Darker Than Amber

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Audience Member Smith Exudes crazy TNT like toughness that explodes. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member A classic hardboiled thriller based on John D. MacDonald's outstanding series crime fiction novels about houseboat dwelling troubleshooter Travis McGee. This film got short shrift from critics, poor marketing from the studio and faded into undeserved obscurity. Renowned mainly for one of the most best fight scenes in screen history (Rod Taylor and William Smith actually came to blows while filming the climactic fight), this film also has gorgeous on location scenery in southeastern Florida and a groovy jazz soundtrack by John Parker. How this film has not been given a decent release on DVD and Blu-Ray is beyond me, especially when you consider some of the truly awful films that have been treated much better than this one. This is a film that definitely deserves to be ranked up there with other great crime dramas of the 1970's like Get Carter, Dirty Harry, Across 110th St, Charley Varrick and others. There is a poor quality video of this film on You Tube and some equally poor quality bootleg DVD's out there, but we need to get this film re-mastered on DVD. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Audience Member I'm sure this review is colored by my love for the McGee novels, but this fits the bill for a movie version of the man very well. Great, violent fighting, and a great sense of humor make for a close film approximation of the novels. Too bad there weren't more made. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/02/23 Full Review Audience Member Before Robert Clouse was typecast as a martial arts director due to Enter the Dragon he made this gem. While a man is fishing with his buddy a gorgeous woman is thrown off a bridge, he saves her but she then tries to take care of some unfinished business. The woman ends up getting killed, now our hero is pissed and determined to get to the bottom of this. Rod Taylor is amazing as the lead, the film screams the 70's and the has enough offbeat dialogue to keep the viewer amused. Great forgotten classic features one of the best finales with a man with a servere case of bald rage. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/12/23 Full Review Audience Member Okay, I was kind of distracted when I watched this by my baby, but from what I saw, this movie was awesome! Not just regular awesome, but William Smith Awesome! This is a very hard to find film that's never seen a video release in the US, but gets aired on TV every so often. The best scene has to be the infamous fight scene that is rumored to have been an actual brawl between star Rod Taylor and villain William Smith after one of the two supposedly landed a real blow. This is one scene that did live up to the hype and was a great capper to a tough little film. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Great Travis McGee mystery thriller with top notch direction by Robert Clouse(ENTER THE DRAGON) and great performances by Rod Taylor as McGee, Suzy Kendall as the lady in distress and William Smith as one terrifying villain. The final climatic realistic brawl between Taylor & Smith is the highlight of this rare 70's film classic that I saw at NY's Anthology Film Archives film retrospective of 70's Hidden Cinematic Treasures hosted by Bill Lustig of Blue Underground. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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