Today you get a movie review. I finally got hold on eBay of a tape of Darker than Amber. Being an unabashed fan od John MacDonald's trashy thrillers I was really looking forward to seeing this adaptation. Unfortunately it was thoroughly disappointing. If you were writing a book about movies adapted from books, this would be worth a chapter all to itself on How Not To Do It.
If the movie had been completely bad, it wouldn't have been so worth my attention; but it's one of those cases where just a few things are right - you can see a glimmer of potential, so it's even more frustrating that that potential was squandered. The casting was good, and the sets and locations were right on. The script is the problem. Why didn't they get MacDonald to adapt his own book to the screen, since he did it so well with Cape Fear? Instead some hack butchered the book - throwing out most of a satisfyingly complex detective story, keeping just the action and nowhere near enough exposition to explain what the action is meant to accomplish. Ted Bikel is perfectly cast as Meyer, but he has so few lines (compared to his major role in the book) that his character is reduced to a stereotypical comic ethnic sidekick instead of the essential balancing role that he has in MacDonald's books. (He plays a sort of combined Spock and Bones to the protagonist McGee's Kirk.)
One last thing that drove me nuts about this film was the sound editing. Absurdly loud non-diegetic music covers up the dialogue (what little there is) in critical scenes. It's all frantic '70s jazz, vaguely Caribbean sounding - was the director afraid we would forget the movie is set in Florida without such a cliched soundtrack?
MacDonald's books could be made into some terrific movies - and a few of them have - but this isn't the way to do it.
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Whenever I seriously think about canceling my SG membership a new mindblastingly awesome set goes up. This time it's Jem. Yowza bowza wowza, as Jim Spagg (RIP) used to say.
If the movie had been completely bad, it wouldn't have been so worth my attention; but it's one of those cases where just a few things are right - you can see a glimmer of potential, so it's even more frustrating that that potential was squandered. The casting was good, and the sets and locations were right on. The script is the problem. Why didn't they get MacDonald to adapt his own book to the screen, since he did it so well with Cape Fear? Instead some hack butchered the book - throwing out most of a satisfyingly complex detective story, keeping just the action and nowhere near enough exposition to explain what the action is meant to accomplish. Ted Bikel is perfectly cast as Meyer, but he has so few lines (compared to his major role in the book) that his character is reduced to a stereotypical comic ethnic sidekick instead of the essential balancing role that he has in MacDonald's books. (He plays a sort of combined Spock and Bones to the protagonist McGee's Kirk.)
One last thing that drove me nuts about this film was the sound editing. Absurdly loud non-diegetic music covers up the dialogue (what little there is) in critical scenes. It's all frantic '70s jazz, vaguely Caribbean sounding - was the director afraid we would forget the movie is set in Florida without such a cliched soundtrack?
MacDonald's books could be made into some terrific movies - and a few of them have - but this isn't the way to do it.
-----
Whenever I seriously think about canceling my SG membership a new mindblastingly awesome set goes up. This time it's Jem. Yowza bowza wowza, as Jim Spagg (RIP) used to say.
adelayde:
thanks for joining the VS group. 
_sarah_:
Fixed. Thanks.