Daily News from New York, New York • 102

1 This 'Ghost Story' is really horrible tOTHING SEEMS TO BE working out right I this time of year. All of those big, expensive, Li gift-wrapped holiday feasts we've been waiting for at the movies are turning out to be suet pudding. If you thought Reds was bad, wait until you see Ghost Story, Neighbors, Buddy Buddy and Shar- .4. ky's Machine. You'll get to know what real depression is.

I always thought the plague that hit Hollywood could be cured with one enchanting dose of Fred Astaire. Well, they've brought him back this Christmas in a Grade horror called Ghost Story and from the picture I get, Fred could use some medicine himself. This truly wretched piece of junk wastes the time, REX HEED 3 photographed and hideously misused here. Her best scenes are the ones where the rotting flesh falls from her face like melting Halloween pumpkin wax, which doesn't say much for the way Hollywood uses a promising talent Lawrence Cohen's script is moronic, and John Irvin, the director, doesn't have a clue how to sustain even the most minimal suspense. Melvyn Douglas died shortly after the film was completed.

He must have seen the answer print MORE GLOOM HANGS OVER Buddy Buddy, a dismal flop that painfully illustrates the disintegration of Billy Wilder as a comedy director. Looking at this dull, humorless mess, you'll have to pinch yourself to remember he once gave the world Some Like It Hot Walter Matthau plays a Mafia hit man who stakes out a perch in a hotel window in Riverside, Calif, to assassinate a grand jury witness. Jack Lemmon plays a nervous wreck who moves into the adjoining room to commit suicide. Every time Matthau tries to pull the trigger, the poor slob next door interrupts him with some newly contrived insanity that threatens to bring the cops. It's a one-joke routine that drones on endlessly while the audience dozes.

The film has no rhythm, no tempo, no comic thrust It just lies there, like a dry goldfish gasping for oxygen on a nylon carpet It's depressing to watch two great funnymen like Matthau and Lemmon smothering in this kind of stale rubbish. By working doubly hard to get laughs where there are none, they both end up looking like squealing, sweating hysterics climbing the walls of a padded cell. Instead of directed, Buddy Buddy looks blown on with a spray-paint can. If this is the "big" comedy for Christmas, forget it You'll get more kicks out of pulling the whiskers off a Salvation Army Santa Claus. I have just seen Jack Lemmon deliver one of the greatest performances of his life in the new Costa-Gavras film, Missing.

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until February before he redeems himself. Meanwhile, Buddy: Buddy must have been perpe-' trated on us all because he wanted to show allegiance to his old buddy, Billy Wilder. It just goes to show what happens when you work for friends. I hope he was well paid for this sentimental gesture. It has wrecked his status.

Fairbanks Houseman, Astaire and Douglas. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. are the macabre old crows. The deep, dark secret they have shared for several decades is that years ago, when they were young and handsome, they buried a poor girl alive inside a car that sank to the bottom of a lake and the poor critter has been trying to get out of her watery grave for half a century. Now her ghost has returned to give everybody the creeps and claim the lives of the old geezers who murdered her.

If it sounds familiar, it is. You've seen this corpse-returns-from-beneath-the-swamp-to-seek-revenge idea a thousand times. Ghost Story has a haunted house, an escaped maniac from insane asylum, a blizzard, spooky organ music, eerie lighting, terrible nightmares and portentous predictions of evil things to come, but nothing ever happens. It's a rip-off, a joke on the gullible audience, and a travesty of the talents involved. Fairbanks wanders dazedly through a snowstorm and crashes to his death from a frozen bridge, while one of his two sons (both played by Craig Wasson, the immigrant hero in Four Friends) falls naked from a New York penthouse through a plate glass window.

Everyone else meets a similar fate except Astaire (there are limits to how much damage even the most insensitive filmmaker is willing to inflict on an aging legend) and Patricia Neal, who has one line of dialogue before disappearing from the movie forever. The ghost is played by Alice Krige, the English actress who played the Gilbert Sullivan singer in Chariots of Fire with such charm. She is cruelly energy and talent of everyone involved. It's a sad example of how to abuse senior citizens. Practically everyone involved in this trashy sleaze looks bewildered, miserable, and ultimately embalmed by a mortician for open-casket viewing.

A terrific cast of seasoned pros has been assembled, all of them are wasted, and the awful truth ia that without them this movie would be just another 42d St grindhouse potboiler. Maybe the money was great, or maybe they read the superbly eerie novel by Peter Straub the movie is based on. Either way, they must be hanging their heads in shame. Not a shred of the novel's literary quality remains, most of the atmosphere and plot have been sacrificed for corn-ball special effects, and nothing remains except closeups of old stars looking panic-stricken and tortured by the mess they're in. Ghost Story is a horror, all right, but it isn't even remotely scary.

In a beautiful picture-postcard village in Vermont (we know it's a beautiful picture-postcard village because every other long shot of the village is a picture postcard) there are four old codgers in dinner jackets called the "Chowder Society" who meet to exchange ghost stories in the dark. Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, John- Houseman and Natalie's film is in question fl OLLYWOOD MGM still maintain it has not I i yet decided whetner to iinisn waiaue woou LiU "Brainstorm" film. But the inside word I get is this: Metro has, indeed, determined it wants to scrap the picture and collect $10 million from Lloyds of London. The insurance carrier, however, is reportedly balking at the payoff High level sources report Lloyds has had representatives studying footage of the film in which Natalie had several days the stories. I didn't quite believe it until they started doing it to me.

I don't know how other columnists feel about having their material lifted in such 8 blatant manner. But for one, consider it tacky. -ITS LEGIT: I informed readers Monday that Paramount intends to get deeply involved in Broadway production. And now I can tell you this: The studio has decided that involvement will be such a major undertaking, It is formally creating a special division for development of stage projects which will be headed by Dan Sherkow, chief of Paramount film production on the East Coast All this has happened so fast, a title has yet to be chosen for the legit operation but Paramount Stage Theatricals is being considered as a banner. WIN, LOSE SOME: Annette Funicello's decision to back out of "Grease 2" because of a conflicting Skippy commercial assignment, could end up greasing the way to a new screen career for Connie Stevens.

When Connie was signed to replace Annette as the "Grease" school teacher who clicks romantically with Tab Hunter, she was informed the part was a cameo that called for just a few days work. But as things have worked out Connie has clicked so on camera that the script was rewritten so that her role has grown and grown as shooting has progressed. BIG SCREEN SCENE: Director Costa-Gavras will be meeting with producer Lester Persky in Paris next month, to start rewrites on the big-screen version of "Bent" Persky tells me he is hoping to start production of the film in Europe in mid-'82, with Richard Gere as star. But he admits no contracts have yet been signed with the actor, and that the project, in fact will not be a green-light reality until a budget is completed and United Artists approves. Run-down 'Heels' of work to complete at the time of her death, and though that work did Include a key scene, Lloyds feels that with some rewriting, "Brainstorm" can be saved.

As I reported last week, "Brainstorm" co-star Cliff Robertson got the same feeling after chat with director Douglas Trumbull about the prospects for the projectand before the cast was released and in- By DOUGLAS WATT iSSi CM BSSt 8 BO ijl if formed they'd be told when and if to report back to liJlialfl work. The 1 982 Daily News World Almanac and Book of Facts is the ideal gift for students of all ages. 976 pages bulging HEAD OVER HEELS. Mutkal camady with book by William f. MMerwJr.

Vkla7adaiad tram tha play "Tha Wondar H.fcvKjTEft fawyar Goodman and Ban HeeM. Muafc Vlala. Lyric bybo.Wim iliubath Auttin, DannK Bailey, John Cunrtwham, Owv bwfw. ChaTta Mlchaal Wrfaht. staved by Tarry tar (mualeal nttaij)ajd Jay indar (book).

Sat and caatumat by Jann Falaballa. Uahtlna by Jaff Davl. At Tna Harold Ckirmaa. Pathetic little musical last night at the Clurman. Called "Head Over Heels." Based on obscure Ben Hecht collaboration (1936-37 season).

Commedia dell'arte stuff. Pining Pierrot Nubile Columbine, buxom Nurse always in attendance, is in love with wary Harlequin, latter made invisible by trick hat peddled by traveling salesman Punchinello, who also-possesses magic slipper and cloak for forgetting. Harlequin winds up with Columbine, Punchinello-with Nurse, Pierrot with nothing. Silly little songs go trippingly, one tripping over the other, except for halfway amusing next-to-closing male duet "How Do You Keep Out of Love?" evidently last-minute addition, to judge from program insert Lyrics rhyme like mad, never falsely but never very pointedly, either. Music trite.

Book negligible. Cast agreeable. Staging fluttery. Lively little offstage musical group pecking at notes. Italianate set (inactive fountain and columns) -serviceable.

Costumes same. Also lighting. Two Both short MEANWHILE: Robert Wagner, who has decided he can't bear to spend the holidays in the Beverly Hills home he shared for so many years with Natalie Wood, leaves this week for Gstaad, Switzerland, with their three daughters. They'll be staying in a villa rented for their use by Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards and expect to spend most of their time with the Edwardses and their children, and with the David Nivenses. with information on almost any subject you can name.

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Allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. Make check or money order payable to New York Daily News. Mail to: Daily News, P.O. Box 100 Radio City Station, TfewYork.N.Y 10019. DAIT-KVVS WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: I'm not surprised ratings on the syndicated "Entertainment Tonight" are slipping because you can't fool the public for long.

The show portends to bring exclusive news of the show business industry. Instead, it is larded with material that has been lifted from print -with no credit to those who gathered the material and wrote.