Wednesday, March 20, 2019

By the Gods!

Kirk Morris, as Samson, in a spectacular 'feat of strength' moment from SAMSON & THE SEA BEAST (1963)

This set up is quite amazing. Not a big budgeted film by any means and yet since these were Italian productions, beautiful locations and ships were readily available, something even big budget Hollywood films couldn't easily get at the time. The 'death trap' is quite elaborate: the small boat with the rowers are pulling away, bringing the lances closer to Samson. Samson is not in danger as long as he keeps the boat close to the dock but with so many men rowing, it's a fight for dear life.

Director Tanio Boccia directed Kirk in the all time PEPLUM classic, TRIUMPH OF MACISTE (1961). IMDb's profile of Kirk has the absolute worst photo (headshot) imaginable, taken from this movie.




4 comments:

Scott Ochiltree said...

Interesting collection of photos.

The ships used in Italian Peplum and pirate movies were often quite inaccurate historically.

The ones in the first picture are noticeably better than average. However, their masts seem too tall and they need more yards.

Hollywood spent a lot more $$$ and got the ships correct in its various MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY films. I believe some of these vessels may still exit.

Brrrodie the Westie said...

LOOKS GOOD ... I have a fair Italian dub, taken from TV and repackaged, which looks like 1:85 or matted widescreen, and imdb says aspect ratio of 1:85. But your crisp screen caps look like 2:35 ... and that's what it says on the product page at amazon.fr. Which is it? Thanks for posting

Unknown said...

Shouldn't the rowers be sitting in the opposite direction if they are trying to row the boat away from Samson?

Stef said...

Yeah, that death trap was pretty ok, but it took me a while just to get what was going on. The camera angles were clumsy.