Le sette sfide

Tough sandal film with Ed Fury

This peplum film, also known by the English title "The Seven Revenges", was released in Italian cinemas on April 1, 1961. The film was directed by Primo Zeglio and written by Sergio Leone ("Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod / Play Me the Song of Death" (1968), among others.

The Great Khan (Roldano Lupi) rushes from victory to victory, but realizes that the time is ripe for a successor. There are bitter battles for succession between the tribes that follow him. As part of a tournament of life and death, the Circassian Ivan (Ed Fury) and the Kyrgyz Amok (Furio Meniconi) are supposed to decide between themselves who is the more worthy successor. The extremely strong Ivan dominates the sophisticated challenges, but is brought down by a sneaky arrow shot by his competitor, so that he also suffers severe burns. Badly disfigured, he is able to recover through the self-sacrificing care of the beautiful Tamara (Elaine Stewart (1930-2011)), but now seeks murderous revenge. Together with his fellow fighter Kir (Gabriele Antonini, born in 1938, who also appeared as Odysseus in the Hercules films with Steve Reeves) and the beautiful Khan daughter Suani (Bella Cortez, born in Cuba in 1942), Iwan succeeds in to confront his evil adversary Amok, who has since become the Great Khan...

This film is unusually dark and harsh for a sandal or peplum film. The boyishly attractive Ed Fury's face is disfigured in his role as Ivan and can only be seen with a face mask for half of the film. In the superbly choreographed fights (particularly good: the tournament between Circassians and Kyrgyz in the middle of the film) there is merciless killing.

The American bodybuilder Ed Fury (born 1928) convincingly portrays his broken character Ivan. After moderate success in Hollywood (for example, like Steve Reeves, he was seen as part of the men's Olympic team in a singing performance by Jane Russell in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953)), he left - attracted by the immense success of Steve Reeves as Hercules - in 1960 to the Roman Cinecitta to film "Ursus in the Kingdom of the Amazons" (1960). This Ursus was also supposed to be the star role of the blonde and rather boyish-looking muscle man.

This sandal film, which was made primarily in the former Yugoslavia (today: Croatia), is particularly worth seeing because of its unusually realistic harshness!

THE SEVEN REVENGES might not be great art but as a Peplum, or a Sword & Sandal film, it rocks! A combination of action that's full of energy and excellent production design make this a fun 90 minutes to watch. Ed Fury stars as an Ivan the Terrible of sorts and it's easily his best performance of his career. He really sinks his teeth into his role. Sporting dark hair and a pencil-lined goatee, the friendly and happy go lucky Ed Fury we're usually accustomed to seeing is gone, certainly with the fact that his character is more anti-hero. What happens to Fury is also a tad surprising, considering his career relies on his boy next door good looks. The gorgeous Bella Cortez also stars. The sets and costumes are excellent, so much so that some scenes were re-used in other films like Hercules Prisoner of Evil. This film is totally forgotten and yet it's one of the better Peplums.