The conditions were not ideal - the print was pan-and-scan, muddy, and the dialogue tracks were improperly synched for m
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Rod Taylor
clore_2 — 11 years ago(February 02, 2015 07:48 PM)
The conditions were not ideal - the print was pan-and-scan, muddy, and the dialogue tracks were improperly synched for most of it. But what can one do when it's not available on DVD - you hunt down a print over the web and hope for the best. It was also edited, missing three minutes of which the bulk had to be the fight scene. I could have sworn that it was longer. Stories go that the staged fight became real because one fake punch actually landed, though who is to blame still isn't clear after 45 years.
I saw this way back in the summer of 1970 and by this point, after
The High Commissioner
and
The Hell With Heroes
, it was beginning to appear to me that Taylor's star was fading. So, I was surprised that he turned in a fine job in a better than average film.
Rod is his cool self and I'm glad that Steve McQueen nor Robert Culp got the role as they would seem too slight to fight William Smith. I'm not so sure that Taylor would win without the help of the script but you know he would be in it to the death. Still, I prefer the two bouts with Peter Karsten in another "Dark" movie -
Dark of the Sun
.
I'll give director Clouse credit - his dark scenes are really shot at night, there's no trickery and we're in Florida, not some Southern California shore line that could pass. Taylor gets great support from Theodore Bikel as his buddy and Suzy Kendall as the damsel in distress that McGee saves from a watery grave. That reminds that I have to get a copy of
Fraulein Doktor
in which Kendall stars and personal faves Kenneth More and Nigel Green are there too - and for Melvelvit, there's Capucine.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me -
Synergetic11 — 10 years ago(April 29, 2015 04:04 AM)
I just watched it too in a VHS to DVD transfer from British TV that someone was selling online. Despite the rather poor image quality, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a great action film with two of the coolest actors ever, Rod Taylor and William "Falconetti" Smith, teaching all the young lads how to be a real macho man. The music was also fantastic, a mix of cool jazz and late 1960's booty-shake psychedelic rock. I'd say "Darker Than Amber" is as good as ANY film Steve McQueen ever starred in, "Bullitt" and "Thomas Crown Affair" included. Why it's not on an officially released DVD with a decent image transfer is anybody's guess, probably contractual BS, the same reason why "Chimes At Midnight" by Orson Welles was so hard to find all those years.