Daily News from New York, New York • 99

NEvtfXtfr' mi 1 1 I i 1 Ltd 3 A EifflriM nfftiir--- m.ir,. M.C. Hammer I- i iamnier gets BiaiSeci By MICHAEL SAUNDERS Daily News Staff Writer MILLION DOLLARS IS A LOT OF money, but not enough, it seems, to ignite i a spark in M.C. Hammer's new video. Tf- IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS: Fritz Lang cranked up filmdom's first female robot in hts 1926 epk: Metropolis." THira-Gii-taiBQJiLawra Lady 'Eve' is but the latest she-robot to prove her metal By PHANTOM OF THE MOVIES "Here Comes the Hammer" cost more than $1 million and took six days to shoot, yet seems as if it takes six days to watch.

Capitol Records is poised to release the full 15-minute version in a few days, at a list price circa $12. The trim nine-minute MTV version is still at least five minutes too long, and not half as interesting as the videos for "Pray" or the overexposed Can't Touch This." "Here Comes The Hammer" is full of the special-effects gimmickry found in longer pieces enough swirling, ghostly scenes to satisfy short attention spans of Hammer's younger fans. The video begins slowly and attempts to build momentum with Hammer and crew wandering through a haunted house, tailed by three well-dressed goons to add a little intrigue to the thread-thin story line. To make a long video short. Hammer and dancers are chased through the house, where each room represents a different jump in time.

It's like a warped Tom and Jerry cartoon, only less interesting. Hammer fans will appreciate a few funny moments of ad-libbed patter between M.C. and his frightened sidekicks. But director Rupert Wain wright fails to use the best resource at hand: the pyrotechnic dancing of Hammer and his three-man troupe, No Bones. Aside from a few images taken from previous Hammer videos, the dancing is downplayed in lieu of the semblance of a plot The footwork, however, is what made Can't Touch This" burn.

"Here Comes the Hammer" smolders like a wet log. The film wizardry pays off in one respect, by conjuring an image of Hammer dancing with James Brown during several montage sequences of old and new footage. It's an appropriate mix. The unmistakable funk groove of Brown's backup band is the engine powering the single. The lion's share of Hammer's recorded material is borrowed from various sources by liberal use of computer sampling.

His success is based on his good taste in knowing what to lift entist Stephen Murray is so distraught over the object of his affection's attraction to his colleague that he fashions a duplicate to fall in love with him. When she, too, swoons over his crony, there's naught to do but blow up both duplicate and self in a mini atomic blast! Male chauvinist plans, likewise, go awry in "The Stepford Wives" and "Revenge of the Stepford Wives" (Nelson, when threatened WASP patriarchs install obedient 'droids to replace their increasingly independent-minded wives. Human-android relations fare a bit better in 1980 "Galaxina" (MCA, when the emotion-equipped title android (played by the late Dorothy Stratten, a real-life victim of violent male psychosis) is able to consummate her love for flesh-and-blood fella Stephen Macht by ordering the requisite extra parts from a catalogue! Matthew Laborteaux is less fortunate when he synthetically revives slain girlfriend Kristy Swan-son, who awakes in a decidedly psychotic mood, in Wes Craven's "Deadly Friend" (Warner, though homo sapien Harrison Ford and "replicant" Sean Young share a happy ending in Ridley Scott's otherwise downbeat but often brilliant See DROIDS page 37 FEMALE ROBOTS, ANDROIDS, CYBORGS and sundry synthetic variations thereof have been surfacing onscreen ever since the evil Dr. Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) created a distaff robot to prod downtrodden workers into staging a self-destructive revolt in Fritz Lang's futuristic 1926 SF silent "Metropolis." Of course, with ever-advancing technology, artificial femmes have come a long way since Fritz' day, in terms of high-tech capabilities and sophisticated designs, if not always in cinematic quality. In fact, the latest addition to moviedom's mechanical-miss roster, Renee Soutenijk in "Eve of Destruction" (which opened Friday), is not only smart and seductive, but comes equipped with a built-in nuclear warhead! While "Metropolis" (Vestron, $79.98, colorized, with Giorgio Moroder score) played its femdroid-driven storyline as a political parable, many of the subsequent variations on the artificial-female theme have been fables dealing with man's invariably unsuccessful attempts to invent the perfect woman.

In the 1953 Hammer Him "The Four-Sided Triangle" (Sinister Cinema, for instance, sci BACK TO THE '60s David Hinckley P. 33 WILLIAM gfVlARlLYrg KORYICH i.