Facelift needed for week-end viewing

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33694, 18 November 1974, Page 4

Facelift needed for week-end viewing

Possibly the most satisfying feature of the viewing on Friday and Satuniay nights was that Saturday saw the final episode in the “Boney” series.

It is not so much that ’■Boney” was all that bad, although it was certainly nothing out of the ordinary, but more that there is something new to look forward to this week.

Apart from the feature films, both nights have become totally predictable and when the films fail to impress there is very little to offer either the discerning viewer—if such an animal exists — or the one who switches on simply because he has nothing better to do. The films shown on Friday and Saturday nights had two things in common. One was Capucine appearing in both and the other was the relief which the ends brought. This feeling was particularly strong with Friday’s “The Honey Pot," which for some reason or other went until 12.15 a.m., a situation contributed to by an unexplained filler about glassmaking around 11 p.m. The annoying thing about •The Honey Pot" was that it

was one of those films which

in spite of its mediocrity had the virtue of tempting the viewer, once engaged, to stick on in order to discover what the ending was going to be.

i For this reason, and no great harm was done by dozing off once or twice between 11 p.m. and midnight, we saw it through. If the ending, or more accurately the succession of endings, all of an explanatory nature, took some grasping at such an hour there was at least some reward in learning what Rex Harrison’s elaborate charade had been all about. William Holden is an actor who is very interested in African wildlife. This probably explains his presence in "The Lion,” Saturday night’s film. He finished up — along with his co-stars, Trevor Howard and Capucine, who looked more at home in Rex Harrison’s Venetian villa than in a game warden’s compound — playing second fiddle to a host of wild animals.

In fact, the storyline was so weak that with a little shortening the film could have been passed off as a study of Kenyan wildlife. Some of the scenes shot

from a moving vehicle of frightened and enraged animals were first-class. ❖ * * Perhaps, the biggest favour the N.Z.B.C. could do Friday-night viewers would be to pack up the episodes it still holds of ‘‘The High Chaparral” send send them off to Arizona (with any sinuses it might have awaiting dispatch), where the series is made. If nothing else the programme is an insult to cattlemen. How could anyone as dim as Big John build and manage a spread like the chaparral, plus house a couple of relations who don’t seem to do much work?

The preamble to Friday’s episode told of it being in living colour. The colour might be alive, but in script, direction and acting it was devoid of such an asset. The story was a flashback to when Big John and brother, Buck, met. up after the Civil War and discovered that they had been fighting on opposite sides. At one point there was a flashback, within a flashback, which might have been intended to keep the audience on its toes.

There was the usual heavy quota of uninspired lines, with John signing off as always with a knowing smirk. The family bit was again pushed hard with Buck almost falling apart at the seams when John told him that to her dying day their mother loved him.

She might also have gone to her grave wondering how she could have had sons so vastly different in appearance and build. “Love American Style” is very much a take-it-or-leave-it comedy and those who took it on Saturday night might have found the effort worth while. The tale about a bungling kidnapper trying to do business on the telephone with his victim’s husband came off quite well and, if nothing else, should have helped put viewers in the right frame of mind for the equally unbelieveable antics of the matmen who followed in “Big Time Wrestling.” —K.J.M.