Color of Night

1994, 1080hd

Johnny's comments:

90s weekend update has a look at the 1994 erotic thriller Color Of Night, just released on Bluray with both the 122 minute theatrical cut and the 140 minute director's cut. There's a fair bit of difference between the two cuts with a lot of scenes edited differently particularly the sex scenes. I have seen a version of the movie before off a TV showing, but I have no idea which cut it was, I'm assuming it was the theatrical cut.

I had a look at the director's cut and it is actually not a bad little movie, not without issues (the biggest still being Jane Marsh obviously playing 3 different characters and none of them ended up being the killer) but a good fun watch nonetheless. There's a lot of silliness going on throughout but the director's cut embraces it's own silliness with a cheeky sense of humour and playing a lot like a giallo movie with over-the-top violent set pieces owing a lot to the director Richard Rush's love of stunts.

Color Of Night is very much a movie of its time, a movie that wouldn't be made now but also a movie that is a victim of its own excess. Sadly, the movie probably killed any chance Jane Marsh had of having a Hollywood career, not helped by other factors including an overbearing husband who was one of the producers of this movie who insisted in being very hands on with her career, to her detriment.

If you ever feel like watching this movie again, I recommend checking out the director's cut as it makes slightly more sense, has more sex and nudity and check out the director's commentary with the now 90 year-old director who had some great insights but also sounded like he could die at any moment...

As mentioned above, I've made videos from both cuts of the movie as there are different edits of a lot of scenes and some scenes that only exist in either of the versions. I didn't recap some scenes from the theatrical cut because the difference was they were shorter with no extra shots.

Jane March in the theatrical cut film clip

Jane March in the director's cut film clip

(All collages below)