CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Play Kristy For Me

LITTLE DARLINGS

Directed by Ronald Maxwell

(Paramount) _

Little Darlings is a great film if you like a lot of shots of young girls admiring their budding breasts in the bathroom mirror, young girls getting hot ’n’sweaty playing volleyball, young girls dreamily riding big horsies bareback in the hot afternoon sun and young girls just plain getting wet, both figuratively and literally. In short, it’s my kind of movie.

The story involves a contest between the potty-mouthed, chain-smoking Angel (Kristy McNichol) and the frankly Tatumlike rich kid, Ferris (Tatum O’Neal), to see who can lose their virginity first. The prize: a date with Ranger Rick? No such luck—the winner gets a certificate from director Ronald Maxwell that says she never has to be in a movie like this again.

Kristy picks a revolting dirtbike buckeroo and probable Rush fan who’s built like a beer cooler. She kidnaps him in a rowboat, hoping to get next to his oar.

Tatum’s man is a folksinging French teacher who greatly resembles Keith Allison, a recurring image in Maxwell’s films. “How can there be a cherry,” he warbles, “without a stone?”—at which point several members of the audience disgustedly shove popcorn boxes over their heads and commence to tweet in unison.

As actresses, both O’Neal and McNichol are pretty smooth. Their necks are smooth. Their lithe young limbs are smooth. Their tanned, delicate teenage thighs are as smooth as the inner lining of a hairball. This brings up the old-age critical dilemma of whether a writer can be fafr to an artist when all he really wants to do is Bek her body all oyer. I think Dick Van Dyke summed it up best when he said, “I’m just a writer—what do / know about human dignity?” That’s right, Dick, and letme just add as a postscript, the nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat!

Anyway, Tatum comers Frenchy in hfe cabin one night but it’s no go. He’s seen International Velvet (twice!) and is further put off by the odd Flipper vibes she gives off during an unfortunately faked drowning sequence.

Kristy, meanwhile, is with old dirtbreath in the inevitable abandoned boathouse, the better to cop his dinghy. At this point, I dug in for the sordid adolescent sex scene I had paid my hard-earned hatchet royalties to see, only to be rewarded with close-ups of dripping mascara, heaving buoys, an evocative, longing view of the boathouse ceiling and then Angel buttoning up her shirt, her face fixed with'the sly, slightly off-center grin of the inbred. As the popular snout herself said in a groundbreaking earlier scene, shit\

All this talk about virginity inevitably leads to real-life speculation about the two young stars. Is they is, or is they ain’t? Tatum—well, you can just imagine what goes on at the O’Neal digs, if you have a three-donky mind, that is. As for Kristy, when People mag popped the question to her recently, she replied “GRAND SLAM, BABY!”

Grand slam? I don’t know, I think it’s more like in football when you tell someone you just scored and they ask, “but did you have the ball?”

Rick Johnson

Kamakazie Katies Kat Up NBC

PINK LADY AND JEFF

(NBC)_

This is the kind of TV show that’d cheer up the crew of the Enola Gay. Two diminutive microbes from the land of the rising Sony sandwiched around an American comic whose jokes they don’t really understand because they don’t really understand a whole lot of English. Gee, I like it when TV execs get conceptual. These two lost transistorettes of ethnic desireability are, of course, Mie and Kei, the My n’ Lai of the 80’s, collectively known as Pink Lady. They are not to be confused with an early 60’s group from Japan who used to come out dressed in Beatle boots, Paul Revere military jackets and mini minis which went just to the outskirts of the pubies. They were called The Pinky Chicks and they were popular, . but not as popular as Pink Lady. These two daughters of the divine wind are worth over 70 million bucks, and if you believe their press releases, all they want to do is get married and be normal. Veah, right!

Pink Lady have been.trying to crack the mainland of America for awhile now. They tried with a semi-precious disco LP and a song called “Kiss in the Dark.” The flip side was “Walk Away Renee” and if you play it at 33 it sounds as good as the Left Banke version. The only thing is that the American public seemed satisfied with Abba, phonetically. There are limits. Yet the execs as NBC apparently got a yen for giving these nice, unprepossessing ladies a six week variety show. I suppose it beats another sitcom about the giddy misadventures of a leper trying to set up an apartment in the Bronx with a Doberman and a transvestite dwarf. On second thought.. .oh, nevermind.

So Pink Lady has a TV show. So naturally, after all the Godzilla jokes, all the Kyu Sakamoto jokes, all the cruel Hiroshima jokes(y’know, “Wow, awright the first nuclear variety show, bring on the muties, ” hey what can I say, some people are weird), the first Pink Lady show hits the airwaves in a tidal wave of expectation and under-the-breath giggling.

Comic Jeff Altman, who is obviously enjoying the possibilities of being-the co-host of a variety show with two silly ladies who can’t speak a lick of English, does a few funny schticks; I really liked the Leonard Moon thing, “Hi, I’m Leonard Moon, I played the meat in Rocky...” and achingly refrains from leaping into the fray with a barrage of Jap jokes. Then Pink Lady meld into the screenand sing a few songs. After this a commercial. (“Yes, radies and getlemen, Pink Rady reewree buy Bonzai peas ’cause they are the peas what let you grow extra-sensory perceptions. Bonzai peas, made arid bottled in the slowly growing gardens of Nagasaki.” Montage of mushroom clouds, crazed turtles and wind storms. Like they say, the only good indulgence is self-indulgence. Wuzza-wuzza.)

Pink Lady does for TV what pink ice does for bars and Woody Allen did for international ha-ha hood in What’s Up Tiger Lily? The second show of their six-part visual harmony was as dry and dull as a re-run of Bachelor Father. I mean how can you get excited about Larry Hagman when all he’s doing is stealing Earl Holliman’s act?

Pink Lady—hmm, if this show ever goes 52 weeks I’ll launch a sneak attack on the nearest Radio Shack.. .Mei and Kie—they are driven.

Yes (pause) no.

Joe (Ginsu) Fernbacher

Steve McGarrett Bites The Dust; Hawaii Expelled From Union

HAWAII FIVE-O Episode; “Woe To Wo Fat”

(CBS)_

The main thing I ask myself about an actor’s performance is: if the part had instead been played by a large slab of Gouda cheese, would anyone have noticed?

Probably not, in this case. The case being Jack Lord, who for over a decade was synonymous with the humorless, petrified jello pole known as Det. Steve McGarrett.

Was? ’Fraid so, little wahinis. After a monumentally unnoticed 12-year network run,, Hawaii Five-0 has at long last tasted the bitter poi of cancellation. Although it goes down in history as the longest continuously running police show in the history of television, the program is more important for regularly exposing millions of viewers worldwide to the blunt-instrument personality of McGarrett, the most repellant leading actor in TV annals.

McGarrett was a man for all seasons, as long as they’re winter. Obviously the kind of guy who uses square toilet paper, Steve brought a whole new angle to the idea of witness convalescence. With his chilling cathode eyes and remarkably airless demeanor, he came off like a dried-out-but-still-zany Richard Nixon doing a •take off on Yul Brynner’s character in Westworld. All the charm of a whisper campaign; all the wit of a novelty shower curtain. Yes, what we have here is the Rip Repulski of CBS.

The final episode opened like the hundreds before it: big waves splashing,.the classic theme song, aeriafshots of The Islands—oh no! we’re gonna hit that apartment building!—whew, close call! Ah, here we go: grass skirts, hula meat, token natives, black gold, Texas T, who cares?

Day One of the final show re-introduces the dreaded archvillain Wo Fat, who has plagued the Five-O team for years like a particularly blubbery case of non-specific urethritis. With his shiny bald dome and flowing red robe, he looks like a bunch of dead squirrels piled up around a parking meter.

It seems that Mr. Fat has artfully kidnapped three out of the four top nuclear scientists on Earth and brought them to his island hideway. Only, they don’t know they’re missing to the rest of the world, a problem many of us experience from time to time.

Skip to Day Two, as Big Steve disguises himself as nuke-node *4, Dr. Boom-boom Raintree, and allows himself to be apprehended by Fat’s fatlings. 01’ Wowowo, now changed into a sumptuous green and yellow caftan that makes him look like a mountain of decaying tuna, falls for the switcheroo and dumps the hidden cheese in with the real scientists. But uh-ph! The lady scientist of the group is Raintree’s ex-squeeze and she sees through his cover immediately.

“You’re no scientist, you’re not even a person! You’re Jack Lord!” she cries. Silencing her momentarily with a swift kick in the luau pit, he gives her the old National Security peptalk and then suggests that she play qlong and be his Honolulu Lulu.

“I’m no easy lei,” she replies with genuine, unrehearsed disgust.

That night, our hero sneaks out of his bedroom and pops all the bubbles in the bad guys’ laboratory. Oh no, bummer! Here comes Wo in outrageous orange and blue jammies that make him look like a napalmed mailbox. He unmasks McG. (“ah shit, it’s Jack Lord!”) and in a cheap ploy for audience sympathy, promises him a sunrise firing squad.

With four commercials still to go, the writers are forced to allow Steve one last shot at an escape. But tough coconuts, bruddah, an alarm goes on, sending Wo and his boys chasing the fugitive slime through the jungle with automatic rifles, automatic dialog and offers to appear on Password Plus. It’s point blank city and still they keep missing him. All over America, people are up out of their TV chairs screaming “DAMN IT! GIVE ME THE GUN!”

It finally gets down to McGarrett and Wo Fat going at it barehanded, as it must. Distracting his opponent with a reaction-dulling Crime Doesn’t Pay lecture, Steve delivers a hard chop to the oinkish Islander’s soft white underbelly and he goes down like a ton of Ukeleles.

Cut to Wo Fat sitting on a jail bunk in prison stripes, looking for all the world like an encaged, three-dimensional topographic map of Montana. As McGarrett strolls offscreen with a nellyfied smile of satisfaction on his antlike puss, the camera zooms back to Wo pulling a file out of his shoe, just in case they need a fat villain on Tenspeed & Brownshoe sometime.

1 suppose we’ll never really know whether Hawaii Five-O’s extended popularity was due to its star’s all-encompassing mediocrity, its colorful beaver shots of Waikiki or just because it became an institution, like throwing up. One thing for sure is that, for twelve long seasons, Five-O demonstrated the virtues of simplicity over content time and time again. And if simplicity is a virtue, think what stupidity must be!

Rick Johnson

J.R. Finds Clemma In Kookie’s Comb

THE COMPLETE DIRECTORY TO PRIME TIME NETWORK TV SHOWS by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine)

The Great Hagman Debate began during one of those infrequent moments on Dallas when no landmark sleaze was squirming its way across the screen. You know, just a breather while Sue Ellen mixes White Russians in the baby’s bottle or Lucy stuffs a couple more *9 petri dishes down her t-shirt.

The question: w\mt shows did J.R. star in besides the late, great I Dream Of Keyholes? A true stumper. Blanks all around the “living” room, and none of them know the answer, either.

“The Ken Berry Wow Show?”

“Mohawk Showroom?"

“New Zealand—For The Fun Of It?”

This could go on all night, and itprobably will. Scores of inspired-but-wrongo guesses, followed by a lengthy trudge through V. Terrace’s prehistoric, unindexed encyclopedia, published way back in 1976 (you remember, the year you bought all those red, white and blue sparklers that didn’t work?). Ignorant frustration builds until you’re ready to scream what both Jean Millington and Patti Quatro—perhaps the number one and number two contemporary American philosophers and coincidentally ex-members of Fanny—have wailed so many times in the past: I’ve had it!

So get it—the all-new, fearfully authoritative Complete Directory To Prime Time Network TV Shows by Tim Brooks and Earle “Don’t Call Me Dave” Marsh. With over 2500 entries from Alkali Ike to Zorro, the Directory has an answer for practically every question you can ask about network television except why?

While none of these facts are exactly as important as sqy, where to get good Clemma in Royal Oak, they still matter to those of us attempting to build a reputation as total pests. It’s like what Beaver once described as “a new kind of homework you think of yourself.” Under each entry you’ll find the complete cast, a broadcast history, telecast dates and a few words on just what The Puke Show actually consisted of and how it changed the course of Western civilization.

This being a reference book and all, the authors keep it pretty dry, rarely straying into subjective areas such as why the mere sight of Billy Buntrook’s face makes otherwise somnolent Hazel advocates want to run out and shove bacon up Jimmy McNichol’s nose. But if the book boasts no male reproductive organs (always one step ahead of the censor!), what it does contain is Appendixes: Prime Time Schedules, Emmy Award Winners, Top Rated Programs By Season, Song Hits From TV (“Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb”—*4 in ’59!) and the absolutely essential Index of Personalities, Performers, and Allen Ludden.

This Index is what the literate world and tube fans alike have been waiting for. You wantto know who played Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah on Yancy Derringer? Zip, zip, page 693—of course, it was good old X. Brands! Or what show did Alexander Solzhenitsyn write for? Quick, to page 75—Love That Bob? No, it must be Chrysler Theatre (Pinto Theatre wasn’t on yet). Or how many lifeless pods in the King Family? Thirty-seven! Or the vital poop on Jefferson Drum, Blues By Bargy, Gerald McBoing-Boing, Sure As Fate, Actuality

Specials, Honestly Celeste or even my own personal favorite, Diagnosis: Unknown, with Cal Bellini? It’s all in here, and as appallingly factual as the reality of pricing shower curtains at K-Mart.

Oh yeah, J.R. Well, after Jeannie, he lent his dead-starfish grin to The Good Life (bomb, ’71), Whatever Happened To The Class Of’65? (they bombed in ’77) and.. .aw hell, look itup yourself! Me, I’ve got some important TV abuse to accomplish. Listen to this: “NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC—Documentary. ‘Life in an undersea capsule 328 feet below the surface where voices sound like Donald Duck’s.’ (60 min.).” Sounds like something that’ll really quack me up! Click.

Rick Johnson

What’s Pink, Plastic And Asks Lots Of Stupid Questions?

You say you’re tired of your Etch-A-Sketch? Bored with your hand-held electric croquet game? All your Flintstones Colorforms have dried up and everytime you play Kiss On Tour you end up second-billed to Triumph in Manitoba? Well, if you’ve had all your troubles at bargain rates and you need some cheap thrills fast, Parker Brothers has the game for you!

It’s called Pop 500 and it consists of a little pink poly cassette the size of a trial box of Hotdog Helper, containing five-hundred different questions and answers about pop music. All you have to do is look at the question in the little window on the front (EX. 209. “Big Girls Don’t

.?”), muddle over it for awhile (Big girls don’t

tell? Don’t care? Don’t drop everything one day and move to Waukegan?) and, if you’re stumped, just flip it over and there’s your answer in the tiny rear window (Big Girls Don’t Understand)! Then, you turn the little knobs and wheelies on the side and another question and answer pops into view. Listen, it beats trying to teach your dog to eat a paint can!

The half-thousand devilishly stupid questions fall into four main catagories: Fill-in-the-blank

(484. The steel guitar is likely to be found in.

music. Insipid?), Identify (185. What TV show bears Don Kirshner’s name? Leave It To Beaver?), Rearrange-the-letters (Jolt On Hen = Elton John, in more ways than one) and the ever popular, high percentage True/False. T/F: Donna Summer has talent.

Aside from the obvious (239. Name the violinist for Kansas.), the irrelevant (239. Name die violinist for Kansas.) and the downright irritating (231. How many records were sold in America in 1977? I give up, twelve?) some interesting historical notes and revisions can be found. Did you know that “Jailbreak” was a big hit for Thin Lizzy? Sure, it was number one in Bazutaland, wasn’t it? Or that punk rock started in England? The Standells beg to differ. Or how about Led Zep’s original name being The Whoopee Cushion? Hey, give “Stairway To Heaven” a serious listen and see if you don’t agree.

Of course, the operative fun factor in this game is not to be found in answering these idiotic questions correctly, but in delivering your own Snappy Comebacks. Included among the most loaded Q’s are: 31. What is the name of B.B. King’s guitar? (Timmy? Greg Sierra?) 136. “Mrs.

Brown You’ve Got A Lovely ” (Kumquat?

Detail? A lovely, but impertinent, sense of humor?), 57. What record label is named after a

Bogart movie? (Grunt?), 497. Crosby, Stills,

Nash and.? (pass the ammunition?), 487.

Who is Still Crazy After All These Years? (Who isn’t?!) and my own personal favorite, 183. What is Heavy Metal music? Don’t ask me!

Despite the fact that, by the time you reach the number 200, you could be declared legally dead in 16 states due to lack of brain function, the penultimate stumperoo is the dreaded 234. How many grooves are on a record? Think hard now—after all, this thing is for ages 10 to adult and you don’t want people thinking you’ve got the brain power of a refurbished TV, do you? Okay, give up? The answer is two grooves, one on each side.

Another good feature of Pop 500 is that it’s constructed of plastic, so you won’t hurt yourself when you stomp the living shit out of it!

Rick Johnson