Musings!

Steve Reeves, as Hadji Murad, and Scilla Gabel in THE WHITE WARRIOR (1959) 

Directed by Riccardo Freda, THE WHITE WARRIOR is Steve's most 'serious' movie of his career. It has some fun pulpy action here and there, but the overall tone is more on drama than action. Freda also edited the movie and Mario Bava was the cinematographer. Quite the talent behind the camera. Personally, I like it but I feel there were many missed opportunities with it. First, Steve is at his biggest in this movie. He looks like a beast. Unfortunately, for us fans of Reeves, he kept his clothes on for most of the movie. That one wrestling scene where his takes his shirt off shows how massive he was. I have many versions of this film. Few of them are alright. Since the beautiful cinematography is by Bava, I feel the movie should be saturated with colours but most prints are muted. The old DVD from VCI is, imo, the most accurate when it comes to colour (the image quality itself of the transfer is not that good though...). Nice vivid colours. Hopefully, when a HD print of this surfaces, it will retain the beautiful colours.