--AANVERTER CASETAWAY

*!7"

༢་

en vil urbi

"ASSAULT on the senses

Film makers of note have begun to produce movies that will 'show it like it is'

By Marilyn Beck and Ellsworth Redinger

Violence in "Mandingo."

Disaster personified: scenes from "Earthquake," top, and "Towering Inferno.”

Elite," directed by the master of cinematic › brutality, Sam Peckinpah; and "Burnt Offerings,"featuring Karen Black and Oliver Reed in a tale of gothic horror.

And on UA's upcoming production schedule: the film adaptation of the Pier Paul Reed story of survival via cannibalism, “Alive.”

At Paramount, Dustin Hoffman will be starring in the suspense spy film, "Parathon Man." And Walter Matthau and 11-year-old Tatum O'Neal will be making "The Bad News Bears" which the studio expects to get slapped with an "R" rating because of the shockvalue vulgarities with which the dialog will be laced.

At Columbia, a return of 300% profit on the distribution of the French-made sex film, "Emmanuelle," has encouraged studio exclusives to proceed with other X-rated fare.

13

In the planning there: the film version of Erica Jong's sexually explicit, "Fear of Flying and the movie adaptation of Irving Wallace's study of gang rape, "The Fan Club.”

The Gay Scene will also be heavily represented in the scheme of films to come through homosexual themes (“Staircase," "Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” “Boys in the Band”) have hardly provided box office bonanzas in the past.

This time Paul Newman's going to try it with "The Front Runner," portraying a college coach who falls in love with his track star who will most likely be played by Richard (John Boy Walton) Thomas.

-

Al Pacino is also getting involved in the homosexual experience in Warner Bros.' "Dog Day Afternoon" based on the New York robbery staged by a man seeking finances for his boy friend's sex-change surgery. In the works, too, is a film adaptation of the stage play, "The Ritz," whose action centers around a Gay bathhouse.

There are, of course, many film productions planned or in shooting stage that will not be overtly erotic or brutal or catastrophic. But much of the future escapist fare will show the influence of the new tapestry of film making that weaves in threads of sex and violence much as its woven into real life. The production team of Chartoff/Winkler is making one of four Rudolph Valentino films currently in the works and one of dozens of upcoming movie biographies. But from the way Winkler describes the emphasis he and his partner will place on their "Valentino," it is obvious the project will hardly be the traditional glossy glorification of a late screen idol's life.

―

→

"Ours will be a provocative film,” admits Winkler, "Because Valentino was a most confused man sexually, who represented the ultimate in masculinity but whose doubts about his manhood were staggering. We will deal frankly with that part of his makeup and with the fact his second wife divorced him, claiming their marriage was never consummated."

-----

There will be, by all expert predictions, no subject too indelicate to dissect on motion picture screens. In the decade that has seen ethics, aesthetics and public appetites transmogrified

and audiences respond most surely to movies that provide the surest shock Hollywood has rediscovered the key to financial fulfillment.

In the months ahead that key will be used to open the door to cinema imagery that will make the hard-core efforts of independent porno producers seem pathetically outdated. NEXT: The Era of Do-It-All Cinema