TV's Second Season: Did It Fall, or Were You Pushed?

TV is like everything else in the world, from Nigel Olsson records to those malformed, ground-rice French fries guaranteed to cause early oven death. Either you suck it up indiscriminately like a hungry rogue celery in a plantfood factory, or you wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot Mandingo and spend the rest of your life reading a book. I don't ever believe that latter crowd though || they're like those characters who claim they never listen to AM radio but still go around humming "Island Girl" all the time. Shout it out loud: I'm hooked and I'm proud.

The so-called "viewer's revolt," which is what professional TV critics (all of whom would rather watch 24hour Cronkite) called the slight drop in ratings at the beginning of the '75-'76 season, ended as soon as Big Eddie and Beacon Hill were melted down into more sitcoms.

As a revolt, it was about as effective as a Koolaid strike afcthe kindergarten anyway, and now we're all happily crouched too close to the screen again, clawing at popcorn and slurping up something full of #2 red.

The more television panders to that mythical Lowest Common Denominator (a 12-yr-old Pirates fan in suburban Pittsburgh whose old man squeezes geese for a living) the better it gets. And if you think the first half of this TV season was benignly programmed to leave you in a moo slumber of Angie Dickinson dreams by eleven o'clock (ten central) then the Second Season will tickle the pickle beyond your wildest non-expectations. Taste is not the secret of successful television abuse.

As was true last fall, situation comedies still have the tube in an evertightening yuk-grip. The spin-off fad, which threatens to clone all of prime time into one inter-locking rubber ranch, has thankfully lost some steam, .

and the only new ones are Laverne & Shirley, with chubmouth Penny Marshall and alternate ick Cindy Williams from Happy Days, and Grady, Fred Sanford's old buddy. L&S got one of the highest ratings for a debut in the history of plagiarism, and deserves it with their moldy beer jokes and femaled Fonzieisms. Also, Paul Lynde is not in it. Grady, however, had better spin right back to the junkyard before he finds himself sitting in a Hollywood bar playing career solitaire with McLean Stevenson.

The all-new carbon comedies aren't about to wipe out Bob Newhart, but they do have their moments. Best of the slag is One Day At a Time, one of those laugh-while-you-preach jobs with the customary Beleaguered Mom and Precocious Kids, one of whom is the ever-diabolical Mackenzie Phillips. The TV Guide write-ups always'start out "Ann is in a dither because her daughters..." a) were caught hitting up Polygrip behind the furnace, b) are wearing militant gay armbands to hygiene class, c) fill in your own VD story . Partridge Family without old Frogmouth.

The rest are nothing to donate blood over. Dumplings has James Coco and much rubbing of blubber but it ain't no Calucci's Dept., The Practice is another bad Groucho Marx impression , this time with Danny Thomas, and Popi has more dull ethnics than any given panel show. It's still best to stick with Mary Tyler Moore, the great Every sissy, who has class guests like Betty Ford. After she was-on., this household of budding liver casualties spent an entire hour arguing Which One Is It?

Lots of comedy pushers are still deifying the variety show, that sure cable car to oblivion. Best hope for a decent duke-out with extinction is the reunited Sonny & Cher. They're still fine together and their cut-down dialogues will always appeal to those of us with the sense of humor that chortles at nursing home fires. And face it. Sonny is the Sky Saxon of the Family Hour. It can't all be fleeting nips.

Anotherthrow-the-fishheads-at-the fridge-and-see-if-they-freeze format is NBC's Saturday Night, which is totally off the wall but has the misfortune of not being picked up by several of the network affiliates and a slot that coincides with the time the crowd starts to sing car songs at the bar. Blue chip anchors destined to soon join Howard "Your mother plays rhythm guitar in j hell" Cosell in crater land include Donny & Marie, a day care center for saddle shoe wearers and Rich Little. One has Paul Lynde and one doesn't.

One genre that's still getting more interesting all the time is the cop show, the disco music of TV. Now that producers have faced the fact that there is only one basic police plot (hired killer hunts wealthy black junkie-dealerpimp who murdered beautiful prostitute in bizarre drpg-porn-blackmail scheme) they're really beefing up the characters. Thus, George Kennedy as Bumper Morgan, The Blue Knight. He's got a face like a dune buggy with a flat tire, but boy does he have personality! It may be as repellent as that rat shit decaying under the bathroom scale, but it sure beats Jigsaw John

(wave bye-bye fast). However, original creater Joseph Wambaugh has seized control of the show and promises less raping, pillaging and stealing of roller skates from club-foots, so it may soon decline. City Of Angels, with Wayne Rogers from M.A.S.H, looks good too, a 30's squint-and-sneer Sam Spade type with dames, voice-overs, and Venetian blinds. McCoy plain stinks, with Tony Curtis as the kind of guy who decorates his bedroom with roadmaps. Yawn while I break your fingers.

The networks put a couple of semiserious (as opposed to New Zoo Revue) female stars on the air too, but don't trade in your rape whistle on them. Bionic Woman, with Lindsay Wagner as a six-million dollar cutie who can straighten my necktie anytime, is as robotic as its progenitor, and Brenda Vacearo as Sara thinks she's Julie Christie when really she's a strippeddown Brenda Morgenstern.

The rest of the schedule is pretty dim. There's pro basketball, syndicated snoozes like Cooking Without Camels and My Most Unforgettable Fish, and ABC's ludicrous Almost Anything Goes, where townfolk from Dodofarm, IL and Barneyville, MD take each other on in thrillfests like the Pregnant Canary Drop Kick, the Blindfold Escape From Sinking Rowboat, and of course, Pin The Tail On The Blimp.

All in all, the Second Season offers lots of good, clean trash. But there will never to be another Gilligan's Island.

Drive-In Saturday

Snuff Said?

Have you had enough of snuff?

I have. I recently returned from a private screening of what may be an authentic snuff movie. I say may be because it's a good idea to be skeptical these days. Do you think that was really a mechanical shark that ate Robert Shaw in Jaws? Don't you think Metal Machine Music was a put-on, perpetrated by Red Seal?

This was my second opportunity to see a film purporting to show on-screen the actual murder and mutilation of an unsuspecting actress. Last fall a ticket became available to a $200 screening of an Argentine-made snuff movie. It never happened. The heat was on. The deal fell through •

The new one is called — what else — Snuff. It's being distributed by Monarch Releasing, a New York based company that refuses to divulge the origins of the picture. There are no credits, so the people who get cut up don't even get their names on the screen.

The Monarch ad person ought to be snuffed. "The picture they said could never be shown." "The bloodiest thing that ever happened in front of a camera." "The film that could only be made in South America.. .where life is CHEAP!" Even the New York Times turned that stuff down.

Snuff is the picture that Rona Barrett has been running off at the mouth about. Even thotrghsiie hadn't seen it,,, % she wanted it banned. She said ffrd people who made it were from another country so the United Nations ought to look into it. Each time she popped off about it, Monarch sent her a dozen long-stemmed roses.

A little investigative work uncovered these facts. The film was shot in South America a few years ago. The identities of the director, producer, writer, etc. are known — but only to a select group of film people. Before Monarch got their mitts on it, Snu//had been shown privately in the New York area on at least two occasions. In the basement of a Manhattan mannikin factory over Labor Day weekend, and at a private party following the steel cage wrestling championship match between Bruno Sammartino and Ivan "The Russian" Koloff.

But who really cares about any of that? Right? Are the snuffings real?

First let me explain about the story. Yeah, there's a plot! Something to do with a band of Mansonite hippies on the loose. This part's in Spanish and all I can say about the dubbing is Oy! Caramba! Lots of Easy Rider type imagery here. Acid rock too. Psychedelicatessen! But just when you might be thinking about snuffing the theatre box office manager, things take a turn for the better — or the worse depending on your stomach.

They stop the film and rub out one of the actresses!

The only other person present at the screening I attended was a burly Swedish film distributor who had seen action in World War II. During the scene in which the girl's fingers were systematically snipped off, he covered his face with Variety. When the rest of her hand was severed; he took a long pull on his bottle of Aquavit. By the time they got around to ripping her heart from her chest, he was hiding behind a stock of 8x10 glossies.

"I saw many atrocities in the Big War," he said later. "In factj got my own hand sliced up pretty good with shrapnel. What they did to that girl was real."

So what about the girl? Obviously nobody was about to give out her name and the phone number of her service. She looked like a thousand other actresses, pretty in a dirty blonde, bland sort of way. If she was really snuffed, she won't even be missed. Her friends will think she's out of town, doing You Can't Take It With You in a dinner theatre.

The snuffing sequence is remarkably clear. It's not grainy or herky-jerky. The camera is all over that girl like a cheap suit.

Snuff has already been released in some of the major markets and it should be at the drive-ins this summer. But watch out. There's a new rumor going around. Seems there was a showing of Snuff down in the Southwest. And they ran a kind of lottery among members of the audience. The girl with the winning ticket hasn't been seen for a while.: .

Edouard Dauphin