The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 358

CALENDAR MOVIES 'BLACK' SHEDS SOME LIGHT ON FILM GOTHIC BY KEVIN THOMAS to Black" (city wide on Fri-H day) has all the ingredients of a JL cult film, yet has the wide appeal of Dennis Christopher in his first picture since "Breaking Away." What's more, for all its references to old films, you don't have to be a buff to enjoy it. It will be cherished most of all, however, by those of us who are lovers of Hollywood Gothic. Written and directed by Vernon Zimmerman, much respected for "The Unholy Rollers" (and by those of us who've managed to see his never -released "Deadhead "Fade to Black" has the same plot as "Willard," some pungent "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" atmosphere and a finish that echoes that of Peter Bogdanovich's "Targets." Yet Zimmerman is so personal a film maker that it emerges as fresh and original, alternately witty and compassionate, bizarre and scary. Like Bruce Davison's Willard, Christo- Now Willard, if you recall, got his revenge when he met Ben, a rat with whom he could communicate and whom he could command to lead attacks by hordes of rodents. When Eric snaps he becomes his favorite screen heroes in order to even the score.

At one point he's Dracula and another, The Mummy, but his most beloved alter egos are Richard Widmark's Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death," Hopalong Cassidy and, most especially, James Cagney's Cody Jarrett in "White Heat." His most poignant impersonation, however, is that of Laurence Olivier in "The Prince and the Showgirl" because it involves the girl of Eric's dreams, a young Australian blonde (Linda Kerridge), whose resemblance to and impersonation of Marilyn Monroe is so accurate as to be heart-breaking and uncanny. "Fade to Black" captures Eric's often moldy and bizarre world to perfection there's the dingy old Venice house where he lives and has turned his room into a film freak's shrine with its layers of memorabilia. There are the seedy side streets of Hollywood and finally there are the clips from films that delight many of us as much as they do Eric. Indeed, it's Zimmerman and Christopher's particular achievement that a lot of us will be persuaded to see ourselves in Eric that we can recognize that in many ways we're separated from him only by degrees. Shot through with dark humor, "Fade to Black" has been cut to move fast and never mind the exposition.

(There is a heavy-handed subplot dealing with a clash between an obnoxious cop and a crusading psychologist that fortunately doesn't bog things down. It has plenty of bravura, and it's held together by the sheer presence of Christopher, who triumphs both as the pathetic, vulnerable Eric and the archetypal screen figures he brings to such funny yet terrifying life. In her American film debut, Linda Kerridge has a similarly tough assignment, convincingly playing a nice girl who looks like Marilyn Monroe. She can't help but capitalize on the striking resemblance, but she isn't Marilyn and knows it; yet all the same she becomes Marilyn when seen through Eric's eyes. Eve Brent Ashe, who as Eve Brent graced many a film in the '40s and '50s, is outrageous fun as the hateful aunt, and Morgan Paull has a nifty cameo as a deli-ciously phony Hollywood producer.

Thanks to Alex Phillips rich camera work, "Fade to Black" looks sensational. It's not for kiddies or the timid, but in its bold, modestly-budgeted way, it's the real "Day of the Locust." On one level it's unabashed exploitation, raucous and vivid, but on another it's actually quite touching in all its camp pathos. Dennis Christopher dressed as Dracula at a film marathon in "Fade to Black." pher's Eric Binford is a much put-upon youth. He's constantly berated and belittled at home by his wheelchair-bound aunt (Eve Brent Ashe). She crazily blames Eric for the accident that crippled her he was 4 at the time! and bullied at work by his co-workers and his apoplectic boss (Norman Burton), proprietor of a Hollywood film exchange.

Such constant injustice and unhappiness only make Eric, a rabid film buff, retreat farther into a world of fantasy. tion for almost a year and before that was in the Disney publicity department. "Our intent is to get this company to be a major force in the film business. One of the things we're looking at is story and also character. Kids today are born into a world of problems: energy, money, nuclear problems, the draft.

I think people want to go to the movies and be uplifted. But in a realistic way we have to realize the audience is more hip to things. "There is also a feeling here that everybody is working for a purpose. There's a little bit now of that at MGM, too, but here we have a wonderful sense of heritage." Wilhite, who comes from Iowa and is a film buff there is a photograph on his wall of Wilhite and Groucho Marx, one of his idols jokes that his bluff won't be called until spring of 1982, when the first film in which he is totally involved will be released, and that "1982 will either be my big year or I'll be back in Iowa selling tractors." Wilhite considers the smallness of the Disney heirarchy an advantage: "I make proposals to Ron, who talks to the others or maybe doesn't depending on the amount of money involved and I get a quick answer. The other thing is that we're willing to talk to anybody.

I want to make it known we're interested. I have no problem getting Ron or Card to talk about things. At this moment this is a very open film company. We're looking for people with a passion." Many of Wilhite's decisions are made in conjunction with David Ehrman, who came to the studio last July as executive editor. Ehrman's primary experience is as an English professor and academic.

He is 31. "My understanding is that Disney feels it has lost some of its market that's no big secret any longer, I guess and I'm here to help get it back," he says. "We're considered a kid's studio and that isn't enough. I want the Disney image to stand Such optimism as is expressed is cautious. Recovery for the animation department will be long and difficult.

The results of the changes made in the executive lineup for live action production won't show for at least another two years. The animation department is steadily recruiting, and plans are on the board as they have been for several years for "The Black Cauldron," a major animated film. And while that is in story development, Woolie Reitherman and Mel Shaw, two Disney veterans, are starting work on "Musicana," an ambitious concept mixing jazz, classical music, myths, modern art and more, following the old "Fantasia" format. There are now plans to double the animation department's size, with the intention of releasing a full-length animated feature every two years. It is a slow, laborious process.

C) Meanwhile, the live-action arm of the studio is growing too, more rapidly and more surely than the animation depart- ment, depending on new young execu- tives who, it is hoped, will attract others like them. It is all a late but determined effort to end a crisis which has seriously hurt the to most critically important part of the en- tire Disney corporation: film making. The box office for its more recent films has been disappointing at best, the ratings for Disney's Sunday night television staple have been consistently dismal. The studio's future was seriously injured by the defection of its most talented animators and its position in the marketplace hurt by the withdrawal of a major film. "Disney's door is now open," Miller says.

"We want to entice creative people. We're dealing with younger, more inventive talent now. We have decided to give profit participation where it is in our best interests. We have a lot to commu- nicate. The days of saying 'Oh, here's an- other Disney film' are over." i3 proved somewhat less inclined.

Some of Disney's evil ladies have populated the fantasies and nightmares of generations of children, from the cruel queen in "Snow White," the studio's first animated feature, to the dog-skinning Cruella deVil in "101 Dalmatians." By contrast, the studio's most recent villainess, Madame Medusa in "The Rescuers" (1977), is more daft than dangerous. That, according to Miller, is about to be changed: 'The Fox and the Hound' has a very frightening fight in it," he "We're even thinking it may be a PG rat-ing. Even "The Rescuers," critically and financially successful, did not reach the audience Miller and the other Disney executives hoped it would. Seventy-five percent of the filmgoing audience is between 18 and 35 years of age, and these are the people who are staying away from Disney films. This audience is known to like some complexity of character and plot, and this is one of the main thrusts of the studio's attempt to revitalize its films.

To accomplish its goals, the studio decided first to get the attention of the powerful talent agents in the business. The agents have tended to regard dealing with Disney as, at best, an occasional necessity. There was no creative deal-making and, most important of all, the studio refused to give any profit participation whatsoever. No more. Carroll Ballard, the talented film maker who last year directed "The Black Stallion" a film Miller and others frequently cite as the perfect "new" Disney picture while bemoaning the fact it wasn't theirs is at work on "Never Cry Wolf" in which he has a profit percentage.

"You might just say the quality of the agents who are returning our phone calls is definitely improving," says Tom Wil-hite, 27-year-old vice president of creative development. Wilhite is part of the new Disney, has been in his present posi for fantasy and adventure, as it always has, but also for some updated drama as well. "I'm talking to a lot of agents. 'My Bodyguard' would have been a terrific Disney film, but it was never brought to us. I want us to be known to be available and interested in that sort of film." Among the projects now being developed at Disney: "Tron," a science-fiction fantasy based on an original idea by two young film makers who are now working at the studio.

"Tex," a story about the trials and tribulations including coming of age sexually and dealing with drugs of two brothers growing up in the world of race horses. The project is based on the novel by S. E. Hinton, one of the most popular of the authors writing for adolescents. "Ambassador Lane," about a white adolescent who goes to Harlem as an ambassador for the mayor of New York.

"Which is not to say we're giving up on the traditional Disney comedies," Ehrman says. "What we've got to do is put back some of the emotional commitment that's been lacking. We have to be willing to evoke some feelings." "There is going to be someone out there who is going to be unhappy with the changes we'll make," Wilhite adds. "You just don't make films that people respond to, films that have emotional peaks and valleys and which deal with different subjects and not upset some people. That's a risk we've got to take." The total control that Walt Disney insisted upon is eroding.

The studio has bankrolled its first independent production, "Never Cry Wolf." It is also involved in co -productions for the first time: "Popeye" and "The Dragonslayer" with Paramount and "Biggies" with producer Robert Stigwood. "Popeye," directed by Robert Altman and starring Robin Williams, will be released this Christmas..