La vengeance d'Ursus

Revenge Of Ursus stars Canadian bodybuilder Samson Burke playing a superhero who wants to retire to his farm like Cincinnatus. But like Michael Corleone, they keep dragging him back in.

Ursus has an Opie like little brother in this film and they're both involved in the politics of two city states where the king of one state wants to marry the daughter of the king of the state where Ursus lives.

It's a political marriage in every sense of the word. A tyrant to his own people, the bad king desires nothing less than to marry the daughter then kill the father and claim both states. He's a Snidely Whiplash villain if I ever saw one.

This one is a little bit better than most of the peplum's I've been viewing lately.

Samson Burke (he of "Hercules Meets the 3 Stooges" fame), lantern-jawed and broad of back, plays the mythological Ursus, a man with a past, which is only hinted at in the beginning. He now farms with his puckish little brother, Durias, until called upon to confront the evil and scheming King Zagro and his toady, Lycurgas who are plotting to take over the neighboring kingdom of Leecha, through a marriage with King Altheus' lovely (in a 1960's Italian kind-of-way) daughter, Sirah (whew). The plot has lots of action, moves along swiftly, and as these things go, is "not bad", aided by the hero's skillful execution of flying drop kicks, airplane spins, and other impressive TV wrestling moves, and ending up with an early version of an Ironman Event, to test the truthfulness of Ursus' version of events (the schemers beg to differ). One small disconcerting note: the princess' voice sounds remarkably like it is dubbed by Kathy Lee Gifford.

Ursus (Samson Burke) fights evil King Zagro (Livio Lorenzon) who wants to enlarge his kingdom considerably by killing another king and marrying a princess.

Okayish sword & sandals movie with the usual heroic scenes (Ursus is breaking chains, makes an elephant walk backwards and wins fights against any number of opponents). Samson Burke, it must be said though, isn't much of an actor. Also we get the typical annoying little boy brother he needs to rescue every now and then. On the other hand, Gianni Rizzo plays a twisted greedy character very effectively again - ready to change from the losing to the winning side. And Livio Lorenzon gets the best line in the script, replying when begged not to harm Ursus: 'I'm not going to harm him. I'm going to kill him!'

Made the same year as " Ursus e la ragazza tartara (1961)" ,these other Ursus adventures have nothing to do with it ;even the muscle man is not the same : Joe Robinson in the former ,Samson (sic) Burke in this one ;but both films have something in common: Ursus has almost always a brat on tow ;this kid sometimes plays the part of a supporter in a football game: "come on Ursus! come on!

The plot is childish : the noble king wants to marry his daughter to a treacherous sovereign of a kingdom bordering his ;Ursus ,secretly in love with the damsel (soon in distress) , accompanies and protects her during her trip to her future homeland and in the court of the fiancé .Double-dealer king's adviser (Gianni Rizzo , the regular baddie of the Italian sword and sandal ) will put a spoke in the giant's wheel.

I have never done this before, but I am writing a review specifically to tell you not to try to watch "La Vendetta di Ursus" (or "Vengeance of Ursus") from a particular DVD producer. That's because I found the DVD to be completely unwatchable and of such unacceptable quality I just gave up trying to see it.

Not surprisingly, the film I tried to see was from Alpha Video. Alpha is known for producing films that are in the public domain. And, since they are such a cut-rate producer, they do absolutely nothing to clean up the prints, nor do they provide any DVD extras or captioning. The only way I'd ever recommend them is if no other company has released the film--and unfortunately, this is often the case. The films they do bring us are wonderful to lovers of B-movies and silents...provided the prints are watchable.

The film was scratchy, completely bleached (you could barely tell it had even once been a color film it was so bad) and the film repeatedly jumped--with missing bits and pieces throughout the film. While I can ignore the scratchiness and washed out print, because often portions of sentences were omitted and the scenes jumped about due to missing frames, I just gave up and recommend you find another version if possible or just skip it entirely. After all, there must have been 29123491324 different Italian muscle-dramas from the era starring the likes of Hercules, Maciste, Ursus or Samson.