Daily News from New York, New York • 130

OJBI91J PC3IDV MoviesBy KATHLEEN CARROLL t- MoviesBy ANN GUARINO ZATOICHI'S FIRE FESTIVAL Not rated. At Regency Theater. The Japanese Film Festival at the Regency Theater opens with two Zatoichi films that haven't been shown here. Both star Shintaro Katsu, who made a series of films as a blind swordsman who poses as a masseur. In "Zatoichi's Fire Festival," made in 1962, he comes to the assistance, predictably, of damsels in distress and farmers who are taxed by greedy overlords.

His only assets are a keen sense of hearing, a strong sense of smell and an accurate arm. His heart may be touched by a lovely woman, but he realizes love is not for him and in the end he walks off alone, down the road and into the next movie, of course. As usual with these films on feudal Japan, the characters are stereotyped, the battles unbelievable and the plot and subplots plodding. You don't have to be Japanese to be bored by this film. to co Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall: two of the puzzling woman in "3 Women." Millie represents the ultimate in glamor and sophistication.

Her hair is always shiny and perfectly combed. She wears the kind of demure, feminine clothes prescribed in Cosmopolitan for the single girl who wants to catch a man. Her all-yellow apartment has been copied from House Beautiful and her head is stuffed with man-baiting, quickie recipes recommended again for the Cosmopolitan Girl. The delighted Pinkysoon moves in with Millie. She meets the "cute boy" downstairs who responds to Millie's eager greetings with a cough; Edgar, the layed-back ex "stunt double" whose claim to fame is that he knows Hugh O'Brian; and Willie (Janice Rule), Edgar's pregnant, strangely silent wife who occupies herself by painting grotesque figures on the bottoms of swimming pools.

Pinky nearly drowns in one such pool and, upon awaking from a coma, she becomes an entirely different personality. Adopting Millie's diary for her own and borrowing her body-clinging clothes, she begins to carry on with men with the cool confidence of an ex-periencedflirt. Altman is most adept at capturing the spiritual desolation of the sun-bleached desert, which becomes the perfect setting for what is ultimately a war between the sexes, a war in which women emerge triumphant. "3 Women" was based on a dream that Altman had recently and, like any dream, it is a deeply experience that is open to any number interpretations. If there was an Academy Award for artistic bravery, Altman would win it without question, for he is the only director in Hollywood who truly deserves such an award.

3 WOMEN Rated PG. At the Coronet. In this dismal period when most directors seem to be selling their souls in order to grind out pre-fabricated junk like "Airport '77," Robert Altman inevitably stands out as one filmmaker who is constantly making new demands on his talent. Whatever one may think of them, his movies are fearless experiments that attempt to stretch the traditional boundaries of film and explore all its possibilities. Because they fail to fit the conventional Hollywood mold, they have an exciting freshness about them.

Certainly, Altman's latest movie, "3 Women," displays a startling degree of originality. It amounts to a dazzling exercise a delicate puzzle, in which Altman gleefully supplies the pieces antHets the audience work to put them together. The pieces may not seem to fit together at first try, but somehow that doesn't matter. It is fun just trying to meet "the challenge of a movie that stimulates both the mind and the imagination. The movie is about three women whose lives intersect mysteriously in a parched California desert community.

One of the women, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), is a vacant-eyed, child-like creature who has just arrived from Texas, carrying with her her sole possessions a battered suitcase, a sewing machine and one change of clothing. She has been hired as a physical therapist in a rehabilitation center for the aged and there she immediately develops a crush on a more experienced co-worker, Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duval). To a small town girl like Pinky, ADULTS ONLY DOODS-MERWLL The Publrfiing People? of ITT PRESENTS ii ii'i hirArtlirlfiiiiiiiifrtiffiiiliiiliiliLiTtiirfiiCT iftifaiiiiiffiiiJiiiiiiiiiliiiiiM SIDNEY POmERiBILL COSBY HARRY BtLAFONTE VW, -04 e-rt XH AN ADVENTURE FORTHE CHILD IN ALL OF US rATWOATHACKRAY MAX WILK JOHNNY GWJELLE JOERAPOSO A FiomcD International Production ySrV'NZ" HttelByWFeiiDtJulrjr5, under agreement vwth mv9 ThehianYabtans Company Panavrsion, taslmancotar Manhattan New Jersey On Broadway (FRIVOL. taBELLEVUE Broadway at 49 St. Upper Montclair 247-1633 (201)744-1455 tO 9t 1 30.

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