SHORT TAKES: ADMIT ONE

SHORT TAKES: ADMIT ONE

movies

DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (AIPHallmark):: A kindly psychiatrist has strange ideas about curing crazy folk. He lets them dwell in fantasies each day until they reach a phantasmagoric breaking point and plunge back into reality...totally cured. (Sure looks good on paper.) As a result of his unorthodox views the doc gets an axe in the back as a token of appreciation from one of his graduating class and his

asylum is populated by a group of crazies that make the cast of Marat/Sade look like extras from Mary Poppins. Nymphos that make it with corpses, psychopathic ex-judges, disfigured old ladies, brain-damaged giants and assorted loonies flourish in the Doc's greenhouse of gore. Enter a pretty (natch) and thoroughly stupid student nurse and whaddaya got? A bloody, often hysterically funny and essentially rank film. From the folks who wasted your time with Last House On The Left. Movies is better than ever.

Garth

MAGNUM FORCE (Warner Bros.) -This sequel to Dirty Harry begins with a long-nosed Magnum revolver being slowly turned from its behind-the-credits profile until it is pointed directly at the audience. Then it goes off right in your face. So what can you expect after that? Clint Eastwood is a San Francisco cop known for taking the Law, such as it is, into his own hands. Will he join a vigilante execution squad apparently working within the police department? A moral dilemma for our time, or something like that. Otherwise, slick, tough and bloody with just enough intelligence in Eastwood's acting and John Milius" screenplay to keep it from slipping into made-for-tv emptiness.

Vince Aletti

THE DON IS DEAD (Universal): The ultimate ethnic luke. THE DON IS DEAD is an unintentionally hilarious look at three Mafia families at war over a pretty young Irish nightclub singer. Anthony Quinn as the Mafioso boss is as frightening as an elderly nun, but manages to survive the onslaught of cliches which inundates the rest of the cast. Gangsters are filled with enough lead to sink small aircraft carriers, dumb mobsters tell smart mobsters "I need your brains," everyone eats spaghetti and the Italian race comes off looking like the survivors of Planet of the , Apes. Blood flows like wine. Wine flows like water. The script flows like concrete. Someday this will make a howl of a TV Late Show.

Charles Bogle

GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT (Warners): : Any film that starts off with the premise that it is going to be dumb and then gets progressively dumber can't be all bad, although Get To Know Your Rabbit comes close. Filmed three years ago but shelved because nobody knew what to do with it, the film recounts the exploits of a young executive who quits the Establishment to make it as a tap dancing magician. Funny, huh? Sure it is. Tommy Smothers smirks his way through his magician role with all the aplomb of a fraternity brother with Bell's palsy, Orson Welles (as Tom's mentor) bellows a lot and John Astin (Smothers" boss) proves that it is indeed possible for his eyes to cover threefourths of his face for ten minutes at a time. Resembling a bad day at Mad magazine and,. apparently, assembled by director Brian De Palma with a sledge hammer, Get To Know Your Rabbit is a must for home movie fans.

Garth

ASH WEDNESDAY (Paramount):: Can a middle-aged woman, fearing the loss of her marriage, find happiness after a face lift, breast lift and various other bulbous boosts? Can Elizabeth Taylor inject credibility into her one dimensional role of a sensuous liftee? Can an audience sustain consciousness throughout such garish goings on? The answer to all three of the above questions is a resounding "NO!" as Liz does her best to rebuild her crumbling marriage by vacationing in an Italian ski resort and shacking up with a local gigolo. Henry Fonda (in between GAF commercials) finds time to appear for 27 seconds as Liz's husband. Seemingly he needs a tongue transplant of some sort himself as he mumbles his lines with all the finesse of a well-worn sump pump. Where are brain lift operations when we really need them?

Charles Bogle

BILLY JACK (Warners):: What you have here, folks, is a little gem of, a period piece which, although not the most professional production in the history of cinema, is one of the most honest and embarrasingly true. Produced back in 1970 and released in "71, Billy Jack is an amateurish little tour de force that captures on film all the frustrated idealism that most of us felt when we were still concerned about Viet Nam, subversive politics, antiheroes and new educational ideas ala Summerhill.

Billy (Tom Laughlin) is a softspoken, two fisted half-breed Indian who serves as guardian angel for a progressive school for underprivileged kids located in the Arizona desert. A former Green Beret, Billy AND the school incur the wrath of the local redneck townspeople and an inevitable showdown occurs. Slow moving and overly melodramatic at times, Billy Jack succeeds in recapturing a bit of the

self-righteous indignation a lot of us still carry inside along with vague memories of People's Park, Kent and Jackson states and the March on Washington of your choice. And today, more than ever, that flame could use rekindling. Goodnight, Dick.

Garth

THE PAPER CHASE (Twentieth Century Fox) :: This movie isn't bad (i.e. poor acting, directing, script), it's awful (i.e. full of shit."Chock full.) Timothy Bottoms is having a tough time in his first year at Harvard Law School (the paper he's chasing is the old sheepskin, see) and if you care what happens to the twerp after fifteen minutes of this schlock you're worse off than he is. Producer and director John Houseman turns in a fine performance in his acting debut as our hero's nemesis, a gruff old professor, but it was a waste of time. Don't waste yours!

Greg Popek

FIVE ON THE BLACK HAND SIDE (United Artists):: Dad (Leonard Jackson) is an average black middle class tyrant who runs his barber shop the way most people run an army and bosses poor mom (Clarice Taylor) around like there was no tomorrow. Mom whimpers a lot. Youngest son Gideon (Glynn Turman) moves up to the roof where he prepares for the revolution. Older sibling, Booker T. Washington Brooks (D'urville Martin) calls himself "Shariff," thinks about the Third World but dates only white girls. THE PLOT THICKENS: On the eve of her daughter's wedding mom decides to rebel and Afrocize herself. Will she succeed? Will pop remain a stammering dolt? Will anyone think this is funny? If all this sounds familiar... IT IS, having been filmed over the past forty years as everything from Andy Hardy Comes Home to Life With Father. Everyone gets a fair shake via the screenplay and both black and white audiences are united in a common bond of well-meant trivia.

Charles Bogle

THE NEW LAND (Warner Brothers):: Like its predecessor, The Emigrants, this is an exquisitely made film with a precise beauty that's stunningly natural. Starring Bergman stalwarts Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman, it continues the saga of 19th century Swedish immigrants as the aggravations of their journey graduate to the trials and frustrations of settling. Through hundreds of scenes director Jan Troell captures a sense of the time and the Minnesota country with a lyrical quality usually confined to the self-indulgent excesses of Bergman or Fellini. It's a humane movie, realistically sympathetic for its characters, but the joylessness of their lives leaves them a little one-dimensional. Still, it's easily one of the year's best.

Greg Popek

THE WAY WE WERE (Columbia) :: My father can sleep anywhere: at family reunions* reading the news, watching TV. But he can't sleep standing up. "That's one thing I'll have to learn," he said, admiring Robert Redford in The Way We Were. Robert is indeed charming, even konked out standing up, leaning against the bar. And so Barbra Streisand is charmed. As Kate, she plays both question and answer (wo)man to get him involved with her, and after a short marriage they both admit that he can't stand to look at her face, because, although he admires her, she's not his style. His style is Lois Chiles, who, in the words of hubby Bradford Dilman, "is not really much of a person" — and he's comparing her to Kate! Tough luck for the protesting Jewish misfit, huh? You can't help but root for someone in this movie, either Robert who's so cool he can't even remember getting laid the morning after; or Barbra, who remembers everything, and finally agrees to forget.

Georgia C.