Growing Up Is Pretty Dull

in Too-Clever 'Snow Cactus'

By Emerson Batdorff

A superficial cleverness In "Cactus in the Snow” be-

'Cactus in the Snow'

Written and directed by Martin Zweiback, produced by Lou Brandt. Mature. 90 minutes. Cissy

clouds an idea that might Harley Macintosh

have been touching.

.....

.Richard Thomas ...Mary Layne Mrs. Sawyer .................................... ..Lucille Benson Mr. Albert ...............................................Oscar Beregl

Its theme is commonplace Valerie 8 .........................................Beatriz Montell today-the problems

of

growing up-but in "Cactus in the Snow" the growingup pangs are made greater because the guy who is doing the growing up is an orphan who has lived all his life in institutions and foster homes.

Now he is in the biggest institution of them all, the U.S. Army, and he is on a three-day pass before going to war, probably Vietnam.

At 18 he is a virgin and figures now is the time to change. But he is cursed with shyness. This picture is so clever that it has everything. So it supplies a homosexual who gets the kid drunk in order to make advances.

is that the author and director, Martin Zweibeck, insists on being superclever in all things. Nothing is natural because he's looking for a punch every second.

The boy, for instance, gets his pants off all but one leg and wanders around for most of the long scene thus dragging his britches. A glimpse would have been funny. Repetition is not.

EVENTUALLY it turns out that the girl who was so patriotically willing to accommodate the soldier is a

virgin too, and therefore he will have none of her. They have long arguments about her duplicity in accepting his offer in place of one of her nonvirgin friends who had been equally willing.

We get a lot of talk about sex, not much of which is really startling or stimulating. At long last, the girl goes out and hires a prostitute to make amends for her selfishness.

There's more to it, too, but all in the theory that too much is not quite enough. For example, the girl has her hair cut to please the soldier. They then collapse fully clothed on her parents' bed, of all places.

The girl's mother catches them. "What have you done to your hair?" she demands. This is all she talks about during the entire confrontation.