‘A man without courage is a sword blade without an edge.’
After assuming control of the Chinese Empire as regent to the youthful Prince, Mongol leader the Grand Khan enjoys a decade of power. However, with the youngster about to come of age, he begins plotting an assassination…
Well-mounted Peplum adventure from director Riccardo Freda, which rises clearly above most of its contemporaries. Ex-Tarzan Gordon Scott makes his second appearance as legendary strongman Maciste after his debut in ‘Goliath and the Vampires/Maciste contro il vampiro’ (1961).
After persistent trouble with Tartar invaders, the Chinese Emperor Wung (Ely Yeh) enlists the help of the Mongol forces led by Garak, the Great Khan (Leonardo Severini). Together they successfully drive out the invaders, but Yeh dies by an assassin’s knife at the celebration banquet. Amidst the confusion, Severini assumes control of the kingdom as regent to Yeh’s young son.
Ten years pass, and Prince Tai Sung (Chu Lai Chit) is approaching manhood, little suspecting that Severini and his consort Liu Tai (Hélène Chanel) have arranged a fatal accident for him during a hunting party. Fortunately, Maciste (Scott) is on hand to save the young man’s life, but Chit’s sister, Princess Lei-ling (Yôko Tani), has also been targeted at her convent retreat. She manages to escape the soldiers and join up with daredevil rebel Cho (Gabriele Antonini). The Princess and the fisherman fall in love, but Severini plans to marry her to legitimise his claim to the throne.
Given the number of identikit ‘sword and sandal’ films that hit screens during Italian cinema’s brief Peplum craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s, reviews almost become just a matter of pointing out their small differences. Pleasingly, Freda’s film does stray from the standard template in several significant areas, although the overarching story is nothing very original. Its first distinction is a better-than-usual budget, which allows a degree of spectacle often lacking in similar productions. There’s also the presence of Freda, a well-established director with a good reputation, who has been directing since 1942 and has gathered nominations for several awards at the Venice Film Festival.
There’s also a freshness to the way in which the film approaches the familiar concepts and clichés. The most obvious example is Scott’s inevitable trial of strength in the arena. Yes, it involves holding back a horse-drawn chariot, but it’s to prevent the beheading of some prisoners, and he leaps from the crowd to do it rather than as a prisoner in chains. Similarly, Chanel has the inevitable change of heart after she meets our hero, but it’s nothing to do with any soppy stuff or the usual obsession with his muscles; it’s down to self-interest and jealousy. These are not radical departures from the Peplum template by any means, but any plot differences from the usual shenanigans are noteworthy and most welcome.
There are also some welcome moments of humour, possibly courtesy of co-writer Duccio Tessari, whose later work as a writer and director often betrayed such slyly amusing tendencies. Scott handles this and the other demands of his role with seemingly effortless ease, displaying bags more charisma than nearly all the other musclemen of the era. Similarly, Tani looks more engaged than she did at times during ‘Ursus and the Tartar Princess/Ursus e la ragazza tartara/The Savage Hordes’ (1961), probably because the script gives her a stronger, more defined character.
The action is well-staged for the most part and allowed to play out on a wider canvas than usual, thanks to the superior production values. Inevitably, when the film was released in America, Maciste underwent the typical change of identity, but rather than becoming ‘Hercules’, he was renamed ‘Samson’. This was common practice with the distribution of Peplum films in the English-speaking market. However, it is a bit of a mystery why this example was retitled ‘Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World’ as this has no relation to its content or any obvious box office appeal.
Gordon Merrill Werschkul was born in 1926 in Oregon and was working as a lifeguard when a seven-year movie contract dropped into his lap. Rechristened as Gordon Scott, he made his debut as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous fictional hero in ‘Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle’ (1955), marrying co-star Vera Miles a year later. Five more films followed, one including Sean Connery as a villain but by 1960, the character’s big-screen popularity was waning. Decamping to Italy to take on the role of Maciste, Scott subsequently made some more Peplum films but also diversified into other genres, playing Julius Caesar in the historical drama ‘A Queen for Caesar/Una Regina per Cesare’ (1962) and Zorro in ‘Zorro and the Musketeers’ (1963). He also starred in the decent Spaghetti Western ‘The Tramplers/Gli uomini dal passo pesante’ (1965) with Joseph Cotton but finished his screen career with two lacklustre Eurospy adventures, including the insipid ‘Danger!! Death Ray/Il Raggio infernale’ (1967).
One of the best of the Peplum adventures.