Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 16

MONDAY B4 CALGARY HERALD, February 24, 1 992 Editor: Mark Tremblay 235-7578 are back In Hollywood, SI TODAYiS BEST uf 1 I if i i'0nef i i 1 i I IS I I -rxstrnwr Innocent Blood Anne Parillaud of La Femme Nikita is a vampire who preys on mob hitmen. Anthony La-Paglia co-stars, and John Landis directs. The Reluctant Vampire Adam Ant plays the title role, with manic comic Judy Tenuta and others. Buffy, the Vampire Slayer Donald Sutherland, Rutger Hauer and Beverly Hills 90210 heartthrob Luke Perry star as vampires who encounter a Valley Girl in this comedy by director Fran Kuzui, from Dolly Parton's production company. Dracula, the Coke Commercial Director Schumacher returns to vampire turf in a new cola ad, a mini-spoof of the upcoming Coppola pic.

Producer Ray Stark came up with the concept: A woman, about to be bitten on the neck, grabs a Coke and hands it to the thirsty Drac instead. Stark told the Wall Street Journal that he thought of the commercial because Francis Coppola "is a good friend of mine and I thought it might be fun." Interview With the Vampire Anne Rice's best-seller is in development at Geffen, where a script is being readied and a star being sought. From Valley Girls to Adam Ant, Dracula faces new adventures By Steven Rea (Knight Ridder Newspapers) In China it's the Year of the Monkey, but in Hollywood it's beginning to look like the Year of the Vampire. Not since 1979 the year Frank Langella and Kate Nelligan offered their Dracula remake and George Hamilton hammed it up in Love at First Bite have stars and studios been this pumped for blood. Vampires have long been fodder for straight-to-video scare-fare, but apart from 1983's deranged The Hunger (vampirette Catherine Deneuve in a love triangle with Susan Sarandon and David Bowie), plus Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys and Kathryn Bigelow's low-budget Near Dark, both 1987, the '80s offered a dearth of Dracs.

Not so, '92. Consider: Bram Stoker's Dracula Director Francis Ford Coppola helms this faithful, reportedly erotic adaptation of the horror classic, with Gary Oldman as the palid Transylvanian. TV HIGHLIGHTS We're into another Canadian television ratings period, so expect a rush of entertainment and TV journalism designed to entice. For instance 6 p.m. The CFCN Evening News includes Beauty and the Bulldozer, a special report by Gord Kelly on proposals to develop Canmore and the Bow Valley Corridor (Ch.

5-5-4). 7 p.m. Access, in one of its membership drives, presents Here Be Dragons, a remarkable documentary about crocodiles along Africa's Gumetti River (Ch. 13). 8 p.m.

Rick Castiglione and Brenda Finley host 2 7 Working Together, a live, phone-in show aimed at bringing together job-seekers and employers (Ch. 7- 7-2). 8:30 p.m. CBC begins Degrassi Talks, a six-part series of half-hour documentaries for young Canadians (Ch. 6-6-9).

Stars of the long-running Degrassi series interview teens about sex, alcohol, depression and other concerns. 10 p.m. ABC premieres the TV movie Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 (Ch. 8). Charlton Heston stars in this reality- based tale of a community that rallies to help survivors of a plane crash.

Bob Blakey DRACULA: Frank Langella played the count with style the 1979 version STAR TREK Scotty warped over money By Damian Inwood (Province) VANCOUVER The folks at Paramount Pictures had better raise the shields. Star Trek's Scotty is coming at them at Warp 8, with the phasers on maximum. Vancouver-born actor James Doohan says he's going after the studio for money he's owed for Trekkie merchandising items. "They're going to be sued, I can guarantee that," says Doohan, who was in Vancouver on the weekend for a Star Trek Festival. "All we have to do is get four or five of us behind it, because we know we're being cheated." The 71-year-old Doohan is a career actor but is best known for his role as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott in the Star Trek TV series and films.

r- A 1 4 CLUBS It should be the cause that refreshes tonight at Sparky's Diner, 1006 11th Ave. S.W. The 3rd Annual Marcia Timmerman Variety Concert for the YWCA Sheriff King Home for Battered Women and Children will feature such acts as the Rodeo City Band, Shadoplay, 12 To The Bar and Deanna Dubbin plus guests. The early bird set gets under way at 7:10 p.m. and after 11 p.m.

all the musicians taking part in the benefit will jam the night away. Tickets are $5 at the door. Donations to the Sheriff King Home will also be accepted at the show. James Muretich VIDEO Rich Girl (Columbia-TriStar) Though virtually no one saw the movie during its fleeting week at theatres, we can't let it pass into videoland unnoticed. What we have here, after all, is a major stink bomb.

How stinky? Let's just say that if the budget had been bigger, Bruce Willis probably would have starred. Instead our hero is portrayed by one Don Michael Paul. He's, a beefy-yet-sensitive rock singer with Springsteen affectations who plays in a nightclub where one of the waitresses is a rich girl gone incognito (Jill Schoe-len). They fight, mate, etc. Virtually every aspect of Rich Girl is excruciating from the ungifted performances to the uninspired music to the fact that everyone takes the film so seriously.

For hard-core lovers of truly bad cinema, this one's a double-dog dare. Russell Smith, (Dallas Morning News) BOOKS They used to be called comic books, now they're visual novels or novellas. Time City, out this month, is a 24-page, black-and-white book by North Vancouver artist Adrie Van Viersen, whose love of anachronisms was inspired by seeing David Lynch's Blue Velvet. In Time City, cars can fly but reporters, like" the book's Maddison James, still pound Underwoods and dial rotary phones. Van Viersen blends the decades from the '20s to the '50s and bumps them up against the 23rd century.

Nancy Tousley And he says that if Paramount decides to make a Star Trek VII, all may not be well on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. "Sure we're bitter because we're not being Teens rap on booze, sex, drugs By Alison Mayes (Herald writer) "Spike! How's your baby?" "Joey! Where's your hat?" Wherever actors Amanda Stepto and Pat Mastroianni go, Canadian kids still tend to mix them up with their characters from the popular CBC series Degrassi Junior High and its fol-lowup, Degrassi High. Although the teen saga has ended (a special two-hour finale drew 2.3 million viewers last month), Stepto, who played teen mother Spike, and Mastroianni, who was the clownish Joey, are still followed around by their alter-egos. But when they return to CBC-TV airwaves tonight at 8:30, they won't be in character.

Instead, they'll be serving as journalists, interviewing real teens about sex in the first segment of the documentary series Degrassi Talks. In five instalments, taped last spring and summer in communities across Canada (not in Calgary), Degrassi stars talk to young people about alcohol, abuse, depression, drugs and sexuality. "For years we were dealing with these issues as characters," says Mastroianni, 20, who now sports a sparse beard and moustache and confesses he always hated hats (Joey's trademark). "We thought it would be a neat idea if we went out in public and turned the camera around and let (teens) have their say about all these issues to find out what Canadian teens really think." Most of the 40 kids who relate their experiences were chosen from 500 who phoned when Degrassi advertised a toll-free number. Degrassi actors also went to the streets (working as technicians and camera operators as well as interviewers) to get quick, candid comments from teens about the issues.

While in Calgary Friday to promote the show, the Toronto-based actors both pint-sized wore black shirts, faded blue jeans and silver pendants Stepto's of a skull, Mastroianni's of a Yukon native emblem. Stepto has a pierced nose but wasn't wearing nose jewelry. Her waist-length, dyed-blonde cornrows nearly obscured the image on the back of her jacket the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious. Asked if they're going to follow the current trend of teen TV stars descending into addictions and crime (witness Danny Bonaduce and Dana Plato) the pair laughed heartily. Stepto, 21, who played the punkish Spike for five seasons, says she has never feared that her private life would be held up to public scrutiny.

"My mother worries about it more than I do. I'm a good citizen, so I have no worries. The only thing I'd probably get arrested for is some activist thing, and then I wouldn't care, because it would be something I'd believe in animal rights and political kind of stuff." The Degrassi cast used to receive tons of fan mail, some of it asking for help with the perils of puberty. Young girls wrote to Stepto for sexual advice, thinking she was knowledgeable because her character had a baby. But she felt unqualified to give specific answers.

"I'm not a sex therapist or anything." Mastroianni also draws a clear distinction between the positive messages DOOHAN: Lawsuit paid what we David Olecko, Calgary Herald TALKING: Stepto and Mastroianni hear the word from Canadian teens DEGRASSI TALKS, today at 8:30 p.m. on Ch. 6,6,9 and 24, 16 should be paid," he says. "The fans think we're all one big happy family." And he's outspoken when it comes to talking about the Hollywood studio's plans. "I'm getting so pissed off with Paramount that I don't give a damn what they do," he says.

"I'd like to see a number seven but they're sometimes so terribly stupid, it's unbelievable. "It took them 10 years to find out they had us in their stable and they spent extra money to try and find out if we were really popular. This was eight years after we were in syndication." Last year he made 30 personal appearances, including trips to Germany and Australia. But Doohan says he didn't become rich on Star Trek, unlike Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, who made millions. "I still need to work," he says.

"We were paid peanuts in the original series. The residuals ran out in the first week of April 1971 so we haven't made any money on Star Trek since then." Then along came the movies but the money still wasn't great. "They started saying: 'Well, take it or leave And, of course, if you hadn't been working that much, I guess you'll take it," he says. Doohan was a captain in the 13th Field Regiment and was wounded by machine-gun fire after leading his men onto Juneau Beach in the D-Day Normandy invasion. Then he learned to fly an artillery observation plane and earned the reputation as "the craziest pilot in the Canadian air force." They don't want to be treated like a kid If teenagers are not looked down upon as being stupid and useless, maybe they'll start behaving useful." Stepto acknowledges the documentary series is tackling "heavy topics" but says its overall message is positive: that talking is constructive, even healing.

The producers of Degrassi Talks are now researching a special on how teens see the future (beginning March 3, teens can phone 1-800-36 1-TALK to contribute). Meanwhile, the old gang from Degrassi High has dispersed, some to high school or university. Stepto, who was attending Toronto's High School for Performing Arts when cast as Spike in the mid-'80s, is now working in an office, going to acting auditions and has a role in an upcoming play. Mastroianni, whose pre-Degrassi show-biz experience consisted of "K-Mart flyers, like modelling," recently fulfilled some fantasies when he played a role in the series Top Cops. "I fired an Uzi.

I played a really bad guy, a gun-runner That was a lot of fun. I'm fascinated by Mafia films. I want to do a chase scene, I want to be shot and I want to play a Mafia guy." Stepto's ideal acting job? "I want a scene where I get to vandalize something and break, like, store mirrors. I want to be a psychotic provided by the series and his own position as a famous teen. "I thought the show and the characters were good for role models.

I didn't think we would be the best role models, us as people, 'cause we're regular kids and we go through the same things other people go through I never, ever, thought I myself was a role model for impressionable youth. "But I do watch what I do when I'm in public. Like if I'm smoking and I see some kids coming up to me I'll quickly butt out. You don't want to destroy the kids' idea of you." In their travels for the documentary, Stepto and Mastroianni say they were struck by how alike Canadian teens are, regardless of race, religion, gender or other differences. "A lot of them have low self-esteem," says Mastroianni.

"I think a lot of teenagers do things because either their friends are doing it, or it may be the 'in' thing to do. If teenagers had more confidence and said, 'People should like me for me, and not for what I'm supposed to I think there'd be a lot less problems. "Teenagers want to be respected. EPHRON: I needed the money QUOTE OF THE DAY "One of the reasons I started writing screenplays was very simply that I needed money. My marriage (to Carl Bernstein) suddenly ended and I had two kids and couldn't support everybody as a magazine writer." Screenwriter Nora Ephron, explaining that it wasn't the urge to create that sent her rushing to the.