of kung-fu flick “Dynasty” which I reviewed a few months ago. Kino Lorber's disc includes both 5.1 and 2.0 stereo tracks, a pair of anaglyphic 3-D glasses, the trailer, an audio interview with Tony Anthony and a commentary by Jason Pichonsky.