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Son Of Samsom
[Retromedia]
1960; color
Directed by Carlo Campogalliani
Starring: Mark Forest, Chelo Alonso, Angelo Zanolli, Federica Ranchi, Carlo Tamberlani & Nino Musco
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The sword and sandal genre is kind of unchartered territory for me. To date I think I've only ever seen two movies that would qualify: Hercules And The Moon Men (the husband bought a dusty VHS copy of at a flea market a few summers ago) and the Elizabeth Taylor / Richard Burton version of Cleopatra. (Quite long, but awesome!) So I wasn't really sure what to expect from this movie, other than a muscular body builder type who roams from place to place righting wrongs, kissing pretty girls and throwing boulders, and in fact it did have those things. What I didn't expect was for it to be so violent and bloody! There were stabbings, beheadings, people buried face down in the sand up to their ankles and feet first up to their heads while still alive. (Of course those poor souls who were buried alive will then be bitten by presumably poisonous snakes and or trampled by horse hooves.) Moments later another fella who already had the misfortune of being arrowed to the gut has insult added to his injury as he's burned alive while still suffering from his mighty stab wound. And that's just in the first five minutes! There is a plotline to justify all this violence, and as anyone who read the title may have imagined, introduce the son of Samson character. It has something to do with the Persians conquering Egypt - which the husband was quick to point out is historically inaccurate; I'd elaborate but the backstory is revealed just as quickly during the first bloody battle and I kind of got distracted by all the red paint. The story also involves a hapless pharaoh who's being manipulated by his sexy but evil queen, (actually a Persian trying to take over from the inside), and the pharaoh's son who returns to take the throne after his father's untimely but not unexpected death at the hand of one of his wife's cronies. On his journey, son of pharaoh meets son of Samson, Maciste. Then lions get killed, and in one case wrestled and punched in the face, and a friendship is forged. The type of relationship considered a bromance by today's standards. By the standards of Greco-Roman era, of course, it just meant they were gay. Anywhoo, the two set out to open up a can of whoop tushie on the whole Persian invasion thang, which they do, causing yet more violence and death. All of this naturally only breeds more of the same, climaxing in a typically bloody, typically violent example of a violent uprising, culminating in the end of the movie. Probably not for everyone, and not the type of thing I'm always in the mood for, but fun to watch.
—Bunny
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