BY FRED BLOSSER
“Son of Samson,” an Italian
production from the wave of sword-and-toga or “peplum” movies in the early
1960s, has been released by Kino Lorber Studio Classics in a Blu-ray edition. When you hit “play,” don’t be
alarmed when a different title, “Maciste
nella Valle de Re,” appears instead. It’s the same picture. “Maciste
nella valle de Re” or “Maciste in the Valley of the Kings” was the original
title in Italy, where director Carlo Campogalliani’s production opened on Nov.
24, 1960. There,
“Maciste” had a nostalgic fan base among older filmgoers who fondly remembered
the super-strong defender of justice and freedom from an iconic series of
silent movies (1914-1927). The
75-year-old Campogalliani had directed three of the original Maciste pictures,
and rebooting the character had long been his pet project. The recent success of Steve
Reeves’ first muscleman epics, “Hercules” (1958) and “Hercules Unchained”
(1959), finally provided the go-ahead.
Since
“Maciste” carried no brand-name value here, “Son of Samson” became the title
for the dubbed, slightly edited version that opened in New York on June 2,
1962. The new title
shrewdly reminded ticket-buyers of Cecil B. DeMille’s popular “Samson and
Delilah” (1950), from which the script lifted a couple of incidental
situations. Also, with
its biblical connotation, “Son of Samson” was designed to placate moralist
watchdogs in conservative small towns. It was okay to ogle a sexy leading lady in skimpy, navel-baring harem
outfits and an oiled-up, nearly naked hero, as long as the Good Book somehow
fit into the scenario. DeMille
had virtually pioneered the same tactic. Never mind that “Son of
Samson” had no narrative connection to the DeMille picture. For that matter, it really had
no religious elements at all. With
its second-unit visuals of the pyramids and other desert monuments, It might
just as easily have been retitled “Samson Meets Cleopatra” to exploit current
publicity around Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “Cleopatra,” which was still a year
away from release. The
“new” Maciste was so popular in Italy that more films followed, in which Mark
Forest was followed in the role by Kirk Morris and Gordon Scott, among others. Later, several of the pictures
were packaged with other peplums for syndicated TV broadcast in America as
“Sons of Hercules” and “Gladiator Theatre.”
In
Campogalliani’s movie, Maciste (Mark Forest) wanders through Egypt in the 5th
Century B.C. looking for good deeds to perform. When he’s attacked by lions,
he kills one with his bare hands (like Victor Mature’s Samson in the DeMille
picture) and is saved from the other by an archer who turns out to be Kenamun,
the Pharaoh’s son. Kenamun
and his father Armiteo try to keep their cruel Persian vizier from oppressing
the common folk, but Armiteo’s trophy wife Smedes (Chelo Alonso) secretly
throws in with the vizier. They
murder the Pharaoh, put Kenamun under a spell, and dispatch their troops to
round up unoffending peasants for brutal slave labor. Maciste steps in to rescue the
villagers, including pretty sisters Tekaet and Nofret, and break Smedes’ spell
over Kenamun. Unlike the
heroes in today’s movie franchises, Maciste doesn’t brood over a tortuous
back-story involving daddy issues, murdered parents, or remorse over past
misdeeds. Asked why he
spends his time helping poor people for no personal gain, he simply answers,
“It is my destiny.” In
that more innocent era of movie entertainment, no further explanation was
required. When Maciste
and Smedes meet in the palace, she tries to seduce him with a slinky belly
dance, and we visit an ingenious execution chamber known as “The Cell of
Death.” There, if you
somehow escape being crushed between two closeable walls, you’ll fall into
a pool of crocodiles. The
script by prolific screenwriters Oreste Biancoli and Ennio De Concini
faithfully observes Chekhov’s famous dictum. If a Cell of Death appears in
the story, someone must perish there before the final credits roll.
The print
of “Son of Samson” presented by Kino Lorber is the Italian version with a
dubbed English voice track. It
includes a fleeting glimpse of a woman’s bare breasts (full disclosure, in case
you’re curious . . . not Chelo Alonso’s) that was censored out of the American
print. Even here, it
speeds by so fast it seems to be optically blurred. Older fans will be glad to see
hunky Mark Forest and super-hot Chelo Alonso again in peak trim, although the
simplistic plot is a reminder that the Italian sword-and-toga movies (even a
better-budgeted one like this, seen in proper Totalscope and Technicolor
presentation after years of abysmal “Gladiator Theatre” prints) tend not to
live up to our youthful memories when we revisit them many years later. The Marvel Studios generation
may squirm at the old-fashioned pace of the script, and wonder why the laconic
hero doesn’t brush off various perils with a stream of clever quips.
Nevertheless,
if you can get your 12-year-old kid brother, son, nephew, or grandson to sit
still long enough, he’ll learn that the basics for luring audiences to the
ticket booth haven’t changed all that much since 1960, whether the buffed-up
guy in the poster is Mark Forest, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Dwayne “The Rock”
Johnson. Millennial
sword-and-toga dramas like the “300” movies (2006 and 2014) and cable’s
“Spartacus” series (2010-13) have more nudity and graphic carnage, but still,
at the end of the day, it’s all about the abs.
The Kino Lorber
release includes captioning and an excellent, insightful, spirited audio
commentary from movie guys David Del Valle and Michael Varrati.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)