Film Summary CCCLIV (Samson)


Samson's living in India?

Well if Hercules can fight Mongols and Artemix can travel to the America then I can't see why it be a problem for Samson to live in the land of the Indus Valley.

This is a film that takes its cues from the other Hercules movies of the day. Samson is the potential hero (there's also this Prince that gets involved later on. And he's supposed to be a bright omen of the future. You know the political hero if you will.)
But none of this matters as of the moment. For Samson has to break into an all woman's Fortress to retrieve a small kid that one of the ladies had taken from his local Forest.
Now despite the name it's not actually in all woman's Fortress. They have this one wizard guy who was just kind of living there who's supposed to be the consort and there's this other really big guy who's supposed to be security. Nobody even talks about him. He just fight Samson for a couple of minutes and then dies. Before Samson inevitably breaks down the doors of the Fortress and takes back the small kid.
This outrageous Queen Sheba. I guess she really like that baby goat and really wanted it back. Why she couldn't get a different baby goat is beyond me.
She wants to have Sampson arrested. And sends out her Squad of female warriors to do so. Or one would call them female warriors, it's not like these are Amazonians or anything. They're just a bunch of girls in fairly nice dresses with those weird snake looking swords who go out and find Samson.

He decides to come on his own accord just to see the princess because there's this weird romance going on between them. After she went out herself to find the man and retrieve her kid. It's at this point that she stole his horse. And for some reason he doesn't seem that bothered about it.
You could have just gone back and got your horse. In fact why didn't he do that? He made all that effort to go and rescue a baby goat but his own horse gets stolen and he just seems indifferent to it.

But there's no time for that. For it seems the magical wizard man who lives in the female Castle has an underground layer full of other priests and these two little people one covered in blue the other covered in red. The red one can create Sparks and flames and light candles and possibly light other things on fire. The blue one can create massive sandstorms and summon weird looking carpets and God knows what else. They're these weird superpower beings.

Why does the Queen love Samson? She's met the guy like twice and in one of those occasions she stole his horse. She's only seen them properly once and she was annoying the whole time. I mean I get it, the guy is good-looking and he's got that Suave but kind of naïvete about him. But that's still no excuse to love them.
And why would Samson like her? She's stolen your animals more than once she's rude and obnoxious and hasn't shown to be a very good person especially towards you. Once again she's pretty but that's all she's got going for. As it goes from the film's perspective he has the upper hand he's got better standards he can go for. At least find a nice girl.
Although with all that said, I believe Samson is married. Or at least he traditionally was, he had at least three wives. Maybe that's why he's so open about all this. He's not bothered about having a fourth. Even from a traditional Muslim point of view he'd still be okay. He can't go beyond this. Or at least he's not supposed to. Maybe he can make a deal with God and have more wives, it works for Muhammad.

Pacing is a bit slow. Some might chop that up to its age others might say it's the songs. I chop it up to the drawn-out horse chases and fight scenes. Now admittedly a lot of these are fun to watch. Some of the choreography between Sampson and his opponents could be really fun and it's always amusing to see two Burly giant men tackle each of the ground for our amusement.
And then there's the part where he has to fight the tiger. And it's both a combination of ridiculously cheap and horrifyingly Ludacris as you realise they cut from scenes of him fighting a stuffed animal to some other poor schmuck dressed in the same clothes as the actor who plays Samson actually getting attacked by this tiger.

I don't know why but after the lion scene I just kind of lost interest in this film. There's something of a slog to it. I feel as if I have little to no investment. And I don't know why this is, I love most of the Hercules movies or Jason the Argonauts and this film Falls right into these categories. It's acting, set design and general story are the same as any other B movie Epic of the day.
A part of me had wondered if it was a foreign disconnect. But I've seen Roman epics made by plenty of other countries. The Italian, Spanish and Mexicans of all made him and I find most of those generally entertaining. But there's just something about this movie that's uninteresting to me.

Maybe it's just not that good of film. And instead of saying so I'm trying to find some weird excuse.
I think it's just down two tone. You watch one of these epic films and you suspect a Burly man fighting monsters with cheap costumes or a big Roman army (or Indian army), maybe there's some political Espionage in the background. The senators (or in this case: Magical wizard Council) tries to conquer the local land.
And then you have these half-hearted attempts at romance. Between Samson in the queen and a few other people too. But excluding the musical numbers a lot of the film doesn't really focus on that. And I think my brain is trying to figure out what it wants from this movie. Do I want to watch action adventure film where Samson fights the Dragon or do I want to Romance of the ages film where Samson falls in love with the queen. I kind of wish they would just choose one and stick with it.

Or maybe the whole thing is just too darn long.

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