SAMSON AND THE SEVEN MIRACLES OF THE WORLD is at least half right. Though the hero in the original Italian production was another incarnation of wandering hero Maciste, at least the scenarists have the hero doing Samson-like feats, such as pulling down pillars and fighting wild beasts (here a tiger rather than the lion of the Biblical stalwart). However, there aren’t seven separate miracles in the story. At one point the English translation attempts to rationalize the title by having a character claim that Samson already did six other miracles and that the movie will climax with the seventh.
I got my hopes up for this re-viewing, having noticed that the director was horror-favorite Riccardo Freda. However, Freda can’t do much with this routine adventure-tale. Maciste/Samson shows up in 13th-century China during the Mongol dominion, and shows the Chinese people how to fight back against a ruler with the un-Mongolian name of “Garak.” Similarly, since an Italian guy plays the leader of the Chinese rebels, the script also has to rationalize him as having had foreign parentage. There’s also another Italian actress on hand as one of Garak’s concubines, and the only Asian actor of note is Japanese-born Yoko Tani, playing an imperiled princess.
Despite the charisma of Gordon Scott, he doesn’t get any good fights or any romance from any of the actresses. The film was shot on sets left over from a couple of more expensive projects with Chinese settings, one being MARCO POLO, so I imagine Freda and everyone else put in minimum effort, knowing the movie was mostly made to amortize the costs of other movie sets. Helene Chanel’s breasts were the only visual effects I cared about herein.
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