Darker
Than Amber (1970)
Talk about slow-paced! This mystery/thriller, based on a John
MacDonald novel, is like watching paint
dry. The action takes place off the coast
of Florida. A beautiful blonde (Suzy Kendall), left to drown by two thugs, is
discovered and revived by the hero and his sidekick. Even after the
hero and the blonde fall in love, she won’t tell him who’s after her or
what’s going on. Blah, blah, blah.
James Booth has two brief scenes in this film as Burk, a dirty old Irishman who
lives in a derelict bus by the dock, renting out boats. In the first
scene, he awakens to the sound of the hero pulling away in one of his rental
boats. Burk runs down the dock after him, shouting, while the
hero pretends not to hear.
In the second, longer,
scene, Burk has
another humorous altercation with the hero and retires into his bus to play the
ukulele and sing tunelessly to his pet birds. A thug arrives and
wants to know who rented the boat earlier. Burk won’t say, so the
thug beats the crap out of him and bashes his head through the windshield of the
bus. Bye
bye Burk and bye bye my reason for watching this turkey.
As usual, James Booth creates a vivid minor character. The poignant little scene with the ukulele and the birds is
unlike anything else I’ve seen him do. The neck scarf is back, worn
more loosely, in red. His fake Irish
accent sounds authentic, but his hair looks distractingly
artificial. (To age him, the make-up artist evidently painted his
hair white. Bleaching, or even a wig, would have looked more
natural.)
Text copyright Diana Blackwell, 2002.
Appendix