"Travis McGee is having a conference with one of his clients. Business as usual."

Rod Taylor, he of the recently revived Dark of the Sun (by way of Bill Lustig, Quentin Tarantino, and the Warner Archive), starred a few years later as Travis McGee, the most famous creation of mystery scribe John D. MacDonald, in Robert Clouse's Darker Than Amber.

That brings me to the latest acquisition resulting from my movie poster addiction, which you can see below.  I would have liked a more prominent image of star Rod Taylor rather than villain William Smith, but the garish colors and imagery make up for it.  Interestingly, Smith's name is nowhere to be found in the billing block.

This Belgian poster features the customary bi-lingual title treatment and sources its main images from a few other posters and lobby cards for the film.

Now, if only CBS, by way of Paramount, could see to it to release this on DVD or Blu-ray. Unfortunately, it's influence on Soderbergh's Haywire is probably too oblique to have much impact.

On another positive note, there has been recent talk of another screen interpretation of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee.  The new adaptation, of the first McGee novel, The Deep Blue Good-by, has Leonardo DiCaprio attached as star and producer and Paul Greengrass as director.  My first reaction to hearing that DiCaprio is slated to topline was far from an enthusiastic "Yow!" response, but I guess it's best to take a "wait and see" approach.  That said, I know one thing...to borrow--and tweak--a line from the immortal Hank Kingsley: "One of Rod Taylor's balls is bigger than Leonardo DiCaprio."

I suppose if this thing ever gets made, CBS / Paramount would probably finally be inclined to release Darker Than Amber on a disc format, though.

When Cult Films Appear Within Cult Films

When a film scene plays out in front of a movie theater or in pre-Giuliani Times Square, I'm probably not the only cinephile who squints at the television set in order to read the marquee(s) or determine the one-sheet in the display. Of course, I really love it when the film within a film is a particular favorite of mine and /or a cult film.

Here are a couple of examples of "cult films within cult films," which I also happened to catch on 35mm within the last half year or so. Both examples hark back to a time when neighborhood theaters that played one film at a time were commonplace and the exterior and lobby were transformed into visual paeans to that film.

Darker Than Amber in Dusty and Sweets McGee:

The poster to the left of the ticket booth is different from the final one-sheet and resembles the key art in the British quad. The tagline reads, "If Travis McGee puts his life on the line, it's not going to be for free." Incidentally, we can also see a poster for what appears to be a stage production of Hair, just to the right of the man in brown leather.

British Quad (paired with Figures in a Landscape):

U.S. one-sheet:

Italian locandina:

The Warriors in American Gigolo

Most of the time, I'm sure the film advertising that appears within other films comes down to chance, but in the case of The Warriors and American Gigolo, the Warriors advertising prominently appears throughout the scene; my thought is that it's not a coincidence that The Warriors, and not The Wanderers, for example, is the film in the background given that both were produced and released by Paramount. To think I had the opportunity to ask Paul Schrader such an important question at a recent screening of Gigolo...and didn't do it.