The Missoulian from Missoula, Montana • 32

E-4-Missoulian, Friday. January 17, 1992 7V I 1 I Video Report A Weekly Lookat What's NewonTape By MIKE MclNALLY of the Missoulian Sad to say, Lundgren still doesn't come across as a particularly articulate actor; Lee is much better, much more relaxed -and considerably more fun to watch. If only the two had some better dialogue to banter about. At one point, our two heroes are strapped to tables, where they're being tortured with jolts of electricity. The witty banter continues, to the point where the torturer rolls his eyes and ups the voltage exactly the correct response.

BBB II I Annabella Sciorra and Wesley Snipes star in "Jungle Fever," director Spike Lee's latest effort. The movie is new on video shelves this week. The latest movie from director Spike Lee a tough-minded look at interracial romance is this week's top video release. "Jungle Fever" stars Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra as the couple whose romance sparks a torrent of reaction from their family and friends. John Torturro and Ossie Davis co-star; Stevie Wonder provided the music.

The other top release this week is Kathryn Bigelow's "Point Break," with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. Reeves is a rebel FBI agent who's investigating a batch of bank robberies; Swayze is a thrill-seeking surfer who may be involved. It's a slow week for lesser-known video releases. Here's the rundown of what to expect to find in western Montana stores: "Deadlock" is a futuristic update of "The Defiant Ones," with Rutger Hauer and Mimi Rogers escaping from a prison, where electronic collars keep the prisoners at bay. "Till There Was You" stars Mark Harmon as a musician who travels to a tropical island to investigate the murder of his brother.

The Report movies those mysterious titles on the video shelves that often offer sex and violence as selling points can be entertaining viewing. Or they can rtnHs Fverv other week thp Video Report reviews new videos and rates them on a scale of one to four Bs. A slickly directed martial arts rip-off of "Lethal Weapon," "Showdown in Little Tokyo" delivers the B-movie goods imaginative violence, nasty villains, a pair of mismatched cops who (imagine!) learn to respect each other while bashing bad guys. Dolph Lundgren co-stars with Brandon Lee, the son of Bruce Lee. Here's the plot twist: It's Lundgren, the beefy blond, who's the student of Oriental culture; Lee, by contrast, is all-American.

"My dad's a white guy, a dentist," Lee says by way of explanation. Oh. In any event, Lundgren and Lee, the two cops, soon lock horns with evil Japanese gangsters. Heads roll. Arms roll.

Fingers roll. Eventually, bodies spin in an entertaining finale. If 13m i i There's a scene in "Prayer of the Rollerboys" when an explosion occurs for no discernible reason. Now, I'm not necessarily against that; I believe that if you need an explosion for plot purposes, you should be able to just add one. In fact, "Prayer of the Rollerboys" needs many more explosions.

In "Prayer of the Rollerboys," an economic collapse has devastated America. (Far-fetched? You bet.) Into the social void rolls a seductive young gang on wheels, those trendy in-line roller skates. Armed with loads of cash and plenty of automatic weapons, the Rollerboys are rapidly growing in influence. Corey Haim stars as a young man trying to make his way without the help of the Rollerboys, who have an evil hidden agenda. But it's a hard task, since Corey's younger brother is attracted by the gang.

"Prayer" has some nifty skating sequences, but it needs more of them. Along with explosions. Lots of explosions. BBV2 "Evil Toons" purports to be the B-movic answer to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" "Evil Toons" is a mixture of animation and low-rent exploitation film about a demon and four college co-eds hired to clean a haunted house. The gimmick here, and it's not a bad gimmick, is that the demon is animated; the co-eds are, more or less, live actresses.

But animation is expensive, and B-movies are cheap, so the demon isn't particularly well-animated and he's on screen for, oh, 90 seconds. The rest of the plot is ludicrous. The jokes, such as they are, are consistently stepped on by the actresses. The writing is pretty dreadful, although movie fans will enjoy dialogue such as this, from one co-ed to another: "What are you doing? We heard screams and now you're naked and covered with blood. Is anything wrong?" The director, Fred Olen Ray, is Universal City Studios rented an average of 526 times per store, based on an average inventory of 10 copies per store.

There's a catch with that yardstick as well: Just as "T2" was hampered by its late release, "Ghost" was available all year. So Video Business created another yardstick: How well a video rented in its first six weeks of release. By that measure, the magazine came up with a third 1991 champion: "Home Alone." The movie rented an average of 234 times per store in that six-week period, the magazine said. The runner-up was "The Silence of the Lambs." Certainly, your home-video collection won't be complete until it includes episodes of "The Mod Squad," the 1960s TV series about three hip young undercover cops. A California company, Nu Ventures, has just released five videos of the show and says that five more tapes are scheduled for future release.

The Los Angeles Times says that "The Mod Squad," which starred Peggy Lipton, Clarence Williams III and Michael Cole, was the "Beverly Hills, 90210" of its time. llriil iiili Largo Entertainment Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze are hunks in the sky, on the beach and in the lobby of banks in "Point Break," new this week on video. n- i -1 i ii lir it i iJ'mrn i iiWH 1 Video stores ordered 714,000 copies of "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," the Arnold Schwarzenegger action epic. That's the biggest order ever for a video meant for the rental market. (For video sales, of course, the champion looks like "Fantasia," with more than 10 million.) But "T2" was released late in the year, limiting the number of times it could actually be rented.

So the magazine Video Business tabbed "Ghost" as its champ for 1991; the magazine said the video fast approaching the status of legend for his cheerful incompetence: As a result, "Evil Toons" is almost one of those Bs that's so bad it becomes fun to watch. Almost. Video notes What was the top-renting video of 1991? The Knight-Ridder News Service reports that it depends on what yardstick you use to measure..