Le géant de la vallée des rois

Evil Queen Smedes (Chelo Alonso) controls Persian-occupied Egypt while keeping her stepson-rightful ruler Kenamun (Angelo Zanolli)-under the influence of a mind-numbing medallion. Now, it's up to the mighty Maciste (Mark Forest) to lead a daring revolt in order to overthrow Smedes and restore Kenamun to the throne

Son of Samson is quite an atmospheric peplum with the desolate scenery adding to the feeling of helplessness and oppression the Egyptians feel. You actually feel like you're there - the scenery is quite vivid. Surprisingly, it's a bit bloody and brutal, for its time anyway. It has a good story, however, and the narrative unravels leisurely. Maybe it's a little laborious in pace. But it's intriguing and involving enough.

Mark Forest stars as Samson (or Maciste), a strongman figure with a keen sense of justice, a vast contrast to Chelo Alonso, who plays the evil Queen and steals the scene with her wicked ways. Does she get her just dessert? You'll have to watch to find out!

Maciste is in Egypt where an evil queen is out to seduce him into her villainous ways, to get what she wants.

The name Samson appears in the title but this has no relationship to the biblical Samson. The film was distributed to English-speaking countries as Son of Samson but in all of the original films Maciste has no relationship to anyone named Samson. Italian titles translate into English as "Maciste in the Valley of the Kings" and it's aka "Maciste the Mighty" It's a film that barely kept me interested in it at times, other times was looking up more information on the internet about the film which was more interesting than the film itself.

2/10

Better than expected wide-screen peplum, with fine exteriors shot in Egypt, and terrific Chelo Alonso as evil queen Smedes, who has time to do an exotic dance that is half belly dancing, half Cuban pelvis shaking, a plus that disappeared in her second foray into a Maciste film (in the land of the cyclops) the following year. Smedes is the treacherous wife of the Egyptian pharaoh, whom she kills according to the designs of Persian invaders, and tries to seduce the handsome Italian-American Mark Forest, in a good version of Maciste, who leads the people in a revolt against the wicked Smedes. As Steve Reeves, Forest also retired soon, investing their money and time on something else: Reeves in a ranch; Forest, teaching operatic singing.

Most peplums with a Yugoslavian partner in the international co-production tend to have interesting location photography and a different visual style, and this one is no exception. The setting is the 11th century BC Egypt, where the nation is controlled by Persian occupiers who have enslaved the people. A well-intentioned pharoah who tries to defend the people is killed and his evil, manipulative wife (well-played by Chelo Alonso, in the tradition of over-the-top female villains in old Republic serials!) takes over and sells out the nation. On his return home to straighten things out, the pharoah's son, Kenamun, runs into Mark Forest (as Maciste, the Son of Samson) and the plot kicks into action. The plot also includes a mystical necklace that makes the wearer a zombie ready to be ordered around (shades of old serials once again!), and of course there is some romance. Mark Forest is as handsome as, say, James Darren, his physique is well-used in a number of difficult "tasks", and he is believable in the romantic scenes as well as the fights. I've seen 11 of his 12 1960s films and enjoy all of them. Interesting visuals, a unique setting, a fine female antagonist, Mark Forest's exciting presence--definitely an above-average sword-and-sandal opus for fans of the genre. Director Carlo Campogalliani was involved with many excellent historical films with American stars: Ed Fury's first Ursus movie; Steve Reeves in Goliath and the Barbarians; Lex Barker in Captain

Falcon; Jack Palance and Guy Madison in Sword of the Conqueror (that's one crying out for a DVD transfer--the circulating copies are very splicey). Check some of them out. A copy of this film was shown at UCLA recently at a peplum festival-- if there's a copy good enough quality to be screened there, it needs to be transferred to DVD now!

Well for the first half of this entry the acting is very wooden but somewhere down the line the cast start to look interested, I feared the worst when I bought this on DVD but was surprised just how good it is (in parts!), our hero saves a bunch of babes...sorry slaves from capture and unites with the people against the tyrants...well you should get the idea by now if you watch these kind of movies,as always Mark Forest looks superb as Machiste son of Samson and his muscular frame has the ladies in question in a spin, one word of warning though, some battle scenes are incredibly brutal and gory, this surprised me greatly as I don't think this would have been passed by British censors but as these epics come and go a good entry into the genre.