Darker Than Amber
                              
Director: Robert Clouse
Year: 1970
Rating: 5.5
Back in the 1960s and 70's the Travis McGee novels by John D. McDonald were everywhere. The airport bookstores would have a ready supply. Men sitting on the beach or around a pool would have one on their lap as they went in and out of fitful naps. They were mandatory reading for my father along with the Donald Hamilton Matt Helm novels and the Ross Macdonald Lew Archer stories. Perhaps, not coincidentally, I have collected all of these three series. Read all the Helm novels, most of the Archer ones and a bunch of Travis McGee. McGee was a man's man. The kind of man we all wanted to be. He lived on a houseboat in Fort Lauderdale, the Busted Flush, that he won in a poker game, only worked when his money ran low and often bedded sun-tanned lithe women with legs that stretched halfway to Miami. His work when he wanted was as a "Salvage Consultant", meaning if you have lost something and want it back - you hire him, for half the price of whatever it is.

 

He also reclaims broken souls. For no charge. In the book, he has just spent ten-days with a woman who was running away from her sadistic husband - building her confidence, healing her spirit and sleeping with her to let her know she was still desirable. What a guy. As popular as the McGee novels were, it is surprising that there have only been two adaptations of them. This one and another from the novel The Empty Copper Sea starring Sam Elliot - but in which they put McGee in California - taking McGee out of Florida is like taking the spice out of Thai food. McDonald wrote 21 McGee novels - all with a color in the title.

 

McGee (Rod Taylor) is doing what he likes best - fishing with his friend Meyer Meyer (Theodore Bikel) in a small motorboat after midnight. They catch more than fish though when a woman comes off a bridge above them and goes straight down - and doesn't come up - McGee dives in and finds weights tied to her legs - he undoes them and brings her to the surface. They take her back to the houseboat, take out the fishhooks - ouch - and clean her up. She gives them nothing. Enough red flags to cover a battleship - but she is lovely (Suzy Kendall) and McGee is a collector of lost and hurting people. And again, she is lovely as she dances seductively on the deck. But she is trouble that you can see coming a mile away. McGee of course sleeps with her.

 

That didn't sit well with me as a number of things didn't in the film. At one point, one of the men who threw her off the bridge holds a gun on McGee and tells him to dig his grave. How often in films have we seen this work? The guy holding the gun is always the one who ends up in the grave. I mean how lazy can you be? Shoot him and then dig the damn grave yourself. Sure, you will get dirty but better that then dead. He and Bikel run some con on the other guy who threw her off. He is played by a muscle-bound dyed blond-haired William Smith and he is terrifying in this. Menace and cruelty drip off him like sweat. But I never really understood the point of it all. It ends with a big fight between Taylor and Smith in a ship cabin that is legendary for its ferocity. I read that it turned real and that Taylor had his nose broken and Smith had three broken ribs. Sounds a bit like PR so I don't know. But the version I saw was a copy off TCM and it didn't seem all that much - but on YouTube they have the uncut version and it is pretty hard-hitting and the dead body in the cabin added flavor to it that my version did not have.  This is directed by Robert Clouse and I think partly based on this film and the action, got called for Enter the Dragon. Though Jane Russell gets top billing, she is barely in it.