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Evil King Antoine conquers the throne of good King Solomon, & kills
not only him but also his whole family ... his whole family except for his
baby son that is, whom Solomon's faithful servant helps to escape. But
during the escape, he loses the little boy in the forestleaving it to the
forest animals, especially lions, to raise ...
Years later, King Antoine & his (seemingly) equally vicious son
Altar tax the populace for everything they've gut subjectsw himself to
rape &/or execution. Raston (Solomon's erstwhile servant) meanwhile is the
head of a small gang of rebels, aided by his daughter Ida - but he dares
not strike until the son of King Solomon, now dubbed Lion Man (and played
by Cüneyt Arkin), resurfaces.
... & resurfacing he does, as his strong sense for justice forces
him - a musclebound hunk of superhuman strength - to side with the poor
populace in their fight against the evil taxmen.
But one day, the rebels have laid an ambush for Altar, but when they
try to capture & kill him, Lion Man, oblivious to the curtent
political situation due to having been educated by wolves, sides with
Altar & defeats the rebels.
Soon, the rebels think him a problem, capture him & want to kill
him, when they see his birthmark in shape of a lion that proves him
to be Solomon's heir without a doubt - so instead of killing him they
choose him as their new leader, even if he can't even speak properly.
After several more encounters with King Antoine's men, the whole bunch
of rebels is really captured by Antoine & Altar, & the king asks
his son to slay Lion Man ... when his mother Maria, who has spent most of
her life in a dungeon because she opposed Antoine's evil plans, stops him
& claims Altar is not Antoine's son at all but Solomon's illegitimate
son she bore out of a brief affair with him. & to prove it, she has
him show his birthmark ... in the shape of a lion.
Altar immediately changes sides, & not only helps Lion Man & the
rebels escape but joins them ... but during the escape, Lion Man is badly
wounded & his hands destroyed by acid.
Later, King Antoine finds out & captures Altar & Ida, to use
them as bait to lure Lion Man to him ... but Lion Man does not come
unprepared, he has substituted his destroyed hands with steel claws (that
look a bit like lion claws), & these make him an even fiercer fighter.
Of course, in the end he defeats Antoine's army (witht he help of the
rebels) & kills the King himself.
From an objective point of view, this is not a good movie, a very
simplistic muscleman-story done on the cheap, steeping kneedeep in pulp
clichés & being more than a little reminiscent of the Italian peplums
(= sword & sandal films) from 10 to 15 years earlier (especially Ursus
nella Valle dei Leoni/Ursus
in the Valley of the Lions from 1961 spring to mind). But besides
all these points of critiques, one just cannot deny the film's pure &
contagious fascination for the genre & film as such, & be it as trashy as this one, which
makes Lion Man an endearing fun ride (if nothing more).
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