Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 67

ST. PETERSBURG TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1988 3D George Lucas' slump continues with 'Willow' nnn ON FILM HDL UPPER Star Wars if not for "a baby obsession suggesting an unholy alliance of Lord of the Rings and thirty something" and that "next to this Vf-w f4. wrrt I hjMMterh' A string of multimillion-dollar disasters would hardly cripple George Lucas' empire. However a series of disappointments, beginning with Labyrinth and Howard the Duck, and now continuing with the dull but respectable Willow, is seriously tarnishing his image. Lucas, the creator oi American Graffiti, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, recognizes that this summer will determine his credibility as a producer for seasons to come.

Besides the $35-million sword-and-sorcery fantasy Willow, which cost an additional $20-million to market, Lucas also is producing Francis Coppola's Tucker, an August release about an automotive innovator crushed by the industry's giants. Next May, Lucas will produce the third Indiana Jones adventure. The sequel, with Harrison Ford reprising his role as the swashbuckling archaeologist, will be released next spring. There is concern in Hollywood that Lucas' blend of fantasy and special effects is beginning to lose its appeal. Willow certainly backs that premise.

Audiences have purchased $27-million worth of tickets at 1,000 theaters nationwide during the past three weeks. But they're hardly clamoring to see the picture the way they did when Star Wars premiered 11 years ago. Star Wars made $400-million at the box office. Willow has slipped to fifth place Lucaslilm Ltd. Joanne Whalley stars as beautiful daughter of an evil queen, and Val Kilmer is Madmartigan, a renegade warrior, in Willow, the latest movie creation of George Lucas.

Willow), Howard the Duck looks like a minor miscalculation." The overwhelmingly poor critical response will make it difficult for Willow to sell $90-million worth of tickets, the amount it needs to turn a profit. Indeed, during the months to come, retailers and manufacturers who gambled on Willow may be stuck with warehouses filled with unwanted Willow coloring books, bed sheets, lunch pails, underwear and board games. Lucas, 43, will remain a guiding force in the film industry through his movies, his special effects company Industrial Light and Magic and Lucasfilm's innovations in sound, projection and theater design. But the George Lucas who captured the world's collective imagination for nearly a decade was a man of ideas, a storyteller for a new age. He would do well to return to his roots and not as in Willow rely on past triumphs for future inspiration.

Movies in the morning School's out. And with the advent of summer comes a plethora of morning movie programs for young viewers at bay area cinemas. Cineplex Odeon will have weekday screenings at the Countryside Village 4, the Sunshine Mall and the Plaza in Pinellas County, the Hillsboro 8 and Main Street 6 in Tampa, and the Plitt 4 in Brandon. The entire series, 10 movies, costs $4. The program begins Tuesday and runs through mid-August.

General Cinema is offering eight movies for $4 at the Pinellas 6 in St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay Center, University Square and the Northdale Court in Tampa. Pictures run Wednesday through Aug. 3. The St.

Petersburg Public Library has scheduled 10 weeks of children's movies at 50 cents a show or $2.50 for the entire Tues-day-to-Aug. 16 series. Movies are at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. every Tuesday in the main library auditorium.

Check individual theaters for selections, dates and times. Blame the market Studio update: Last July, we reported that an $8-million production facility would be built in Naples. Christened Naples International Studios by its founder, Grant K. Smith of Naples, the 23-acre sound stage and post-production complex was to be completed this spring. It isn't.

In fact, groundbreaking hasn't even taken place. "Everything was ready to go until the stock market crash of Oct. 19, 1987," Smith says. "That's when our initial investors were nearly wiped out." They withdrew from the project, and Smith set out to find a new group of backers. On Wednesday, he reported that he has $10-million to buy 64.5 acres of land and begin building his production facility.

In addition to the three sound stages, recording studio and space for administration, editing, wardrobe, set design and construction, Smith now plans to build an eight-acre back lot consisting of a Western town setting, a New York street and rural Midwestern American homes. He also plans to build offices to lease to companies involved in film production. Groundbreaking is planned for Sept. 15, though Smith says it may take place earlier. A Caddy search It's the little details that drive film makers crazy.

Consider the '63 Cadillac that Wilford Brimley drove in Cocoon. When director Daniel Petrie and company set out to make the sequel, Cocoon: The Return, they had to find a matching car. That's when they discovered the original four-door Caddy was a limited edition with extra layers of chrome and a special hood. After weeks of looking, unit production manager Gary Daigler found an identical vehicle in Iowa. He leased it, shipped to Florida and had it repainted and "aged" to look like the car in the first movie.

Another chance You didn't see it in the theater. So here's your chance to see it on tape. Steven Spielberg's underrated Empire of the Sun will be released by Warner Home Video on Aug. 10. innPEBS rZ All fathers can afford this gift for their sons Dear Ann: I thought this was such a wonderful poem that I showed it to my husband.

He suggested that I send it to you but asked me to make a copy to keep in case you didn't print it. Surprise me, will you? Your Fan in New Haven, Ruth L. Dear Ruth: Your husband can throw his copy away I'm printing it. Thanks for sending it on. I hope every father who reads it will want to keep this copy.

Give Him a Day What shall you give to one small boy? A glamorous game, a tinseled toy? A Boy Scout knife, a puzzle pack? A train that runs on some curving track? A picture book, a real live pet? No, there's plenty of time for such things yet. Give him a day for his very own. Just one small boy and his Dad alone, A walk in the wood, a romp in the park, A fishing trip from dawn to dark. Give him the gift that only you can, The companionship of his "old man." Games are outgrown, and toys decay, But he'll never forget If you give him a day. Unhappy birthdays Dear Ann: My mother-in-law and I both celebrate our birthdays on the same day, and it's coming up soon.

Can you help? Last year, my husband and I had a huge argument because I wanted to go to dinner at my parents' house. My mom was fixing all my favorite dishes. He felt we should go to his mother's house because it was her birthday, too. This year, his mother has already suggested that we go out for dinner for "our" birthday. My parents are not invited.

I feel it's my birthday and I should be able to do what I want. Incidentally, it's not just birthdays that cause problems. I get an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever a holiday comes around because my mother-in-law tries to take over. I'd appreciate any advice you could give me. No Honeymoon in Niagara Falls Dear No Honey: This game of tug of war with your husband's mother is going to be a continuing problem unless you find a solution now.

Here are some alternatives: 1. Alternate. One year do what your mother-in-law wants, and the next year you get to decide. 2. Ask your husband to be a sport and take everyone out to dinner on your birthday your folks, you and his mom.

3. Let your husband decide between Christmas dinner (or Thanksgiving) at his mother's, or her birthday. 4. You be a sport and let your mother-in-law have the birthday, and you celebrate the day before or the day after. Dear Readers: Today's best advice was offered by that peerless wit, Robert Benchley: Never miss a good chance to shut up.

1988, Los Angeles Times Syndicate and Creators Syndicate Inc. among the top-grossing movies now in the theaters, even though exit surveys taken by independent pollsters report that viewers are leaving satisfied. Word-of-mouth apparently hasn't overcome the negative reviews that greeted Willow's premiere. The story of a dwarf who protects a human baby from an evil sorceress, Willow borrows liberally from the Star Wars trilogy, Gulliver's Travels, The Wizard of Oz and the Old Testament. The most venomous of critics have written that Willow would be a repeat of Monster from 1-D prints that he and the late Al Williams stamped into the sand.

Williams was a notorious prankster in Clearwater in the 1940s and 1950s. Just for fun, he once sneaked a horse into the holding area at the Clearwater police station. Another time, because he loved to play tricks on the fire so the molds for the tracks were taken to a foundry in St. Petersburg. The resulting cast iron feet were ideal.

Holes were drilled into the tops of the feet and the sneakers set in place with screws. When the inner soles of the shoes were glued back in place, the "monster" was ready. A rowboat supplied by a friend brought the creature to shore. "We would go on nights with not too many waves or beach walkers around. Of course, not many people were on the beach then," Signorini said.

The "monster" came out only at night. "I put the shoes on in the water and then walked a long way, maybe two miles, up the beach and then got back in the boat," Signorini said, grinning. "I had to be A number of local people, including the police, believed the whole thing was a hoax. But they had no way to prove it and no one ever came forward to admit to it. Until now.

prints we'd made while we were doing it." At the Suwannee River site, "we stayed on property belonging to a friend named Al Spears," Signorini said. "After we found some good places along the river, we waded in the water and carried the feet. Then I'd put them on where we wanted to make the tracks." Clearwater police were skeptical about the existence of the monster from the beginning and suspected that Al Williams might be the culprit, said Frank Daniels, who retired in 1981 after 32 years on the Clearwater police force, the last 13 years as chief of police. "I don't think any of the Clearwater cops took it seriously," Daniels said. "We suspected Williams because he usually called in the reports of the monster and was such a local prankster, but we could never prove it.

"When a pilot flying over the beaches reported seeing something furry with a head shaped like a hog's in the Gulf, we suspected Williams because he flew his own plane," Daniels said. "You know, that's a funny thing," Signorini recalled with a smile, "because we never knew who was flying that plane and made the report. It wasn't us." Jan Kirby is a free-lance writer who lives in Clearwater, and dinosaur remains had been dug up near Albuquerque, N.M., in July 1947. During the World War II years, Gulf residents were constantly watching the water for signs of German submarines. When Williams died in 1969, he left the secret of the "Clearwater Monster" to Signorini for safekeeping.

Encouraged by his friends Bud and Joanne Lobaugh of Largo (Bud learned the true story about the "monster" from Signorini in 1965), Signorini agreed to bring the "monster" out of hiding, 40 years after the tracks were first seen. All these years, the "monster" was tucked away in its cardboard box under a workbench at Auto Electric. The real "monster" is a pair of cast iron feet with high-top black sneakers. Signorini lifted the feet, each weighing 30 pounds, out of the box and put them on. "You see, I would just swing my leg back and forth like this and then give a big hop, and the weight of the feet would carry me that far," Signorini said, explaining the 6-foot stride of the creature.

"The shoes were heavy enough to sink down in the sand." Signorini said the idea for the big three-toed footprints came from a picture of dinosaur tracks. After several tries at making the feet, Williams and Signorini decided concrete was not heavy enough, Honeymoon Island off the coast at Dunedin, along the banks of the Anclote River north of Tarpon Springs and on the banks of the Suwannee River, where U.S. 19 crosses the river, five miles east of Old Town in Dixie County. In July 1948, four fliers from the Dunedin Flying School said that they had seen the creature off Clearwater Beach and that it looked like a furry log with a head shaped like a hog's. Because of the "monster" sightings, the "little town on Florida's West Coast" made headlines and news broadcasts nationwide.

Ivan T. Sanderson, noted zoologist and science commentator for WNBC in New York as well as the science writer for the New York Herald Tribune and WNBC's special events director, visited Florida in November 1948 to study the tracks along the Suwannee. Sanderson, who died in 1973, determined after months of study that the tracks had been made by some form of giant penguin. He called the creature "Florida Three-Toes." A number of local people, including the police, believed the whole thing was a hoax. But they had no way to prove it, and no one ever came forward to admit to it.

Until now. Tony Signorini still chuckles when he thinks about the stories that sprang up to explain the foot All these years, the "monster" was tucked away in its cardboard box under a workbench at Auto Electric. department, he set off flares in his business, Auto Electric. The fire department showed up all right, and the flares provided quite a show, but as a result the building was badly damaged. Signorini, who was Williams' partner at Auto Electric and, with his son and daughter, still runs the business on Greenwood Avenue in Clearwater, said Williams came up with the idea for the "monster" tracks.

It seemed an appropriate prank: The Loch Ness monster was still making news (its photograph was first published in 1934), careful the water wasn't too deep when I had them on. "Other times, we would take them (the feet) in the car and carry them to where we wanted to make the tracks. Then we'd take a palm frond and brush away all the foot Patchmgtons t.m i A fS Comic Arsenio Hall says yes, then no, then yes again to interviews Tribune Media Servicei change of heart and decided he would make the event, after all and the press department had to make another round of phone calls to reporters who had canceled the day before to inform them of the latest turn of events. Why the original pullout by the hot young comic? Says a Paramount representative: "He decided he wanted to go slowly doing publicity on his first motion HOLLYWOOD, Calif. On Wednesday, Paramount suddenly found it would be without Eddie Murphy's Coming to America co-star, Arsenio Hall, at the film's New York press junket this weekend and frantically phoned members of the media expected at the event to inform them of that fact.

On Thursday, Hall had another TODAY! (And Tomorrow) 10 AM-5 PM Our Second Annual WAREHOUSE SALE 50'-60 OFF! ALL DISCONTINUED DRESSES, SEPARATES ACCESSORIES NOTE NEW LOCATION DISTRIBUTION CENTER 10N. MYRTLE AVE. (At Cleveland St. Business Rt. 60) MUSIC: Mighty Lemon Drops 8 p.m.

Masquerade, 1902 Seventh Ybor City. Tickets $14. Call 248-2877. MUSIC: Roger Williams 7:45 p.m. Walt Disney World.

Tickets $19.50 (Florida residents), includes admission to either Epcot Center or the Magic Kingdom. THEATER: Criminal Minds 2 and 8 p.m. Playmakers Theater, Cuban Club, 2010 14th Ybor City, Tampa. Tickets $10, $13. Call 248-6933.

THEATER: I'm Not Rappaport 8:15 p.m. Asolo State Theater, Ringling Museums, Sarasota. Tickets Call 355-5137. THEATER: The Mystery of Irma Vep, (a penny dreadful) 2 and 8 p.m. American Stage, 211 Third St.

St. Petersburg. Tickets $14 matinee, $16 evening. Call 822-8814. THEATER: Crimes of the Heart 8 p.m.

Carrollwood Players, Village Playhouse, Village Center, 13162 Dale Mabry Highway. Tickets $6, $5 students and senior citizens. Call 855-1318 or 961-1707. THEATER: Deadwood Dick 8 p.m. Kestrel Productions, Boatyard Village Theatre, 16100 Fairchild Drive, Clearwater.

Tickets $8 adults, $7 senior citizens. Call 323-6660. THEATER: Once Upon a Mattress 8 p.m. Royalty Theatre Company, 405 Cleveland Clearwater. Tickets $8, $9.

Call 443-6647. MISCELLANEOUS: Asianfest 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Hamlin's Landing, 401 Second St. Indian Rocks Beach. Free.

MISCELLANEOUS: Charge of the Yellow Rice Brigade, featuring food, drink and entertainment noon-4 p.m. Ybor Square Courtyard, Eighth Avenue and 13th Street, Ybor City, Tampa. Free. Call 247-4497. MISCELLANEOUS: Banana Banshee Improvisational Comedy Group Farewell to Ground Zero 8 p.m.

Ground Zero Performance Gallery, 317 Howard Tampa. Tickets $5. Call 254-1054. Saturday, June 1 1 ST. PETERSBURG 1, 2:30, 3:30, 5.

8, 7:30, 8 30. 9:55, 10:45, 12:15. Beetleuice (PG) 10 30, 12:30, 3, 5 30. 8, 9 55, midnight. Heavy Metal (R) 12 40 a m.

FIFTH AVE. CINEMA (3150 Fifth Ave. N) Good Morning, Vietnam (R) 2:30, 5, 720. Police Academy 5 (PG) 2 30. 5 30, 7 30.

GATEWAY CINEMA (8001 Gateway Mall) Three Men and a Baby (PG) 2 40, 5:10, 7:30 Good Morning, Vietnam (R) 2:30. 5. 7 Please see TIME CLOCK 4-D 441-2828 r-Nv l-R00-2a2-3151 CROSSROADS 8 (2190 Tyrone Blvd. N) Willow (PG) 10, 1:30, 4:45. 7:30, 10:15, 12:30.

Colors (R) 10. 12:15, 2:45, 5:15, 7:45. 10:15. 12 35. Stormy Monday (R) 10 30, 1.

3:15, 5 30, 8. 10 15. 12 15. Presidio (R) 10 15. 12:30, 2 45.

5, 7 45, 10:30, 12:30. Funny Farm (PG) 10:30, 12 45. 3, 5 15. 7:45. 10:15, 12 15.

Crocodile Dundee 2 (PG) 10:15, noon,.