Samson

Alpha Video's DVD release of Gianfranco Parolini's Samson (1961) is a decent if flawed presentation of an enjoyable sword-and-sandal action movie. The main flaw is, of course, that the movie -- starring Brad Harris in the title role -- was shot anamorphically in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is presented here in full-screen (1.33:1), so you're only seeing half of the image that you were supposed to be seeing, and everything is sort of an artificial close-up. On the other hand, the movie has had no widescreen presentation anywhere since the early 1960s, so we're getting here what we got seeing it on local television throughout that decade. The source print is somewhat faded but not so severely as to make it a chore to watch, except at those moments when the image gets really soft -- it doesn't look much poorer than the prints used for television showings in the '60s, and the volume is set at a good, healthy level. The plot convolutions make one wish there were more than Alpha's s