Darker Than Amber (1970)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

As Good As It Gets

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This film is hard to pigeon hole into any preset category. Its based on the writings of John D. MacDonald a Pennsylvania native and a very prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many of them set in the South and predominantly the southern tip of the state of Florida. Between the years 1953 and 1964, MacDonald specialized in crime thrillers, considered now as masterpieces of the hard-boiled genre. Most of these novels were published as pulp paperback originals, with their attendant sleazy cover art. His noir/neo noir street creds start with his 1957 novel The Executioners that was brought to the screen in 1962 as Cape Fear, a very dark story of suspense and animalistic menace starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Many of MacDonald's novels suggested a sinister presence just beneath the friendly patina of palm tree studded small coastal towns.The film followed McGee's back story very well. McGee was basically a Florida beach bum, a Korean War Vet, who won a large 52-foot barge-type houseboat in a poker game. His home base was Ft. Lauderdale, Bahia Mar Marina, slip F-18, but his life style enabled him to drift about the inter-coastal waterway, the Everglades, and the Florida Keys, beach combing, drinking, fishing. He named the houseboat boat the Busted Flush, and took his retirement in installments between jobs, when the money ran out he did "salvage consultant" work. The salvage work was retrieving things lost by people, in shady legal deals, scams, flimflams, skulduggery, etc., etc., usually things with no proper recourse for the victim. McGee's price was for half of whatever he recovered, and half was better than nothing. Occasionally McGee was asked to locate missing people in other Gulf States or foreign locals in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. He is a sort of rogue PI without a license.McGee had a quasi partner/buddy Meyer, a retired economics professor, a brainy type that McGee could bounce problems and ideas off of, who lived on a cabin cruiser moored in a slip near by. The only other regular was the "Alabama Tiger" a millionaire, who had the "worlds longest running boat party" on a large yacht also in the Marina. In the film this is changed to the "Alabama Tigress" (Jane Russell). McGee also had an old Rolls Royce that had been in an accident and had been converted into a pickup truck that was called "Miss Agnes".The story of Darker Than Amber starts off very noir-ishly. As credits roll to a jazzy tune, a convertible speeds down a deserted highway, street lights whiz by overhead, a passing car highlights a driver (Robert Phillips), and a bleach blond goon (William Smith) sitting in the back seat with a honey-haired woman named Vangie (Suzy Kendall). A street lamp flash reveals that one of her feet is lashed to a dumbbell. The car passes over a long bridge a remote section of the Overseas Highway bridge (the highway that island hops its way to Key West) it reaches the far end and makes a U-turn. After a semi passes the car drives back onto the bridge. Cut to McGee (Rod Taylor) and Meyer (Theodore Bikel) fishing from a small rental skiff anchored at night under the ridge. The car pulls to a stop above them and the honey-haired woman strapped to the dumbbell is dropped off the bridge. As the car speeds off she sinks immediately from site and she's hooked on McGee's lure. McGee, with Meyer wielding a flashlight, dives in and brings her up. They resuscitate her and head back the Flush. She wont tell them her name, and she doesn't want them to go to the police. McGee heads back to the bridge in the daytime and dives to retrieve the dumbbell, (an 85 lb. weight for a 100 lb. woman) but is seen by a lookout who is staking out the "murder" site. As they cruise leisurely back up the Keys McGee slowly pries the story out of her. Her name is Vangie (Suzy Kendall), short for Evangeline she was literally a Femme Fatale, a high priced call girl working a cruise ship racket that lured drunk wealthy unattached men to a rendezvous at her cabin. The men were surprised by either Griff (Phillips) or Terry (Smith) and killed for their money then deep six-ed over the side. She was wanting out of the racket but the only way out is dead. By the time they reach Bahia Mar, McGee and Vangie are an item. But she decides to sneak off the Flush in another noir-ish sequence and go back to her bungalow and retrieve her stash of ill gotten loot. Her two murder racket accomplices Terry (William Smith) and Griff (Robert Phillips) tipped off that she is still alive, spot her while she is on her way. Terry grabs Vangie and while Griff speeds down the highway towards them Terry tosses Vangie into the cars path, the force blasts her through a plate glass window of an ice cream parlor.Ahna Capri delivers a good performance as Del, Vangie's co Femme Fatale partner in Terry's murder for money scheme. McGee is able to convince her that she is next to be eliminated.The hit-and-run murder of Vangie, sets McGee off on a revenge mission that culminates in a legendary graphically violent, savage, fight scene, between Rod Taylor's Travis McGee and the film's villain, Terry. This film needs a fully restored DVD release of the full Runtime: 96 min, the version I have was recorded off TCM and it is missing a few minutes of the legendary fight sequence (which can be see on YouTube in a Dutch release)A 9/10 for McGee fans (it could have been a tad bit longer for character development) and an 8/10 if you are unfamiliar with the material

I really wish Rod Taylor and Theodore Bikel had teamed up for a series of McGee films. John D. MacDonald was a wonderful storyteller - his bad guys are believable and really scary, and his sense of locale is perfect - but the best part is the lifestyle of his hero, a large part of which are the friendships he has with Meyer and others (the boat rental guy!), and the idea of taking retirement in chunks as you go along (because you never know...). It takes a series to fill it all in; like 21 novels, in which McGee slowly gets a little older, a little wiser. I could see Taylor and Bikel doing that. (Just as Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin and a good repertory company did for a few of the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout).So if you liked the books and want a glimpse of one of them in live-action, try to find a copy; and hopefully an unedited one. You'll be glad you did.

This movie is the only cinematic Travis Magee movie made. It has a strong cast and was written by John D. himself but the "hipness" prevents the realism from coming out. The casting of Rod Taylor is of a questionable choice and the movie lacks the technical expertise that a first class author should have been given.Miss Agnes is the only concession to class and the "flush" is appropriate as well. All in all a disappointment to those John D. fans. Too bad that those responsible for "Cape Fear" didn't sign on to do this flick!! Lori and Paul WA state

This is indeed a good movie--a tidy, well-acted and -directed thriller with a good "take" on Travis McGee by the rock-solid and dependable Rod Taylor. But it is a tough one to get to see in its entirety, as some of the other reviewers have noted. Even the commercial prints have a running time of 91 minutes, and they are obviously and clumsily cut (here's a clue: the background music and sound jump drastically). No doubt this is because the violence is graphic for a film of this vintage, although that doesn't explain why it almost impossible to find a complete 93-minute copy here in the 21st century. I found one through a guy who knew a guy and so on--a Dutch copy with Dutch subtitles--and after 30 years of poking around (I was doing other things, too, during these decades) I finally got to see the whole movie. And it was worth it, as it almost always is to see the entire work, as the director (Clouse's next film was "Enter the Dragon") intended it. Some might think 2 minutes out of a film is no big deal (although they might gripe if you handed them a novel with 2 or 3 percent of its pages torn out) but this is too good a movie to snip. And although there have been bigger, longer, bloodier, more you-name-it fights, no two men on screen have ever looked like they are really, desperately trying to hurt each other as much as Rod Taylor and William Smith in the climactic fight in this movie. If you can find it, watch it. Good luck.