DRIVE IN SATURDAY

DRIVE IN SATURDAY

FINGER-POPPIN' TIME

Edouard Dauphin

Ever lose a finger? No, that’s not quite the same as giving someone the finger. The Dauph is talking about parting company with a digit from one of your forelimbs. Mary Steenburgen goes through this unpleasant experience in Dead Of Winter, an Arthur Penn flick that just may do for fingers what Blue Velvet did for ears. Yummy. If this keeps up, we may be able to assemble an entire human being made JlM up of hacked-off spare “ parts from Hollywood movies.

Steenburgen plays Katie, an aspiring New York actress—in other words, a waitress—who auditions for Mr. Murray (Roddy McDowall), a strange film producer, and lands a mysterious role in a secretive film being made upstate. Thrilled with the promised money ($12,000, which is even more than The Dauph receives for each column of “Drive-In Saturday”), she quickly packs her bags and is whisked away to a remote mansion where ail the phone lines are down due to a raging blizzard. If any of this sounds familiar, it should. They used the same plot in Debbie Does The Catskills.

Presiding over the country estate is Dr. Lewis, a charming but eccentric psychiatrist played by Jan Rubes. You may recall Jan as Santa Claus in last year’s One Magic Christmas, a film that had a somewhat limited U.S. engagement—it played for a week on the side of Rick Johnson’s barn in Macomb, Illinois.

Though both Murray and Lewis (sounds like a comedy team and, come to think of it, it is) are eyeballing her fingers from the second she arrives, Katie is too excited about becoming a movie star to notice. Lewis takes her on a tour of the old house, pointing out the fierce-iooking polar bears he has killed (one of ’em resembled Iman Lababedi!) and the player piano that is activated by his pacemaker when he gets worked up. The doc steals a quick look at Katie’s knuckles and the damn thing starts plunking out classical numbers like Vladimir Horowitz on Benzedrine. You just know Katie won’t be needing her rings soon.

Lewis and Murray (now it sounds like one of those cut-rate law firms) explain that she will be taking over a film role that has been partially shot by a woman who has subsequently had a nervous breakdown. To do this, she will have to be made over into a double of the former leading lady. This turns out to be not that difficult, since Steenburgen is playing both roles in Dead Of Winter. Eventually, she even appears in a third role, but by then The Dauph was drifting into the dead of Snoozetown.

Still, I was wide awake for the finger severing scene, which is more than can be said for Katie. See, she gets drugged and is anesthetized for the whole amputation, which is done off camera. It isn’t until the next morning that she wakes up, notices blood on her pillow. (OK, it could be a nosebleed, but wait, what’s this gauze bandage doing on my hand?) Talk about a ripoff!

Dead Of Winter’s director Penn has described the movie as “a classic tale of suspense, told in the manner espoused by Hitchcock, before we entered the era of blood and yet more blood.” Nice try, Arthur, but aren’t you the guy who brought us Bonnie And Clyde, a picture where blood flowed like butanol at a CREEM editorial party? Let’s face it. Atmosphere is fine, but there are some of us out here who delight in watching screen performers sliced up by a wood mulcher and hung from a rusty meathook to dry.

Skip Dead Of Winter and if you must think about whittled fingers, munch on some fried mozzarella sticks—sometimes it’s good to pretend and besides, they’re almost as tasty as the real thing!