Daily News from New York, New York • 19

to S5 13 1 John Wayne tries to choke confession out of Al Lettieri in "McQ." I his horse is like a fish out of water; about all he can muster is an occasional "Glub." The script is under water, too. Four people are killed in the first five minutes. So much for action. Dialogue like this went out of fashion with Jack Webb. There's the chief, who barks: "I want your best men on this and I want immediate action!" And the token black pimp who snarls: "Whatcha gonna do, go Fist City on me?" And the tough B-girl dope addict who sighs: "You're the detective detect!" And the arresting officer, who snarls: "Name and address, please." Wayne lumbers along like a cigar-store Indian but the bullets all seem to miss him, while the faster-moving cops drop like flies all around him.

Each time a new buddy on the force is killed, he says: "Damn!" Every cliche in the book, but the cliches aren't funny any more. John Sturges, who directed Bad Day at Black Rock, has sunk pretty low when he has to turn out factory jobs like McQ, which is making a brief detour on its way to television. I hope he paid Colleen Dewhurst lots of money. She's one of the fine, wasted talents involved in this mess, but you needn't be. Pseudo-sci-fi gibberish Zardoz (Trans-Lux East) isn't even on its way to TV.

It's hard to say what direction it's heading in. Maybe the moon. This pseudo-sci-fi gibberish is so preposterously bad it would give Stanley Kubrick nightmares. As far as I can tell, it's about the end of the world, but maybe it just looks like the end of the world. There's no way to be sure, since not one word of the movie makes any sense.

There's this giant rock face that flies through the sky and spits rifles like toothpicks. Suddenly Sean Connery crawls out, long in the tooth and rubbery in the paunch, dressed in something that looks like a Kleenex. He plays Judy Garland in Oz, a backlot where bad actors who roll their eyes like inmates at the asylum of Charenton mutter incoherently about second-level meditations, mutant genetics and fundamental equalities. Connery liberates the place, learning all the unsolved mysteries of the universe and donating his seed in return, thus terminating eternity. I am told, by the kinds of people who write for film quarterlies and college newspapers, there are many levels of understanding from which to view this allegorical succotash.

The film company that gave John Boorman all the money to make it on the strength of his successful Deliverance, in fact, even invited critics to see it twice because it "would be difficult to appreciate first time around." Now a prologue has been attached to explain the film to baffled audiences prone to mob violence. I have not seen the new version, but wild horses could not drag me, bleeding and kicking, to a second viewing. You only have to swallow Drano once to learn how to throw up. Week's Movie Fare Is Bad for Morale ANOTHER WEEK of bad movies isn't going to do anybody's morale any good, but at least the new turkeys on the scene can be dispensed with quickly. Road Movie (Plaza) is a sour little trifle "about a pretty boy sadist truckdriver (Robert Drivas), a sensitive country boy truckdriver (Barry Bostwick), and a tough highway whore (Regina Baff) hauling a load of frozen meat to Chicago.

The acting is good and Joseph Strick's direction is tight and chummy, but you'd be better off watching a rerun of They Drive by Night on the Late Show. Road Movie exists on two levels: the story of wasted, empty lives on the road and a grim portrait of Middle America as the characters pass through it. The characters are finely drawn as they talk about leasing their rigs, equipment repairs, how to avoid state troopers, what to do after losing their load when the refrigeration fails and getting ripped off by muggers and Jiijackers, but there is little to be learned from empty characters except to get an idea of what emptiness is like. The people in Road Movie represent an illiterate, hopeless way of life that could at best hold a bizarre appeal for very few. Swamp of brainless inertia Vastly more interesting is the swamp of brainless inertia these shiftless characters pass through.

The heartland revealed in this movie is a distressing thing to discover. We live with it surrounding us and moving in on us like a killer fog and yet we know little about it and care less. Road Movie photographs it like Diane Arbus still-lifes: the camera is mounted in a moving vehicle through rear-view mirrors and raindrops on windshields and what it uncovers is the seedy motel rooms, greasy-spoon diners, oil refineries, burger chains, strip mines and monkey farms of America, while the sound track fills with sounds of hillbilly music and Bible commercials from Del Rio, Tex. It's interesting in a poisonous way for awhile, like watching a rattlesnake den coming to life in mating season, but pleasurable pain wears thin early and for one, was left wondering "Is that all there is?" The actors give it the old college try. Robert Drivas, enormously gifted in everything he does, is oddly appealing as the cynical truckdriver, and Barry Bostwick, making his movie debut after his usual and even her cloying voice and mannered hysterics add pathos to the character of the battered highway hooker.

But hustling is a limited theme for the screen and Road Movie is like a Chinese -4 menu. On one side, you get the truckdrivers hustling the world and hustling each other. On the other side, you get the whore hustling the trucks and herself. A few from Column A and a' few from Column and with six you get axle grease. Latest John Wayne Xerox McQ (86th St.

East, Criterion) is the latest John Wayne Xerox, and I don't know about you, but I've just about had it. Sutured onto an already tattered tradition of Clint Eastwood as Supercop movies, McQ is another of those Fascist cop movies that show our protectors of justice doing all the criminal things the right wing conservatives are doing: taking the law in their own hands, breaking and entering, beating up on private citizens, and playing God. John Wayne just does it with less than minimal enthusiasm. There is as much energy and color and animation in his acting as there is in my big toe. As a Seattle cop who sets out to avenge a buddy's death by exposing the crooked cops on the force who are substituting powdered sugar for the heroin in the property section and re-selling the real dope to the underground, John Wayne fills the role's requirements with about as much dedication and electricity as a short-order cook searching for oregano for the spaghetti sauce after the stores are all closed.

Even in a dumb movie like McQ, actors are supposed to earn their salaries by giving something that approximates a performance. Wayne without success in the off-Broadway musical Grease, has a James Dean quality that promises good things in future assignments. Regina Baff is less nauseating than 'Blazing Saddles' Keeps Audiences Howling "Blazing Saddles," a Warner Bros, release in Panavision and Technicolor. Produced by Michael Hertzberg and directed by Mel Brooks from a screenplay by Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor and Alan Uger based on a story by Bergman. Presented at the Sutton Theater.

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes. MPAA rating: (Restricted under 17 not admitted without accompanying parent or adult guardian). THE CAST: els without his Gucci saddlebag. THE TOWN of Rock Ridge doesn't exactly welcome their new sheriff with open arms even though there has been some trouble of late. Complains one citizen: "Our cattle have been raped." But the sheriff does find a friend in the town drunk (Gene Wilder), who, formerly known as the Waco Kid, once had a reputation as having "the fastest hands in the world." "I must have killed more men than Cecil B.

De-Mille," says Wilder and sure enough his hands move so fast that they can draw and fire a gun while, to the normal eye, it appears they have never moved at all. NOW FOR THE bad guys. To start at the top, there's Governor Lepetomane (played by Brooks himself, who delights in hamming it up in his own movies), who is totally occupied with affairs of state, in particular an affair with his well-endowed secretary. The real villain is Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Kor-man) who is forever being called Hedy and who would much rather be known for his talents as "a procurer" or "land snatcher." Lamarr is determined to snatch the entire town of Rock Ridge, and to this end he tries to remove the sheriff, using as his weapon a hulking brute (played very convincingly by ex-football star Alex Karras). WHEN THAT fails, Lamarr resorts to the ultimate weapon, the reigning queen of the dance hall.

This delicious character is played by Madeline Kahn, the most giftetd comedienne in movies. Displaying her legs (when we first meet her, Miss Kahn is lovingly dabbing them with powder), and using a thick German accent, Miss Kahn does an inspired take-off on Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel." Brooks has written a hilarious song for her and Miss Kahn playing the shopworn sex object performs it brilliantly, giving the movie its finest moments. "Blazing Saddles" has a tendency to burn out toward the end. Such blazing comedy is not easy Bart Jim Tagoart Cleavon Litt'e Gen Wilder Slim Pickens Mel Brooks Me) Brooks -Harvey Korman Maoeline Kahn Alex Karras Gov. Lepetomane.

Indian Chief Hediey Lamarr Lili Von Shtupp KonQo By KATHLEEN CARROLL A Laughter erupts from the opening frame of "Blazing Saddles" at the Sutton. Against a landscape of stubborn sagebrush, the credits spill across the screen, written in flaming orange letters and in the same careless scrawl that used to mark the beginning of a Tom Mix serial. In the background, Frankie Lane is heard singing, in the whip-cracking style of "Muletrain," a song about a man who "made his blazing saddle a torch to light the way." Soon, very soon, the audience is howling like a pack of moonstruck coyotes. After awhile the jaws ache and it almost hurts to laugh anymore. BUT THE PAIN feels good.

And one can only rejoice that someone has given free rein to Mel Brooks' wild imagination and allowed this incorrigible madman (I use the term affectionately) to roam wherever he pleases, whether it's on the range (in a typical Western setting) or to sustain. Still, for sheer merriment, I can't recommend a better movie. I 1 all over Warner Brothers' back lot. Brooks' western is anything but typicaL It is a brazen, punch- drunk, ree-rwinging spoof of every sagebrush saga that ever came down the Hollywood trail. completely I 4 I lyz.caui touch you rot? TOUCH YOU ROB WHAT KKIO OF EfcOKE.HAYBE I SfcOKE.HAYBE I WM A Gffci- DO YOU FJVE DOLLAR? -rim -7v ITZml AGteLOOYOU CAW BOtzteOWA CAM BOMXOWA v- i i i ixj i i-iv i a jt JJTTLE FfcOAA ftl M7 A.rjuf -MirM ir I im ivy I I ALMOST hesitate to say more.

Brooks' antic humor should be enjoyed for the moment and any close analysis takes away from its immediate impact and spoils the fun. As for the plot, who could possibly describe it? I'd prefer to simply mention the characters. To begin with, there is the handsome black sheriff (Cleavon Little) who wears suede outfits that match his equally handsome palomino and who, as the cameras pointedly disclose, never trav.