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The Old West: Samson's (Alan Steel) best friend Alan (retired Austrian
skiing superstar Toni Sailer) is accused of the murder of Nixon (Carlo
Tamberlani), the dad of Samson's girlfriend Jenny (Brigitte Heiberg), and
local shady barowner Jerry Damon (Mario Petri) tries to see to it that he
is lynched without a fair trial - mainly just because Damon is a really
bad guy. Of course, Samson, who believes in his friend's innocence, sees
to it that Alan is not hanged prematurely, and has him put on a stagecoach
to the next city where a fair trial, that will in all probability end in
his acquittal, awaits him. However, Damon does everything in his power to
see to it that Damon never reaches the next city, even if that means to
lure the stagecoach into an ambush. Somehow though, Alan escapes the
ambush unscathed, and he is kept alive during his walk through the desert
by an Indian boy (Anna Maria Polani) he has picked up on the way. The boy
eventually leaves him, is revealed to be the princess of a secret Incan
tribe, but leaves enough water behind for him to make it a few days. Soon,
Samson and Jenny have caught up with Alan. In the meantime, Damon has
teamed up with El Puma (Wolfgang Lukschy), who has a map to the secret
Incan caves which are supposed to harbour a large Incan treasure, too. Somehow,
everybody involved in the story ends up in the underground Incan empire,
and the baddies soon die like flies by the hands of the Incas and each
other's hands alike. Our heroes however are captured to be sacrificed to
the Gods. The princess however tries to save Alan - which only leads to
her taking her place among those to be sacrificed herself. In the finale
though, a volcano breaks out rather spontaneously, and all the good guys
survive while the baddies and the Incans all die ... In many
ways (and probably unintentionally so), Sansone e il Tesoro degli Incas
is a transitional film between the fading peplum genre that dominated
Italian film production in the early 1960's, and the spaghetti western
that was still in its infancy in 1964, which was of course the year of A
Fistful of Dollars, and yet Sansone e il Tesoro degli Incas
was more inspired by traditional (B-)Westerns and of course the
pan-European success of the German Winnetou-series.
As a result, for the most part, Sansone e il Tesoro degli Incas is
a genuine Western, but biblical hero Samson, whom the
Italian filmbusiness dedicated a series to, is featured in the title, and
bodybuilder Alan Steel, a familiar face from a number of peplums, played
the title role. Also, after playing on traditional Western territory for
the longest time, the film slips into peplum mode towards the end, when
the action moves to a mythical underground civilisation, complete with
eccentric architecture, weird rituals, human sacrifices and the like. All
of this results of course in a definitely less than great film. True, the
Western elements of the movie are well-enough handled but don't spark too
much interest as the plot is at best tried-and-true, while the peplum
elements don't sit too well with the rest of the film. But while the film
might not be great, it's at least some fun due to its inconsistencies and
the like - though maybe not as much fun as the concept of Samson finding
Incans in cowboy land might suggest ...
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