Of course, with titles switching up willy-nilly abroad, your Goliath movie may very well end up a Hercules movie, and vice versa. Still, within the boundaries of Italy, the name mattered, and even while you cannot trademark a hero from Grecian antiquity, it makes sense to stake out a spot anyway – for Italian pepla peddlers were surprisingly respectful towards their competitors.
Not available: Hercules, Ulysses, Maciste, Goliath, Ursus (who?!). Unusable: Aeneas, because Aeneas sucks. Nonexistent at that stage: Kratos. Still unclaimed: Samson. Like a Hercules of the Bible, Samson’s Old Testament feats of strength include such genre-ready hijinks as wrestling a lion, destroying a palace, and battling whole armies. Then there’s the whole evil seductress bit with Delilah. The story is essentially a peplum waiting to happen!
Or…or you could just appropriate that name, call a movie Samson simply to announce “There is a strong, shirtless beefcake cipher here,” and call it a day. (Philistines!) Besides, cinematic trends abhor excess innovation, when Follow the Leader is the name of the game. So Samson, a 1961 release coinciding with the absolute zenith of the movement, is pretty much just a Greek-set picture, wherein a beefy beef boy (here called Samson) discovers a kingdom ruled over unfairly by a tyrant type, controlled by a seductress, and all this complex political intrigue is eventually solved by the sheer flexing of muscles most of us do not have.
Filling in the blanks like an Italian-themed Mad Lib: The warlord is presently called Warkalla (Serge Gainsbourg – what, again?!). The seductress, Romilda (Mara Berni). Assorted other no-doubt-standard characters pop up, each portrayed by actors with unfamiliar Italian names.
Headlining it all is Brad Harris as Samson, making his grand leap from stunt coordinator to leading man! Given the particular…obsessions of this fantastical form, that makes him overqualified to star. Obviously it worked out well enough for the genre’s upper echelons, as witness Harris’ ascent to Hercules in the following year’s The Fury of Hercules (reviewed yesterday).
The same goes for director Gianfranco Parolini, an otherwise undistinguished working member of the peplum community. Having not seen this movie (only so very many others which sound exactly like it), I can only refer to Fury for a sense of Parolini’s brilliance. In other words, Samson is bad.
Samson is otherwise notable for granting an early role to future muscleman Sergio Ciani, who…
Start again! Such a Neopolitan name won’t get you very far up the pectoral pedestal. How about we switch it to “Alan Steel?” I dare say we’ve found the most ridiculously hyper-macho name in the genre! The only thing that’d be more epic would be “Brock Samson.”
Anyway, let the record stand that Samson was the start for Steel.
Part Two, 1963’s Samson vs. the Pirates, represents an aberration in the cycle, in that it barely fits at all. Far from maintaining the standard Greco-Roman setting, and also far be it from placing Samson in his original Judaical environs, rather this Tanio Boccia-helmed pec pic pilfers pirates. It’s more swashbuckler and less sword-and-sandals, doing the Errol Flynn Sea Hawk, Captain Blood, Adventures of Robin Hood thing. This counts as “mixing it up” within such a proscribed realm, moving from B.C. to the 17th century.
To keep things from being completely unfamiliar, the story beats follow the standard damsel and villain framework. Only this time, Samson is out to stop dread pirates rather than preserve some kingdom or other. And to show just where Samson vs. the Pirates’ allegiances lie, the movie takes reportedly every opportunity to strip its hero down to something anachronistically resembling the familiar nipple-revealing toga, and run him through Feats of Strength™, “World’s Strongest Man” style.
“Feats of Strength™” are a Kirk Morris special, as it is Kirk Morris who plays Samson here. Calling this a sequel to the 1961 copycat is pretty iffy, as it relies solely upon possessing a familiar name. Surely in the U.S. that wouldn’t fly. But the Italians consider a franchise differently. It’s all in the name, baby!
Morris returns for the same year’s Part Three, Hercules, Samson and Ulysses, only now in the role of Hercules – the only time he’d officially play the Herc. And indeed, the title betrays one notable fact: This is a crossover! Yes, it’s Hercules # 10, even as it’s Samson # 3 (and Ulysses # 0, for that isn’t a franchise). Such was the swift prominence “Samson” attained, that it became financially beneficial to crossbreed, confuse the hell out of me, and rake in the lira.
Even so, whatever ambition one would expect from Hercules, Samson and Ulysses doesn’t extend to the casting. Able to afford only one top drawer Adonis at a time, producers cast a rather ridiculous figure as Samson: Iloosh Kohoshabe. The man had basically no career prior, and hardly any afterwards, but for a minor position in Iranian film…Man, tossed out of the Italian film industry – that’s gotta sting!
Of Ulysses (Enzo Cerusico, unacceptably puny), he does not belong to any prior franchise – See my write-up for Ulysses vs. Hercules as to why. Still, his name in the title sounds mighty impressive.
At the very least they for the first time recognize the Biblical significance of Samson, and treat his “character” likewise. For while the tale begins with Hercules and Ulysses setting out to defeat a no-doubt cheesy-looking sea monster, instead they get washed up all Jonah-like in Judea. Here, Samson and Hercules mistake each other for villains, and duke it out. It’s the old philosophical schoolyard quandary: Could Hercules beat up Samson? Does Zeus hood a candle to Yahweh? And will Hercules be clever enough to make the connection between Samson’s burliness and his hair?
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Needless to say, I have not watched any of these flicks. Blame obscurity, blame cheapness, blame the fact that the only ones to survive into the DVD era are those which got the “Hercules” name slapped on them. Movies such as Samson # 4, 1963’s Samson vs. the Black Pirate (itself a damnably confusing title, barely distinct from Samson vs. the Pirates). So Samson vs. the BLACK Pirate is known to most (amongst those rarified weirdos who do know such effluvia) rather as Hercules and the Black Pirate.
Anyway, Samson vs. the BLACK Pirate…
Or…HERCULES and the Black Pirate, whatever.
Also in keeping with Samson vs. the Pirates, Part Four is a swashbuckler – so we’re on the fringe of the peplum, which I believe is actually a pun in Italian. Also in keeping with the apparent form of Samson vs. the Pirates, Samson vs. the Black Pirate does most everything in its power to do nothing. Let’s skip over this plotline with efficiency, for the filmmakers, like director Luigi Capuano, themselves have little concern for it.
There is a kingdom – check! Or, rather, a governorship, or some such, in this Caribbean set swashbuckler. Present and accounted for, at any rate, is the leader, Don Alonzo, and his lovely daughter Rosita (Rosalba Neri), waiting patiently for her true life’s calling, as a damsel in distress. On the flip side, there’s the scheming nogoodnik with aims at the throne (or whatever it counts as), Don Rodrigo (Piero Lulli). The titular Black Pirate, which is his entire name, is but Don Rodrigo’s henchman (Andrea Aureli). From these standard players, you could more or less use your peplum familiarity to parse out the rest.
And of course, there’s also Samson himself, with Alan Steel graduating to lead status. Though he behaves like a personality-deprived variation on Errol Flynn, Steel’s Samson has a marvelous clothing allergy, switching from a dapper fop to a rippling he-man at the first possible moment. In fact, the clothing gradually diminishes from the entire male cast as the film goes on, introducing anachronistic near-nudity into a tale of piracy.
Now, those are the elements which keep Samson vs. the Black Pirate well within the peplum framework. It is what I’d call a “bad” peplum. Forgivably, there is no fantasy element, giant monsters or whatnot. A fantasy-steeped swashbuckler would instead be a Pirates of the Caribbean film, and thank Yahweh that wasn’t a peplum – saving us all from a shirtless Orlando Bloom or [shudder!] Geoffrey Rush.
Less forgivably, within the sword-and-sandals game book, is the lack of a secondary female, a femme fatale, leaving the non-homoerotic eye candy severely depleted. It’s amazing, a swashbuckler which cannot make the corset a comely fashion, but leave it to 1964 Italy.
That doesn’t leave a whole lot to respond to, not in a genre so prescribed, and with so many of ‘em recently under my belt. The story is not worth delving into. It’s not like the filmmakers would’ve expected audiences to take it seriously anyway. With that, none of the characters read in even the slightest. So a viewer is never remotely concerned with how this’ll play out, and I doubt even a movie-ignorant child could lend the slightest bit of credence, interest, or suspense to what plays out.
That leaves only a few methods for getting any enjoyment out of Samson vs. the Black Pirate. Naturally for these lesser pepla, one can just take it as camp – though there’s not a gigantic amount of that, once one has grown desensitized to the visual presence of naked male flesh.
The other option is to simply appreciate the action sequences as a mere collection of stunts.
Oh, but the movie’s not that technically adept either! The visuals are murky and washed out – and we’re dealing with the best surviving print here! The cinematography works poorly even in terms of framing, not that dealing with a 1960s pan-and-scan helps. All the physical exploits are generally familiar, though there’s at least the novelty of seeing rapier duels in a genre more fixated upon the broadsword. Given this uniqueness, it’s unsurprising that such swashbuckling shenanigans are not done terribly well. And that’s even when one considers director Capuano was familiar with epees, what with his previous Zorro e i tre moschettieri – Yeah, the Italians combined Zorro and the Three Musketeers! You wanna make something of it?
…
So…Samson vs. the Black Pirate, a movie I can barely be arsed to think twice about, even after a walk. As is, we’re left with the sheer, Ed Woodian pleasure of a few enjoyably bad bits, brought upon us by the U.S. distributors. That means laughing at the dubbing, which is never as promising a proposition as with kung fu exports. The major fun is the name switch from Samson to Hercules. But somehow, this doesn’t seem to have been the original design, even with the English dub. No, I’d wager they first went with the “Samson” name, as it ought to be. So the name “Hercules” gets re-redubbed in awkwardly, in a temporal space demanding a two-syllable word. In a deeper voice! It’s pretty hilarious, frankly, so at least something is salvable from this bland product.
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Moving on with the series, to its final entry, Part Five…
The sword-and-sandals genre was waning in these middle years of the 1960s, a victim of oversaturation. Pity Samson, as that hero only managed 4 entries in the time that Hercules and Maciste appeared in over a dozen extravaganzas each. Surely there wasn’t the sort of major box office clout for such a Jewish name, without a Cabiria or the 1958 Hercules to back it up. And for the genre’s standards, Samson does like clothing too much.
No matter, in the desperate final year of the peplum (1965), all the great producers joined forces together to do the sword-and-sandals crossover to end all sword-and-sandals crossovers – the GREAT CROSSOVER. That day, when it comes, shall mark our penultimate peplum probing. But we’re not there yet, as we must first look at some more Hercules, then more Maciste, then Ursus, then some MORE Hercules. Still, the light is at the end of the tunnel – and only 10 days out!
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Hercules (1958)
• No. 2 Hercules Unchained (1959)
• No. 3 The Revenge of Hercules (1960)
• No. 4 Hercules vs. the Hydra (1960)
• No. 5 Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis (1961)
• No. 6 Hercules id the Haunted World (1961)
• No. 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• No. 8 Ulysses vs. Hercules (1962)
• No. 9 The Fury of Hercules (1962)
• No. 12 Hercules in the Land of Darkness (1964)
• No. 16 Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (1964)
• No. 17 Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)
• No. 18 Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965)
• No. 19 Hercules the Avenger (1965)
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