Twenty years being a long time in film history at this stage, the Technicolor special effects that blazed such a trail twenty years earlier in the 1940 classic are easily surpassed by this Eastmancolor remake. Yet it's a mark of the modest budget that Arthur Lubin was working with this time round that the gemstone presented to the hero by fairy godfather Georges Chamarat grants only one wish compared to the three Sabu originally got from genie Rex Ingram, and the flying white horse while far more elegant and convincing than the one that Miles Malleson originally rode round the minarets of Bagdad also gets far less screentime. (Visual effects technician Tom Howard, who had worked on the 1940 version, produced far better work on a more generous budget and under the more adroit tutelage of Byron Haskin a couple of years later on the livelier and far superior 'Captain Sinbad'.)
Steve Reeves' thief is obviously patterned after Douglas Fairbanks, and most of the inventions of Korda's production are absent apart from the flying horse; the improvements being the sinister trees coming to life at night like triffids, and the promotion of the blue rose from a malevolent distraction to the object of the hero's quest. Giorgia Moll makes a most fetching heroine, but is if possible given even less to do than June Duprez in the earlier version!
Steve Reeves' thief is obviously patterned after Douglas Fairbanks, and most of the inventions of Korda's production are absent apart from the flying horse; the improvements being the sinister trees coming to life at night like triffids, and the promotion of the blue rose from a malevolent distraction to the object of the hero's quest. Giorgia Moll makes a most fetching heroine, but is if possible given even less to do than June Duprez in the earlier version!