Samson-ites

It was our intention last go-around in the Moviehouse to take a look at how cinema has treated Samson - the biblical "Judge" whose love for a temptress from the other side of the sand-tracks caused him the loss of his superhuman strength and his sight until he literally brought the house down - in light of the mid-February release of "Samson," a low-budget production from Pure Flix Entertainment, a Christian-based company best known for a series of "Revelation Road" pictures that mashed up the action genre with the Rapture, as well as the "God's Not Dead" franchise of dramas. Anyway, one thing didn't lead to another, and we devoted the entire piece to spectacle meister Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 epic "Samson and Delilah" for an in-depth scrutiny of a Hollywood that once was.

Interesting facts to know and trade: Both Victor Mature and Hedy
Lamarr, the stars of "Samson and Delilah," were relatively the same
 age when they called it quits in Hollywood; he was 46, she was 47. 

For the 2018 film, unfamiliar faces Taylor James and Caitlin Leahy portray Samson and Delilah in a cast whose biggest names are "Titanic" creep Billy Zane as the anti-Hebrew king of Moab, "Blade Runner" rebel replicant Rutger Hauer as Samson's father, "Bionic Woman" Lindsay Wagner as Samson's mother, and "Twilight's" Jackson Rathbone as an antagonistic Philistine prince. Not exactly the screen heavyweights of 2014's "Noah" and "Exodus: Gods and Kings."

Danites Manoah (Rutger Hauer) and Zealphonis (Lindsay Wagner)
keep a watchful eye on their willful son (Taylor James), who appears
to be very upset about something (pictured below) in "Samson."

Probably the earliest dramatic treatment of the legend of Samson, outside of the Old Testament, was a work by John Milton, the 17th century civil servant under Oliver Cromwell and poet who created the epic blank verse poem "Paradise Lost" in 1667. Milton's tragedy "Simon Agonistes" (translated from the Greek "Samson the champion"), which was published alongside "Paradise Regained" in 1671, was a "closet drama," meaning a play presented as a group reading instead of a staged performance. Believing that the text alone could influence his listeners, Milton did not wish the work to be performed as a drama. He combined the traits of Samson with other biblical figures such as Job, while incorporating his own experiences as a blind man that echoed the fate of Samson as a blinded biblical icon.

"John Milton dictating 'Paradise Lost' to his daughters" was a
work by 19th-century Hungarian painter Mihály Munckácsy.

By 1654, Milton had gone completely blind; the cause of his blindness was most likely bilateral retinal detachment or glaucoma. His blindness drove him to dictate his verse and prose to scribes who copied them down for him.

First performed in 1877, "Samson et Dalila" was a grand opera by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns ("The Carnival of the Animals"), with a libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire. It remains the only opera of Saint-Saëns that is still regularly performed. When the Metropolitan Opera in New York City revived the opera in its 1915 season, famed tenor Enrico Caruso portrayed Samson (pictured below). Since then, the Met has staged the opera at least once every decade.

More contemporary interpretations of Samson in the
opera have been performed by Placido Domingo
and Jose Carreras.

However unlikely it may seem, in 1922, the opera was adapted for the silent screen (pictured below).

M.D. Waxman and Valia star in 1922's "Samson and Delilah."

In fact, Samson's fate was related in a number of silent pictures, dating as far back as a 1902 French short. Popular silent cinema star J. Warren Kerrigan starred in 1914's "Samson" (pictured below). Among the extras, as "Bearded Philistines," were silent movie comedian Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach, best known as the producer of Laurel and Hardy shorts and the "Our Gang" series of films.

As the U.S. entered World War I, J. Warren Kerrigan's
popularity plummeted when he refused to enlist in the
Army, saying they should first "take the great mass of men
who aren't good for anything else, or are only good for
the lower grades of work." The glib statement cost him
sympathy with audiences and support from studios. 

Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 production "Samson and Delilah" was the first sound motion picture based on the Bible since the silent film era. It should be noted that a major inspiration for the movie's script was a 1927 novel by Vladimir (also known as Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, a Russian-born Jewish Zionist leader, titled Samson the Nazirite (also called Judge and Fool). The author, a lifelong activist for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, utilized the biblical account of Samson as an ideal for an active, daring, warrior way of Jewish life.

Steve Reeves strikes a "Samson"-like pose in "Hercules."

A Samson character was featured in several Italian-made sword-and-sandal epics produced in the 1960s to capitalize on the muscleman genre started by American bodybuilder and onetime Mr. America and Mr. Universe Steve Reeves when he went overseas to star in 1958's "Hercules" and its 1959 sequel, "Hercules Unchained." One of the more interesting offerings was 1963's "Hercules, Samson and Ulysses," which featured Iranian bodybuilder Iloosh Khoshabe as the Hebrew strongman.

Hercules  (Kirk Morris, aka Venetian bodybuilder Adriano Bellini)
and Samson (Iloosh Knoshabe) toss boulders like dice cubes in
"Hercules, Samson and Ulysses," from Pietro Francisci, the director
of "Hercules" and "Hercules Unchained."

Actually, the name "Samson" was tossed around willy-nilly in these pasta-tossed potboilers, interchangeable with fictional musclebound heroes like Ursus, Maciste, and Goliath. As a matter of fact, the 1965 film "Samson and His Mighty Challenge" matched up the mighty Israelite with Hercules (played by Alan Steel, Italian bodybuilder Sergio Ciani in real life), Maciste (a made-up muscleman introduced in the 1914 Italian silent epic film "Cabiria"), and Ursus (a fictional Christian giant who survives Nero's arena in the 1895 novel Quo Vadis).

Delilah, depicted as Mrs. Samson (Moira Orfei), prepares to give
hubby (Nadir Moretti) a haircut he won't soon forget in "Samson and
His Mighty Challenge" also known as "Hercules, Samson, Maciste
and Ursus: The Invincibles."

In 1993, this movie was re-released as a comedy, "Hercules Returns," with a comedic music score and cartoonish dialogue overdubbed by Australian comic actors, including Bruce Spence (best known as the Gyro Captain in "The Road Warrior" and Jedediah the Pilot in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome").

The July 1971 issue of Marvel's "The Incredible Hulk" comic book introduced the superhero Doc Samson, otherwise known as Dr. Leonard Skivorski, a college professor and psychiatrist who is exposed to gamma radiation that causes his hair to turn green and grow. Like his namesake, his superhuman strength depends on the length of his hair. He is usually depicted in comics featuring the Hulk, sometimes as an ally, other times an antagonist.

The 1984 made-for-television movie "Samson and Delilah" provided Australian ballet dancer-model-actor Anthony Hamilton with his first major role as Samson. That same year, Hamilton took over the lead role, opposite Jennifer O'Neill in the single-season spy series "Cover Up" after the death of the program's star, Jon-Erik Hexum. Hexum was clowning around on the set with a prop gun when he shot himself in the head with the wadding from a blank cartridge. Arguably too pretty to pass for Samson, Hamilton's own career was short-lived as he died from AIDS-related pneumonia in 1995.

In a scene mirroring the publicity photo of Hedy Lamarr and Victor
Mature from 1949's "Samson and Delilah," Belinda Bauer, as Delilah,
contemplates Anthony Hamilton's tresses in the 1984 TV film.

The supporting players included Max von Sydow, Stephen Macht, and José Ferrer, with Daniel Stern, best known as one of the inept burglars in the "Home Alone" comedies, looking ill-at-ease in biblical wardrobe as Samson's ally and a commander of Israelite soldiers. Victor Mature, Cecil B. DeMille's Samson, had a cameo as Samson's father, Manoah, which would be the last role for the actor before his death in 1999.

Belinda Bauer, cast as Delilah (pictured below), had an acting career that spanned the 1980s into the '90s. She had supporting roles in the motion pictures "Flashdance," "The Rosary Murders," "RoboCop 2," and "Poison Ivy II" before retiring in 1996 to pursue a new career as a psychologist.

Dueling Delilahs: Belinda Bauer (1984), Elizabeth Hurley (1996)

Gerald Rafshoon, the executive producer of the 1996 TV miniseries "Samson and Delilah," was responsible for a series of biblical miniseries throughout the 1990s, attracting such actors as Richard Harris ("Abraham"), Matthew Modine ("Jacob"), Ben Kingsley ("Moses"), and Ben Cross ("Solomon"). The seven in total productions were made available for home viewing as "The Bible Collection." Not unlike the 2018's "Samson" star Taylor James, Eric Thal, the Nazirite half of 1996's "Samson and Delilah," was a workaday actor. His Delilah was portrayed by Elizabeth Hurley, longtime Estée Lauder model best known as "Hugh Grant's former girlfriend."

"Samson and Delilah" pairs pouty Eric Thal with sultry Elizabeth
Hurley in what looks more like a cosmetics shoot than a biblical saga.

Dubiously, the director of the small-screen "Samson and Delilah" miniseries was Nicolas Roeg, a prestigious and influential filmmaker responsible for such iconoclastic cinema as "Performance," "Walkabout," "Don't Look Now," and "The Man Who Fell to Earth." The cast included Michael Gambon as the evil king, Dennis Hopper as a scenery-chewing villainous general, Diana Rigg as Samson's mother, and Max von Sydow as the narrator.

To heck with anything mentioned in the Bible, Dennis Hopper's
General Tariq (a made-up biblical character) and Elizabeth Hurley's
Delilah snuggle in a pose from 1996's "Samson and Delilah."

While Victor Mature virtually rassled with a sock-puppet lion in "Samson and Delilah" in 1949, Eric Thal grappled with a life-size puppet from Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the 1996 miniseries (pictured below).

Roma Downey, the star of the popular 1990s series "Touched by an Angel," and her husband, reality show producer Mark Burnett ("The Voice," "Shark Tank"), were inspired to create the 2013 miniseries "The Bible" after watching Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" for the first time since childhood. The show covered Genesis to Revelation in five two-hour segments, with five hours devoted to Old and New Testament each. Actor Keith David, a three-time Emmy Award winner for his narration of Ken Burns documentaries, was the series' narrator.

The miniseries broke new ground by casting a black actor as Samson. Lincoln-shire born Nonso Anozie (pictured below as Samson) is a graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, whose prominent alumni include Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, Judi Dench, and playwright Harold Pinter. Of Igbo Nigerian descent, the 6' 6" Anozie is familiar to fans of "Game of Thrones" as Xaro Xhoan Daxos, a wealthy merchant in the city-state of Qarth.

Sharon Duncan-Brewster plays Samson's mother in "The Bible."

In 2016, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett were executive producers of the much ballyhooed reboot of "Ben-Hur," the epic 1959 version of which, starring Charlton Heston, won a record 11 Oscars. The cast of the remake included Jack Huston (grandson of legendary director John Huston), Morgan Freeman, and Toby Kebbell ("Kong: Skull Island"). Despite its pre-release hype, the new take on author Lew Wallace's "Tale of the Christ" was panned by critics and proved to be one of the biggest flops of 2016.

No one knows what fate awaits the upcoming release of "Samson," critically or financially.

Director Bruce Macdonald confers with
star Taylor James on the set of "Samson."

"Most people know that Samson had long hair, Delilah cut it off, and that he lost his strength," Bruce McDonald, the director of "Samson" remarked. "But there's so much more. Samson was an unwilling hero, and his journey to regain his faith - the whole story - is relevant in 2018." Co-producer and Pure Flix CEO Michael Scott stated that the film is "for anyone who ever wondered if they really could do what God called them to do."