Samson and Delilah (1984)

Awesome Movie

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A couple of Australians, Anthony Hamilton and Belinda Bauer, play the title roles in this television version of Samson And Delilah. But this film is mostly known for hauling Victor Mature out of retirement to play the small role of Samson's father. During the film Mature is kept very clothed with flowing robes of the desert and I suspect that 71 Mature did not have quite the physique that he had when he was Samson back in the day with Cecil B. DeMille.In fact even with the way DeMille's spectacles are thought of today by more sophisticated audiences this Samson And Delilah comes off as a second company road show product. Whatever else DeMille did, he put style and sex into his film even with the Victorian era dialog that also went into them. Both the slaying of the Philistines with the ass's jawbone and the climatic pulling down of Dagon's temple were done so much better by Cecil. And no other film ever had the gaudy color cinematography than the DeMille Samson And Delilah.I also suppose this film really does belong on the big screen because of its subject matter. That's where I saw the DeMille version when Paramount re-released it when I was a lad.Belinda Bauer is a beautiful Delilah, but there was only one Hedy Lamarr.Veterans of some biblical films Max Von Sydow and Jose Ferrer contribute what they can, but it isn't enough.However after finally getting to see this it was nice to see Victor Mature in both his farewell performance and in the film in which he made the legendary quote that the reason he did the film was that "for the money they were paying me, I'd have put on a dress and played Samson's mother". Fortunately for Vic the producers got another big screen veteran Maria Schell to be Samson's mother.As for Mature he walks through the scenes like a man in a hurry to get back to his retirement and a ranch he owned in those years. The paycheck must have cleared. Mature as he grew older took himself less and less seriously, an interesting phenomenon in a town loaded with king size egos.This Samson And Delilah is all right, but you'll never see anything like what Cecil B. DeMille did with that story.

What a truly atrocious movie! Even the 1950s shtick biblical epics (Samson with Victor Mature, Solomon with Yul Brunner) failed to observe the exact biblical accounts too, but that didn't give the producers the permission to come up with tacky, poor quality movies as a result. Samson And Delilah should be seen as an exercise in how to make the worst B-movie in human history and hope that it sells. I'd shudder to think which TV network would've aired this nonsense. Firstly, the music comes across as a soundtrack made for some low-grade 1940s movie, which was resurrected and dusted off for this film. Wide shots of the Nevada desert or Grand Canyon overlay a crummy narration about the Israelites and Phillistines living in Gaza. Since when did Gaza look like Arizona!? The camera-work is poor quality. The actors are accomplished and therefore deliver a passable performance, but are severely limited by the quality of the whole product. When Samson fights the lion, shots of a real lion and close-ups with a stuffed prop with lipstick red lips are inter cut. Give me a break! When Samson fights Sidqa's forces with the ass's jawbone, he's supposed to slaughter a thousand men, but in this version he dispatches about fifty while Von Sydow and his sidekick watch stiffly in the hammiest fight scene in movie history. If I could vote 0/10 I would. Truly appalling.

This was an interesting film, I was expecting something that would be fairly Biblical in its storytelling, but although it was based on the Bible, some of the elements were out of order, missing, added to or changed too much for it to be an accurate representation of what the Bible tells us in the book of Judges about the life of Samson.This film starts off when Samson is about to marry a Philistine woman (not Delilah, but his first wife) and after that some bits are missed out and Delilah comes into the scene early on before Samson marries his first wife. Yet the Bible makes no mention of her until long after she is dead.I thought the acting was good, especially from the famous actor Max von Sydow, and Belinda Bauer was good as Delilah. And let's not forget that great actor Jose Ferrer who plays the high priest of Dagon.This is an entertaining film, but I would have liked to see it follow the Bible more closely. If you want to see an account of Samson that follows the Bible, this is not it. For example, the Bible says that Samson did not have his hair cut or his beard shaved, in accordance with the vow he took, yet in the first scene we see Samson as a young man and clean shaven. His hair is long at the back, but on top and at the sides it looks normal, not long at all. The vow that he took where he was forbidden to cut his hair or shave, or drink alcohol, is very important to the story of Samson, and especially to how he eventually loses his strength when his hair and beard are shaved off. Yet in this film he drank wine and generally did not do the things the Bible tells. And in this film Delilah cuts off a small bit of his pony tail and he loses his strength, the Bible tells us that he was shaved by a professional barber hired by Delilah. And they missed out all the times when he tricked Delilah and did not tell her the true way to lose his strength, and the Philistines attacked him but he was still strong. So the filmmakers could have made this better and been more true to the true story of Samson, but instead I think they wanted a more romantic and idealistic story so they changed it. And there was too much of Delilah in the film overall, and too much of her showing in her revealing clothing and when she was naked.5 out of 10, which is mostly for the good acting and generally well made film, but would be higher if they had followed the Bible more.

This movie heralded the "introduction" of bona fide Australian adonis Antony Hamilton, though he had done television and a low budget cult film, "Nocturna" previously. Hamilton in various stages of undress is the only reason to watch this film -- which is a good enough one -- though in the version I saw some of the body parts were vaselined out. The dialogue is 20th century American dreck; Victor Mature, the movie star Samson, gives an embarrassing performance eating a chicken leg; and Belinda Bauer is no Hedy Lamarr and let's face it, Hedy Lamarr was not the most exciting actress to hit the screen, even if she was one of the most beautiful. This movie concentrates on bodies making out in the pool, a near-naked Samson getting tossed into the lake by his buddies, love-making between nearly naked Samson and nearly naked Delilah and good looks at Samson's muscles throughout. As far as I'm concerned, this is a no miss, having nothing whatsoever to do with the story. It is depressing, however, to realize that Hamilton died at such a young age and, all kidding aside, that is a very sad loss.