Physical deterioration, censorship, studio control, formatting, and limitations of time are among the many reasons that movies end up being altered, cut, or just plain lost, sometimes before they even make it to the theater.  Each period in movie history had its own challenges, but the 1970s were especially difficult.

During this period, after a movie had been shown in the theaters and then at the drive-ins, it would be sold to the television networks.  To be shown on television, a movie needed to be reduced in length to fit into a two-hour time slot, allowing for commercials.  Widescreen formats were replaced by pan-and-scan, if they were lucky; more often than not, the sides were simply lopped off, forced onto the Procrustean bed of the television screen with its 1.33 aspect ratio.  And, of course, much of the sex, violence, and profanity, now allowed by the elimination of the Production Code in favor of the ratings system, had to be edited out for viewing in prime time, when children might be watching.

This would not have been so bad had someone made sure that the original film was preserved.  But it would not be until the 1980s that the average person had cable television and video cassette recorders, not to mention the eventual emergence in the 1990s of DVDs and widescreen televisions.  It was during that period that the director’s cut became all the rage, allowing for even more than was seen theatrically.  But in the 1970s, for a lot of movies, all that survived was the edited-for-television version.

Perhaps this is no more so than for Darker Than Amber.  This was not a great movie. But it was a darn good one.  I saw it back in 1970 at the drive-in, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Little did I know at the time what a sad fate was in store for it.  When it was shown on television, it was subjected to the usual modifications.  When the movie became available on video tape years later, it was the edited-for-television version.

Recently, I purchased a DVD version, a two-disc set no less.  The DVD case was full of promise, calling it the “Special Collector’s Edition,” consisting of both “widescreen and fullscreen versions.”  Neither one was what I had hoped.  The version that is full screen has Dutch subtitles; the other one has an aspect ratio of 1.6, not exactly the 2.35 ratio the movie was originally filmed in.  As for this so-called widescreen version, it was a bit of a struggle even to get that right.  I had to set my television to widescreen mode to get the proper image, and yet neither the sides nor the top and bottom reached the borders of the screen.  That which is available on YouTube appears to be this version, but squeezed back into a 1.33 ratio, making everyone look a little thin and dolichocephalic.

However, in watching the movie on this “widescreen” DVD, I never got the feeling that I was missing out on anything as far as formatting was concerned.  Some directors, like Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah, made full use of the widescreen format, so when their movies were first shown on network television in the 1.33 format, you always had the feeling that there was something going on just outside the frame.  But with Darker Than Amber, I never had that sense on this widescreen DVD.

Also, I believe the versions on these two DVDs are uncut.  Here too, I must rely on intuition and a memory that is unreliable after fifty years.  When watching movies in the 1970s on television, I could usually tell when something had been edited out. There would be a jump from one image to another that seemed discontinuous.  That was the impression I had when watching the movie on video tape about thirty years ago.  I never got that impression with these DVDs.  The widescreen version is missing a short section, apparently owing to some recording difficulty, but which you can watch on the one with Dutch subtitles, if you care to make the effort.

The widescreen version was obviously recorded from a television broadcast, because while I was watching the credits at the end, an announcer came on to say that the The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer (1977) would be shown next Tuesday.  I wondered if the manufacturer of this DVD might get in trouble for pirating.  But then I thought to myself, “No one has cared about this movie for fifty years, so why should they start now?”

Anyway, Darker Than Amber is a movie full of muscle and manhood.  When the movie begins, a bodybuilder named Terry (William Smith) and another bodybuilder named Griff throw Vangie (Suzy Kendall) off a bridge into the water below with her right foot tied to an eighty-five pound dumbbell. As it turns out, Travis McGee (Rod Taylor) and his friend Meyer (Theodore Bikel) are fishing down below, and one of their fishing lures hooks into her leg.  McGee dives in the water to save her.

When someone in a movie dives into the water, do you ever hold your breath to see if you could do what the hero in the movie is doing?  Well, I held my breath to see if I was a real man like McGee.  I drowned.

Terry noticed the men in the boat below, so he hires someone to sit on the bridge and await developments.  Sure enough, the man he hires sees McGee return to the scene and retrieve the dumbbell he cut loose from Vangie’s foot.  The man also sees the name on the motorboat, which McGee hired from a man named Burk.  Through that name, Terry tracks down Burk in order find out who rented that boat. When Burk refuses to say, Terry, muscle-bound brute that he is, beats Burk to a skull-crushed pulp.

Vangie has it made on McGee’s houseboat.  In keeping with the spirit of the late 1960s, McGee expounds on his philosophy of life, consisting of living it up and doing his own thing.  He makes money finding things that people have lost, and then takes his retirement in installments.  “It comes from the theory,” he says, “that Now is the best of life.”  Only that’s nothing compared to what goes on aboard The Alabama Tigress, a huge houseboat, owned by a woman who goes by the name “Alabama” herself (Jane Russell).  McGee says that there has been a nonstop party on the boat for a year and a half.  The boat’s name used to be The Alabama Tiger, but during the first year of the party, Alabama’s husband couldn’t take it anymore and died.  But the party kept right on going.  In reality, you wouldn’t want to party nonstop for a day and a half, let alone a year and a half, but this exaggerated expression of living the good life had a lot of appeal back in those days.

One night McGee informs Vangie that everyone on his boat has to pull his or her own weight, so he asks her to do the dishes.  She takes umbrage at being asked to do the work of a maid, which is apparently beneath her dignity as a prostitute and grifter.  It is at this point that there is that break in the movie referred to above, during which Meyer expresses surprise that “Captain Bligh” is willing to let Vangie get away with not doing the dishes.  After that break, she ends up having sex with McGee.

The next day, while shaving with a straight razor, as further evidence of his masculinity, McGee advises Vangie against going back to her motel room to get her money, offering to get it for her, but she takes off on her own anyway.  Word gets to Terry that she is back. He grabs her on the street and throws her into the path of Griff’s speeding car, her body flying through the window of an ice-cream parlor.

McGee finds out about both Burk and Vangie.  It’s time for revenge.  But first, he figures he might as well help himself to Vangie’s stash, as long as she won’t be needing it anymore.  He goes to her motel room, where Griff is just outside, wearing a bathing suit.  He is greasing up his body, rubbing his own muscular flesh with passionate selflove.  Then he starts working out with a dumbbell, probably the mate to the one that Vangie’s foot was tied to.  He chases off McGee before he can get into Vangie’s room.  McGee returns later on, enters Vangie’s room, and finds the money she had hidden.  But when he leaves, Griff is waiting for him with a gun. He takes the money McGee found and then forces him out into the woods, making him dig his own grave. But McGee slings the shovel into Griff’s gut, and after a brief struggle, kills him with his own gun.  McGee takes back the money that he had found in Vangie’s room, and then dumps Griff’s body into the grave, covers him up, and tosses away the shovel.

But he still has to find Terry.  McGee learns that Terry, Griff, Vangie, and another woman named Del had a racket going.  One of the women would seduce some old man on a cruise ship, figuring he would carry plenty of cash with him.  After the man was knocked out with a little chloral hydrate, the men would come in and take the money.  Vangie wanted out, so that’s why she was killed.

McGee makes contact with Del when the cruise ship she and Terry are on docks at a port.  He tells her about Vangie’s murder, saying that Terry will eventually do to her what he did to Vangie unless she goes along with his plan. She is skeptical, not willing to cross Terry just on account of Vangie.  He adds that if she goes along with his plan, then after he takes care of Terry, she will be free to find Terry’s stash, which she can keep.  That appeals to her, but she is stunned by McGee’s assertion that he will be able to handle Terry.  “Oh, wow!” she replies sarcastically, “You have all the answers.”  “Listen,” he tells her, “I never lay mine on a line with a loser, ever.” She agrees, reluctantly.

Later, on the ship, in McGee’s stateroom, the original plan having changed, Del is again in disbelief about McGee’s plan regarding Terry.  “You really think you can take him,” she says, thinking his self-confidence is completely unjustified, knowing how strong Terry is.  Again, McGee becomes irritated with her doubts about his ability.

In the course of their conversation, he finds out that in many cases, Terry wouldn’t wait for her to slip an old man a Mickey Finn.  He would just burst into the room early so he could have the pleasure of smashing the geezer’s face in, after which he would throw the body over the rail. When she sees the look of disgust on McGee’s face, she says, “Why are you looking at me like that?  It’s Terry.  He’s psycho.”

Part of McGee’s plan is to get Terry rattled.  To that end, he puts the dumbbell, complete with seaweed, in Terry’s bathtub full of water.  That makes Terry furious.  But what McGee didn’t count on is that Terry is just as good at detective work as he is, for he figures out that McGee was the one who saved Vangie, and he finds out where his stateroom is.  When McGee returns to it, he sees Del lying prone on the bed. She is dead, probably from a broken neck, but since McGee thinks she is sleeping, he shakes her.

Then Terry comes charging out of the bathroom, beginning the fight scene for which this movie is notorious.  Stories are told of how the fight turned real, resulting in a broken nose, some broken ribs, and a knocked-out tooth.  The result is that McGee gets the crap beat out of him.  We see him staggering down the hallway, trying to get away, his face battered and bloody, his right wrist sprained, as Terry takes off, figuring he’d better get away before the cops find out about Del.  When Terry gets to the gangplank, he sees a woman that McGee hired who looks just like Vangie, waving at him from behind a high, chain-link fence, yelling, “Hi, Terry.”  This, along with the dumbbell in the bathtub, was part of McGee’s plan to unnerve Terry.

I guess you could say it worked.  Terry goes berserk, flinging people out of the way left and right trying to get to her, even losing his hairpiece in the mayhem.  The Vangie impersonator, also played by Suzy Kendall, looks scared, but McGee recovers in time, pushes his way down the gangplank, picks up a two-by-four with his left hand, and whacks Terry across the shins, who collapses onto his knees, after which McGee knocks him out with a left fist in the face.

Somewhat later, back on McGee’s yacht, the Vangie impersonator offers herself just as the real Vangie did. But McGee says he needs time to get over the real Vangie first, as he realizes that there is more to life than Now.  In the meantime, she’ll have to do the dishes.

Physical deterioration, censorship, studio control, formatting, and limitations of time are among the many reasons that movies end up being altered, cut, or just plain lost, sometimes before they even make it to the theater.  Each period in movie history had its own challenges, but the 1970s were especially difficult.

During this period, after a movie had been shown in the theaters and then at the drive-ins, it would be sold to the television networks.  To be shown on television, a movie needed to be reduced in length to fit into a two-hour time slot, allowing for commercials.  Widescreen formats were replaced by pan-and-scan, if they were lucky; more often than not, the sides were simply lopped off, forced onto the Procrustean bed of the television screen with its 1.33 aspect ratio.  And, of course, much of the sex, violence, and profanity, now allowed by the elimination of the Production Code in favor of the ratings system, had to be edited out for viewing in prime time, when children might be watching.

This would not have been so bad had someone made sure that the original film was preserved.  But it would not be until the 1980s that the average person had cable television and video cassette recorders, not to mention the eventual emergence in the 1990s of DVDs and widescreen televisions.  It was during that period that the director’s cut became all the rage, allowing for even more than was seen theatrically.  But in the 1970s, for a lot of movies, all that survived was the edited-for-television version.

Perhaps this is no more so than for Darker Than Amber.  This was not a great movie. But it was a darn good one.  I saw it back in 1970 at the drive-in, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Little did I know at the time what a sad fate was in store for it.  When it was shown on television, it was subjected to the usual modifications.  When the movie became available on video tape years later, it was the edited-for-television version.

Recently, I purchased a DVD version, a two-disc set no less.  The DVD case was full of promise, calling it the “Special Collector’s Edition,” consisting of both “widescreen and fullscreen versions.”  Neither one was what I had hoped.  The version that is full screen has Dutch subtitles; the other one has an aspect ratio of 1.6, not exactly the 2.35 ratio the movie was originally filmed in.  As for this so-called widescreen version, it was a bit of a struggle even to get that right.  I had to set my television to widescreen mode to get the proper image, and yet neither the sides nor the top and bottom reached the borders of the screen.  That which is available on YouTube appears to be this version, but squeezed back into a 1.33 ratio, making everyone look a little thin and dolichocephalic.

However, in watching the movie on this “widescreen” DVD, I never got the feeling that I was missing out on anything as far as formatting was concerned.  Some directors, like Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah, made full use of the widescreen format, so when their movies were first shown on network television in the 1.33 format, you always had the feeling that there was something going on just outside the frame. But with Darker Than Amber, I never had that sense on this widescreen DVD.

Also, I believe the versions on these two DVDs are uncut.  Here too, I must rely on intuition and a memory that is unreliable after fifty years.  When watching movies in the 1970s on television, I could usually tell when something had been edited out. There would be a jump from one image to another that seemed discontinuous.  That was the impression I had when watching the movie on video tape about thirty years ago.  I never got that impression with these DVDs.  The widescreen version is missing a short section, apparently owing to some recording difficulty, but which you can watch on the one with Dutch subtitles, if you care to make the effort.

The widescreen version was obviously recorded from a television broadcast, because while I was watching the credits at the end, an announcer came on to say that the The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer (1977) would be shown next Tuesday.  I wondered if the manufacturer of this DVD might get in trouble for pirating.  But then I thought to myself, “No one has cared about this movie for fifty years, so why should they start now?”

Anyway, Darker Than Amber is a movie full of muscle and manhood.  When the movie begins, a bodybuilder named Terry (William Smith) and another bodybuilder named Griff throw Vangie (Suzy Kendall) off a bridge into the water below with her right foot tied to an eighty-five pound dumbbell. As it turns out, Travis McGee (Rod Taylor) and his friend Meyer (Theodore Bikel) are fishing down below, and one of their fishing lures hooks into her leg.  McGee dives in the water to save her.

When someone in a movie dives into the water, do you ever hold your breath to see if you could do what the hero in the movie is doing?  Well, I held my breath to see if I was a real man like McGee.  I drowned.

Terry noticed the men in the boat below, so he hires someone to sit on the bridge and await developments.  Sure enough, the man he hires sees McGee return to the scene and retrieve the dumbbell he cut loose from Vangie’s foot.  The man also sees the name on the motorboat, which McGee hired from a man named Burk.  Through that name, Terry tracks down Burk in order find out who rented that boat. When Burk refuses to say, Terry, muscle-bound brute that he is, beats Burk to a skull-crushed pulp.

Vangie has it made on McGee’s houseboat.  In keeping with the spirit of the late 1960s, McGee expounds on his philosophy of life, consisting of living it up and doing his own thing.  He makes money finding things that people have lost, and then takes his retirement in installments.  “It comes from the theory,” he says, “that Now is the best of life.”  Only that’s nothing compared to what goes on aboard The Alabama Tigress, a huge houseboat, owned by a woman who goes by the name “Alabama” herself (Jane Russell).  McGee says that there has been a nonstop party on the boat for a year and a half.  The boat’s name used to be The Alabama Tiger, but during the first year of the party, Alabama’s husband couldn’t take it anymore and died.  But the party kept right on going.  In reality, you wouldn’t want to party nonstop for a day and a half, let alone a year and a half, but this exaggerated expression of living the good life had a lot of appeal back in those days.

One night McGee informs Vangie that everyone on his boat has to pull his or her own weight, so he asks her to do the dishes.  She takes umbrage at being asked to do the work of a maid, which is apparently beneath her dignity as a prostitute and grifter.  It is at this point that there is that break in the movie referred to above, during which Meyer expresses surprise that “Captain Bligh” is willing to let Vangie get away with not doing the dishes.  After that break, she ends up having sex with McGee.

The next day, while shaving with a straight razor, as further evidence of his masculinity, McGee advises Vangie against going back to her motel room to get her money, offering to get it for her, but she takes off on her own anyway.  Word gets to Terry that she is back. He grabs her on the street and throws her into the path of Griff’s speeding car, her body flying through the window of an ice-cream parlor.

McGee finds out about both Burk and Vangie.  It’s time for revenge.  But first, he figures he might as well help himself to Vangie’s stash, as long as she won’t be needing it anymore.  He goes to her motel room, where Griff is just outside, wearing a bathing suit.  He is greasing up his body, rubbing his own muscular flesh with passionate selflove.  Then he starts working out with a dumbbell, probably the mate to the one that Vangie’s foot was tied to.  He chases off McGee before he can get into Vangie’s room.  McGee returns later on, enters Vangie’s room, and finds the money she had hidden.  But when he leaves, Griff is waiting for him with a gun. He takes the money McGee found and then forces him out into the woods, making him dig his own grave. But McGee slings the shovel into Griff’s gut, and after a brief struggle, kills him with his own gun.  McGee takes back the money that he had found in Vangie’s room, and then dumps Griff’s body into the grave, covers him up, and tosses away the shovel.

But he still has to find Terry.  McGee learns that Terry, Griff, Vangie, and another woman named Del had a racket going.  One of the women would seduce some old man on a cruise ship, figuring he would carry plenty of cash with him.  After the man was knocked out with a little chloral hydrate, the men would come in and take the money.  Vangie wanted out, so that’s why she was killed.

McGee makes contact with Del when the cruise ship she and Terry are on docks at a port.  He tells her about Vangie’s murder, saying that Terry will eventually do to her what he did to Vangie unless she goes along with his plan. She is skeptical, not willing to cross Terry just on account of Vangie.  He adds that if she goes along with his plan, then after he takes care of Terry, she will be free to find Terry’s stash, which she can keep.  That appeals to her, but she is stunned by McGee’s assertion that he will be able to handle Terry.  “Oh, wow!” she replies sarcastically, “You have all the answers.”  “Listen,” he tells her, “I never lay mine on a line with a loser, ever.” She agrees, reluctantly.

Later, on the ship, in McGee’s stateroom, the original plan having changed, Del is again in disbelief about McGee’s plan regarding Terry.  “You really think you can take him,” she says, thinking his self-confidence is completely unjustified, knowing how strong Terry is.  Again, McGee becomes irritated with her doubts about his ability.

In the course of their conversation, he finds out that in many cases, Terry wouldn’t wait for her to slip an old man a Mickey Finn.  He would just burst into the room early so he could have the pleasure of smashing the geezer’s face in, after which he would throw the body over the rail. When she sees the look of disgust on McGee’s face, she says, “Why are you looking at me like that?  It’s Terry.  He’s psycho.”

Part of McGee’s plan is to get Terry rattled.  To that end, he puts the dumbbell, complete with seaweed, in Terry’s bathtub full of water.  That makes Terry furious.  But what McGee didn’t count on is that Terry is just as good at detective work as he is, for he figures out that McGee was the one who saved Vangie, and he finds out where his stateroom is.  When McGee returns to it, he sees Del lying prone on the bed. She is dead, probably from a broken neck, but since McGee thinks she is sleeping, he shakes her.

Then Terry comes charging out of the bathroom, beginning the fight scene for which this movie is notorious.  Stories are told of how the fight turned real, resulting in a broken nose, some broken ribs, and a knocked-out tooth.  The result is that McGee gets the crap beat out of him.  We see him staggering down the hallway, trying to get away, his face battered and bloody, his right wrist sprained, as Terry takes off, figuring he’d better get away before the cops find out about Del.  When Terry gets to the gangplank, he sees a woman that McGee hired who looks just like Vangie, waving at him from behind a high, chain-link fence, yelling, “Hi, Terry.”  This, along with the dumbbell in the bathtub, was part of McGee’s plan to unnerve Terry.

I guess you could say it worked.  Terry goes berserk, flinging people out of the way left and right trying to get to her, even losing his hairpiece in the mayhem.  The Vangie impersonator, also played by Suzy Kendall, looks scared, but McGee recovers in time, pushes his way down the gangplank, picks up a two-by-four with his left hand, and whacks Terry across the shins, who collapses onto his knees, after which McGee knocks him out with a left fist in the face.

Somewhat later, back on McGee’s yacht, the Vangie impersonator offers herself just as the real Vangie did. But McGee says he needs time to get over the real Vangie first, as he realizes that there is more to life than Now.  In the meantime, she’ll have to do the dishes.