Daily News from New York, New York • 150

oc flabby Disney destroys Davis 'ffolkes' is -y -v at all. And that leaves Bette Davis, looking like Beulah Bondi with a hangover, one eye on the camera and the other eye on her paycheck. Watching her in the magnificent Strangers last season on TV was to realize how ready she is for great acting. Watching her in the hands of Disney is like watching Native Dancer pulling a milk wagon. Ffolkes (at the Plaza) is an odd movie with an odd title, pronounced "folks," and starring Roger Moore, James Mason and Anthony PerkinsThe only departure for Moore this time around is that he gets to wear a beard, otherwise he's the same old scuba-diving, cooler-than you adventurer of his James Bond days.

James Mason stands around in an admiral's uniform, and Tony Perkins turns in yet another nervous-nut performance which looks like an audition for the Jaclyn Smith School of Drama. If movies still cost 50 cents one might get away with saying "What the heck, it's not that bad." But the sad truth is that it's not that good either. As the eccentric hero who hates women, swills Scotch, and does needlepoint when he has to think, Roger Moore provides some amusement as he proceeds to save the British government from Perkins and his gang. He is called upon as a last resort when the bad guys take over a Swedish cargo ship in the North Sea and threaten to explode two oil rigs unless the lady prime minister (Faith Brook) hands over 25 million pounds. A storm rages as the Swedes try to poison the bad guys and time ticks away.

A few shipmates get tossed overboard, various stalling tactics are REX REED DF ANYONE KNOWS how to turn swine into pearls, it's Bette Davis. The Watcher in the Woods, however, is her 85th film in 50 years of beer and skittles, and this time she knows when she's been licked. This Walt Disney fiasco, at the Ziegfeld, is a horror movie in more ways than one, none of them worth repeating. A nice young couple rent a gloomy old house in the English countryside. The wife (Carroll Baker) writes charming children's books.

We know that because there's a scene where she's" typing. The husband (David McCallum) is "well known in Broadway musical circles." whatever that means. We know that because he plays piano like Fats Waller and has the good fortune to disappear before the film gets going (something about a rehearsal) and never come back. There are two daughters, all-American as Edsels, but less interesting. The little one says The big one sees things in mirrors.

Ghosts and spooks and things that go bump in the night in the woods outside. Bette Davis is the old crone who owns the house. Years earlier, during a children's game in the old chapel, lightning struck the belfry" and her daughter Karen mysteriously disappeared in the fire. There's an eclipse, a seance, and something like the Cookie Monster that appears from the woods resembling one of the talking apple trees in The Wizard of Oz. I won't be so churlish as to give the mystery away on the assumption that some fool might actually be considering an admission ticket to this hogwash.

But I ill add that the mystery is never solved, and what results in the end is less scary than it is hilarious. Like most Disney films. The Watcher in the Woods has been poorly directed (by John Hough) and abysmally scripted. Obvious camera angles, derivative music and hackneyed structural teases rob it of any possible freshness or imagination. Every element of contrived tension is telegraphed before it develops, and any 10-year-old Nancy Drew can spot the cliches before they happen.

Lynn-Holly Johnson, who played the blind skater in Ice Castles, finds herself strapped with the dopiest dialogue this side of My Friend Irma Goes West. Widening her eyes into small, dumb bee-bees, she says: "If Karen was murdered, that would explain everything, wouldn't it?" She was better on ice. Carroll Baker is always a welcome sight, although you could fit what she has to say in a thimble. David McCallum doesn't bother to say much of anything Donald Sutherland and Suzanne Somers employed, and Perkins sweats and shouts as Moore puts his plan into action. The last half of the movie does maintain suspense, and it is funny when one of Moore's scuba buddies attacks him by mistake because he's wearing a vermilion wet suit, but the denouement is too predictable for satisfaction, and the final scene of the lady prime minister presenting Moore with three white kittens is too cute to ingest What ffolkes needs is a plot twist that is a real surprise and much earlier on.

By the time the suspense is created the characters have turned to cardboard, the jokes have gone stale and the fleeting tide of sympathy has left behind a shore of mud. Nothing Personal (RKO Cinerama, 86th showcases) is nothing entertaining, and a big waste of time Here's an example of submental moviemaking with bottom-line desperation. It opens with Donald Sutherland, a college professor in Alaska, smoking pot in a faculty lounge while a nincompoop colleague daydreams about the good old days of student riots. Before you can burn Suzanne Somers' bra, a student exposes seal killings by big business and the college flies Sutherland to Washington to stop the slaughter. Sutherland's lawyer turns out to be overexposed, publicity-mad, Playboy centerfold Somers herself, who cracks government cases between hardware store commericals- In their fight to save the seals, Sutherland and Somers exploit ecology.

Women's Lib, marijuana, sophisticated blacks, corporate villains, Manitoba Indians, and Craig Russell dressed like Mae West, as a talk-show guest interviewed by David Steinberg. Something for everybody, and nothing much for anybody in particular. What the pea-brains behind this mess forgot is that comedy must have dialogue that is funny. Running a boo in "Nothing PersonaT Volkswagen into the Potomac is about as amusing and original as beat rash. The other missing element is characterization.

Sutherland's spaced-out grin and Somers idiotic come-ons are deadly boring long before the inevitable car chase. Cashing in on causes has always been-a natural resource for film Cops, but Robert Kaufman's script (probably written between stops on the BUT) is a sure-fire disaster. Nothing Persanal is yet another ugly, stupid, instant shlock epic from American International, a company that produces muggings instead of movies. If you braved the crowds at the recent Gone With (he Wind engagement at the Regency, then you know it never dies. It just lives on forever, like the moss-drenched oaks at Tara.

Gene With the Wind mavens nave already amassed quite a collection of books and memorabilia on the subject, but now at last Margaret Mitchell's original publisher, MacmiHan. has brought out the complete Sidney Howard movie script Gone With the Wmd: The Screenplay (Macmillan, $17.95) includes not only the 3 hour, 40 minute version you saw on the screen, but additional scenes contributed by F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Van Drnten, Ben Hecht, and David O. SeLznick himself, adding up to more than five hours of action and dialogue. There are marvelous illustrations, plus frames discarded by MGM daring editing and a series of snapshots takes by Set mirk's technical advisor, Atlanta historian Wilbur Kurtz.

By now I think we know all we care or need to know about the making of GWTW, but this is the first time the script has ever been made available to the public. No more guesswork at parties about Rbett's famous last line, or what Butterfly McQueen really said about birthm' babies. It's all here, a dandy reference book and a thing to cherish. I i jii in i 1.111 i ii iiiiimiijiiji 1 ir fv i I Li 5 A i 1 -i Wt In Lynn-Holly Johnson and Ian Bannen in "Watcher in the Woods" 7 ilf 35? NS i few alar win' mi i Guessing who's the peek a as Ui explanation as to just who this creature is who likes to spy on young girls, particularly blonde teenagers. One such teenager, played quite charmingly by Lynn-Holly Johnson, has just moved into a fully furnished palatial mansion that her parents have managed to rent for a mere $1,000 a month.

Its owner (played with her usual flourish by Bette Davis, delivering each of her lines with such biting force she tends to resemble an angry duchess who's been forced to mingle with the servants) is particularly attracted to the pretty 12 year-old. Johnson immediately begins seeing flashes of blue light in the nearby woods. Mirrors crack in her presence just as she spots the image of a blindfolded young woman in them. The face in the mirror turns out to belong to the landlady's daughter who disappeared under bizarre circumstances 30 years ago. Tired of looking at someone else's face in the mirror, Johnson sets out to solve the mystery.

Now, while this Walt Disney production proved to be much too complex for my poor brain, I did check out the reactions of some youngsters, who insisted they were A WATCHER IN THE WOODS. Bette Davis. Carroll Baker. Directed by John Hough. At the Ziesteid.

Running time: 1 hour, a minutes. Rated PG. A little girl, wearing a bright red sweater, walks cheerfully through a thick forest Since this is England, she naturally has to stop for tea, which, after finding herself a comfortable spot, she pretends to serve to her doll. What she does not realize is that she is being watched. With some menacing-sounding music heralding his evil intentions, the mysterious observer or to be more accurate, the cameraman presses closer to the little girl, who takes one look at him and runs away, shrieking in terror.

Who is this big bad wolf who frightens little girls, this so-called watcher in the woods? "A Watcher in the Woods," a somewhat tantalizing, but ultimately ridiculous suspense movie, not only completely ignores the fate of the little girl who appears in the opening sequence, it offers only a garbled Lyrm-Hofly Johnson in "Watcher the Woods" not confused at all by the ending and who announced their approval of the movie. It was only after I discovered that they were working for a rival newspaper that I decided not to believe them. Kathleen Carroll.