The San Bernardino County Sun from San Bernardino, California • Page 52

THI SUN-TELEGRAM 0-9 Hindenburg: Special effects prevent a total disaster "The rated PG, now showing at the Central City 4 in San Bernardino. by VINCENT CANBY Nw York Tlm Nam Sorvlc NEW YORK As disaster movies go, "The Hindenburg" is so brainless and so peculiarly optimistic that it could have been to work of Ross Hunter, but wasn't. It is pricelessly funny at the wrong moments. It confirms porten- tiousness as a school of cinematic art It has George C. Scott, as a good German, saying through a mostly clenched jaw not long after the take-off, "I have an uneasy sense of disaster." It has his wife complaining primly, That song is going to make me sick," as if it were "Blue Suede Shoes" and not "The Horst Wessel Song." It has characters talking about "Hermann" (whose last name is Goering), and it makes completes implausible a perfectly plausible theory about the events that led up to May 6, 1937, when the German dirigible Hindenburg, the Titanic of all lighter-than-air craft, exploded and burned while landing at Lakehurst, J.

Yet I wouldn't have missed a single foolish frame of it I sort of like disaster movies, even bad ones, for reasons that have to do with the special effects and with other tion, the first most easily available source being The Hindenburg," Michael M. Mooney's book, which provides the source material for the film. According to Robert Wise, the director, Nelson Gidding, who wrote the screenplay, and Richard Le Vinson and William Link, who slipped the other two the story idea, much as if it were a mickey, the Hindenburg was sabotaged by a young German crew member who wanted to embarrass the Nazis. That part is plausible but the way this is dramatized makes you long for the sanity of Take the Money and Run." Remove the last 10 minutes of the film, which is the length to which Wise quite effectively stretches the actual disaster and original newsreel footage that lasted less than one minute, and "The Hindenburg" is just another, somewhat more tedious, "Grand Hotel in the Sky" picture. The cast includes just about everybody you didn't especially want to see In a movie right now, though Dana Andrews, Shelley Winters, George Kennedy and Helen Hayes are now in it Among those who are aboard are William Ather-ton, Gig Young, Burgess Meredith and Anne Bancroft Movie Review things that probably go back to the prenatal state.

I'm also fascinated by dirigibles, those huge, cigar-shaped, rigid-framed (unlike the "soft" blimps of today) aircraft that Germany pioneered, gave a name to (Zeppelin, after the count who built them) and maintained successfully for so many years. If "The Hindenburg" does nothing else, and I'm not sure that it does, it may at least tease your imagination enough to research this curious chapter in avia 15,1976 Film on James Dean to be aired this week MATINEE DAILY OPEN 12:45 MON. FRI. ALL SIATS ltOO RIFORI SiOO 18 was killed was only months." By PAUL HENNIGER Gannett Nw Servlct CINEMA II CINEMA I (obtrt ladlord jMTJonmcowor'd) Iran Im In "tiTm or thi tiacor'd) froel WIHkmmn In "ARIOS "RIIIVIR IS from ivirm "suritmr'd) Abrams said ABC turned down the film, then he took it to NBC. ABC has yet to live down that it didn't think much of "All in the Family" when Noman Lear took it there first.

office, a secretary seen in the background is played by the real Christine white. Dane Clark plays James Wbitmore as incongruous as that may sound. Whitmore was an itinerant actor at the time who ran an acting class Dean You never knew when he He got the part over several was being himself. name actors because he didnt try to mimic Dean. If "Stephen McHattie, who we wanted that, we could plays the Dean role, has a have gotten Rich Little." lot of this essence," Abrams says.

"McHattie, a Canadian Candy Clark plays actress actor and virtually Christine White, who had a unknown here, did a pilot brief love affair with Dean, for Warners that didnt sell. In one scene at a studio "TIMS CHAINSAW MASSACRI" (I) HOLLYWOOD "James Dean," the TV movie NBC Dean used people, Is airing Thursday, proba- Abrams says, and when bly will stir up the cult that they discovered they'd idolized the moody young been had they still had a actor who was killed in an reverence for him. Dean was always he was PUSSYCAT THEATRES presents performing 24 hours a day. Ml BBBBBBI THE FAIREST HOLIDAY OF ALL Walt Disney's 'MpVIE RATING GUIDE IT COULD HAPPEN Nnotoilittirc i'1tF'F9'V9lnfit19'n'l'9t9tMV PMIMTAL GWD4NCI lUOGftTIO I rT'TJ' i ll'l'lf 1 i t-ufM 4m rff i 1.1,TAn,lTflU I illTIKTl ONMI 1 7 f.A'J.SH.iF ITWV7JTri Aiaaaytaa XJ and the Scorn Outorjs -T accident at 24 Producer Jerry Abrams describes the film as a story told from writer William Bast's point of view: what it was like to be Dean's best friend. Bast and Dean were pals in Hollywood 25 years ago.

"Dean was one of those people who moved very fast in this business," says Abrams. "Like Harlow and Monroe, Dean moved fast, and he made the fewest friends In the shortest time in becoming famous. F.piriAiAooiDiRcTHwuAiT nncucv DDnmirTinuc nnhi vionii i nuuuw I lung jMftP10 YOU! WjjiJ-4JJ" U-C0L0R ADULTS NIGHT CALLER lp IBBBBBIBI was umzfiw- mwiuli matinees mmm nssrcAi. lit sit Norm Ootn Daily 12 Noo It Midnight EVERY DAY EVERY DAY TOM I (PSH DEEP TANGO (x) "From the day Dean came to Hollywood to make L.w tfMUwii'MvV W)MW East of Eden' to the day he nnnnnn rir-i Wall DUmt Doubh Ht "SNOW WHITE" (C) 345,7100,10110 CoHII "ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD" (C) 2100,503,105 imi warn Mjii i rrZZ MATINEES THURSDAY THRU MONDAY Idog dryrfternBonI 2KK) MO "'f i I 1 1 1 iMtZn "RISNIT'S ACADEMY Awwhrnna i 21 XXX-Rated ADULT MOVIES HIGHLAND 1 ilSHisg); 1 8 c. Scott 'agSoTsJ TWIN CINEMAS HIGHLANDDEL ROSA 884-1249 S1.00 Mef 7O0, AAnnaayTliurtaay FULL LENGTH FEATURES MIRRORED ROOMS HEATED WATERBEDS 1.

"SNOW WK.TI THI SEVEN DWARFS" (C) "ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD" (C) "ROMEO JULIET" (PC) FRIENDS rt mu PIALTO TWIN CINEMA Ddduuuuli uuuuuuda RIVERSIDEBASELINE 875-0880 SI ,00 Mof 7:00 MondoyThurtoViv "EARTHQUAKE" (PC) "AIRPORT 75" (PC) James Coan It's cash for keeps .1 1'l I L. i in a hilarious run "KILLER ELITE" (PC) Midnal CaiMSldrwy Ponlof "WILDT lOIU.JLJ a mi I II lir JiTlTTT IT I Basel.ne.ESt. 1N I SanBernard.no 'MJj Hl iiraRfflflSfife IH i 885 640b V'il ut nf I 117 liF-g I' Men. thru Thwri. Optn frl Sun.

7:30 6howl SUrl it Oulk IMPORTANT NOTICE! CHILDREN UNDER 13 FREE' Eicepl Sptciil Filmi (i) Btlow Chiiditn in J0C Urdu i frit rHIGHUNO' it 1U I it mm tmjm ill iiii li i i i tn 2t6U KSllIM iff OH Ramp AUtaffll teotty, Chriint, Hotin "SHAMPOO" (R) Jack Nktiohon 9 1 SpjlU mmmmtl'r elr'Ki JOHN CMItllMLMTM KW II At) Hin "WiBPFT--rMF-- mff" rj wii lAuc uiiiH mcHAirnc uuAr.r I 4L1 HUT 4111 I FONTAN -pflMiaaiHrrar SthiliffrtMF'toPNHtif Wlrtm I February 13, 14 15 I fls Ctmt lfinoiHOiiltlr CINEMA I CO-HIT INLAND CO-HIT( WALT DISNETS JB TheterrMnamotbnUU icm "charueand OH llama 122 41171 LI 3 picture from the "oo.juomo.. rBTALTOi Giant Trislt till AMIC0" (PC) 1 "TEXAS (RAINSAN MASSACRI" (R) "TORSO" (R) Exciting Nighttime I IVIATAI IE PHI I RIALT0 H5 fOOTHILl II VD fwf Ofl Mima iai at AMBROSIA I BMcm mm mm (Am Wk Wok Dnmy'l NwMt "HO RIPOSIT NO RITMRH" (C) i scBuoai Kaunas i jit a (M jdTmmk) nt "CMAILII ARB i iriVL.LyLky i ivimiiii h. TNI ANCIl" Ch.ldr6lhrU 11 30 SAN BERNARDINO' his orchestra U2 SO mt vrrntoN tvi South 0 Hill UrUt IUM0) I 54 Adventures Attractions jl WaHr AAatmau end GofO Burnt II DAVID NIVIN 3t10 II STXl kf fgTl-ZSZi A THI SMNJNINI I I I Hours: TODAY: 9 a.m.-Midnight SAN iENAR0IN6l i 9 a.m.-7 p.m. 432 SO HT VI UNO" v( SMtt. SlraM (MOaOl Ri San Bernardino Cearo Scott "THI "TNI tint WAIIO Metro-GoldwynMayer a Ray Stark Production of a Herbert Ross Jm sianiog Walter Matthau George Burns Neil Sunshine Boys" in i I LOMA LINDA 1 Kicnara benjamin Panavinon Metrocolof I I LP' VKSnS'Al IB 11 14 INLAND ONLY CO-HIT MT.

VERNON zvh oumm ftmmwi Oft lamp lAma Undl mmm I Eliort Gould "SMILE" (PCI Wa Ollnav'i JiOO, "lNKhkOTfri liOO, IOiOO warn utimi 11 jb thiuapjl ISAM BERNARDINO! rr TrtM LHa AoNonhirt "THI UFI ANOTIMIS OF (RIULT ARAMS" (C) CnllaVontlnru 11 SO- t-i K. rfffiifpVri 17n.RfVl I tow wi xomi I SPANISH MOVIES TUES ONLY BARGAIN CARLOAD PRICES.