Thursday, November 23, 2023

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.

5 comments:

alomaco said...

There is indeed a HD version of this movie available. The colors look much better than other versions I've seen so far. Overall, the movie has a darker visual tone nonetheless.

https://i.imgur.com/RPEYwvy.png

https://i.imgur.com/aXh3pdg.png

PEPLUM TV said...

Alomaco,

I have a HD version from a TV broadcast with a logo. It's not a good transfer.

The one in the links you provided looks much better but the image is definitely dark...not the colourful one like VCI DVD.

Did you make a Fan Dub of this HD print of WHITE WARRIOR? If yes, where can I get it?

alomaco said...

Fandub done. Shoot me an email anytime you wish.

PEPLUM TV said...

My email is peplumtv2@gmail.com

jimf said...

I don't mind that he kept his shirt on, he was a serious actor.