Color Me Dead

As a big fan of the 1949 film noir D. O. A. I was looking forward to seeing this remake moving the action from California to 1969 Australia but it was so poorly done that it somehow diminished my enjoyment of the original. The strangest part is that both films were the work of the same pair of screenwriters.

The plot gimmick is that a man who was surreptitiously given a poison that has no antidote has only a few days to live and try to find out who did it and why. In the original he discovers the plot in bits and pieces as he goes along. This time around the authors decided to give away a good deal of the plot at the beginning, which only detracts from the suspense.

The original was in artistically composed and lit black and white. The remake is in that 1960s Eastmancolor that never looked as sharp or as bright as the Technicolor it replaced. The biggest problem is the two main actors. The producers must have thought that casting Americans as Australians in the lead roles would help at the box office. The clash of their accents with those of the Australians in the supporting cast is annoying if you're annoyed by such things, but the bigger problem is that Tom Tryon and Carolyn Jones can't hold a candle to Edmond O'Brien and Pamela Britton from 1949's D. O. A. Tryon seems incapable of cutting loose and showing the emotion required for the role. Jones was more versatile, but the slender and sexy Morticia of The Addams Family a few years earlier is lethargic and noticeably older and chubbier, perhaps due to health issues. Neither starred in any movies after this.

I watched this to satisfy my curiosity but I wish I hadn't.