SHORT TAKES

SHAFT’S BIG SCORE - Scores a big, fat zero. Also includes the longest, least interesting climactic chase in recent movie history.

JOE KIDD — A dull, routine western, enlivened only by Clint Eastwood’s hostile presence. The whole thing is as smoothly and prefunctorily put together as a General Motors car; when you see it on television next year you may be reminded of the Edsel.

FUZZ— Pin-up boy Burt Reynolds and pin-up girl Raquel Welch impersonate Boston policemen sent out to solve assorted cases of rape, arson, and extortion. It’s supposed to be hip, funny, scathing and tense; actually it s dumb, nasty-minded and dull. Reynolds delivers most of his lines out of the side of his mouth; somebody must have forgqtten to tell him that he wasn't on a talk show.

SKYJACKED — Here’s a marketable item that’s been around for a few years, finally used to full advantage. The ’70’s version of From Here to Eternity. Great casting: Charlton Heston as the pilot, Yvette Mimeux (chief stewardess, lover of co-pilot, exlover of Heston), James Brolin (of Marcus Welby; he’s the bomber, don’t worry, who the bomber is doesn’t have much to do with it), and a second TV star, the Partridge Family’s nubile Susan Dey. Rosie Greer turns in a fine performance, too. Interesting plot, suspense that relies on the How of it all and an irresistible soap-opera atmosphere (everything from adultery to natural childbirth). Climb aboard and enjoy your flight. Too bad though: it’s a 727 rather than the super—747. No piano bar. . • ,

THE CANDIDATE - Robert Redford runs for Senator in Michael Ritchie’s cool, cynical, funny film about media politics. The editing is as razor sharp as Jermey Larner’s script; the movie practically turns its disillusionment into a kind of chic. Just as Paul Newman has come to be recognized as-the Beautiful Loser, so Redford, with his past few films, seems to have metamorphasized into the Driven Winner who always discovers that his victory is a hollow one. The image should be enough to keep him a superstar for at least a decade. In the meantime, the film provides him with one classic moment: a scene in the backseat of a limousine when, punch-drunk from campaigning and speech-making, he jabbers backwards through his standard speech, turning it into a Groucho Marx monologue.

DELIVERANCE — A superior adaptation of James Dickey’s novel about four men on a canoeing trip who find themselves caught up in a whirlpool of catastrophe, murder and rape. The film was directed by John Boorman, who made the crackerjack gangster flick of the late sixties, Point Blank, and it is filled with the same ferociously tense quality of man struggling against an alien environment that enriched the earlier film. Whatsmore, while the movie stands up as a tremendously engrossing adventure story, it also has an intruigingly ambiguous viewpoint regarding its violence and the morality involved. John Voight gives a highly controlled, intelligent and precise performance in the lead role.

BOXCAR BERTHA - This Roger Corman production seems initially to be a rather dumb period piece with more Bonnie & Clyde and Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid cops than you could shake a gaiter at. It ends with the agitator-outlaw hero crucified on the side of a boxcar and obligatory blood spews pointless and contrived enough to offend the most jaded palate. Along the way you’ll be bored comatose by its inepitude and utter humorlessness. Naturally the film’s gang of revolutionary train-robbers include a black and a New York Jew. Showing most places with 1,000 Convicts & a Woman (subtitled “Story of a Nymphomaniac”) a stale cock-tease epic which Russ Meyer would have scrapped in 1963 and looks like it was shot with a Kodak Super-8.