Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

binterts JSL By David Baker FHm Critic From its sublime opening scene, a flashback in which a mannequin is torn limb from limb by four white stallions running in four different directions, to its exquisite climax, wherein the walls of a pyramid come crashing down around our gorgeous but intellectually neutered heroine, Franklin J. Schaffner's "Sphinx" is a u i I1UW1. It fails so totally and is so funny in doing so that the only recent movie it can be compared with is "Airplane." \\ | V Y v rA r Frank Langella comforts "Sphinx _ Wy-;v-| i -;-] ] r- j] i . $*A~ (( The boc Columbia's two finest publics % the S C. Book Store and the R Book Store, have in their greatest band of marauding pi in North America. They plunder, they rob, they pilfer and when they're finishet merrily and board their diam ship, floating to the Caribbean t 1 A IOOI. Once at their secret link of i meet with the leader of the caneers, named the "pirate where the booty is divided anc buying new, over-priced, unstur WHAT IS THE ORIGIN S*. nauseating creatures? Very sii X ten years ago, a local Columbia ^advertised seeking employee! \ 1$ ainmer iinx' John By rum, the infamous hack writer who most recently plundered Carolyn Cassady's eccentric novella, "Heart Beat," now has taken Robin Cook's 1979 best-seller, mediocre as it is, and turned it into a preposterous 1980s version of "The Perils of Pauline," complete with every overworked cinematic convention of the past 50 years. THE SCINTILLATING Lesley-Anne Down, her hair cropped short and died a shade of red so blazing that even Lucille Ball would envy it, plays a lovely young ^)Kk ** fl? A, ^jgMH * n Lesley-Anne Down in ykstore itior, outlets, small, develop ussell House A copy of that< employ the hands of so rates known in the Florida ^ they stole a v pillage, they disguised as sn 1, they laugh suits and secur lond-studded Not two yet 0 count their started skyroc book-selling. 'J slands, they South Carolina 1 book buc- one-eyed ch li:_I n :AL puuusuers, ijucauuns wuii I invested in The amazing dy tomes. is that nobod> taken over. Ev of these looked exactly mple. About back in a pony i newspaper their shoulder. 5- for some hila Englishwoman named Erica Baron. She's an Egyptologist by trade, even though she has never before visited Egypt and she doesn't know the first word of Arabic. On her first sightseeing trip to the Land of the Pharoahs, Erica wants to get in a bit of research for a paper she's writing about an obscure Egyptian architect named Menephta. Polaroid in had, she sets out to Hisrnvpr (hp roal P.udnt hut *vori "** the darndest things keep happening to her along the way. Fat, greasy Arab men continually bump into her, while horny little Arab boys taunt her, touch her and pinch her shapely derrierre. The little boys who don't want to fondle Erica throw stones at her and the men who don't collide with her pull knives on her, toss her down stairwells, smear her make-up, muss her hair, soil her clothing and shoot at her. The Arab women in the picture all lie to her. ON A ROUTINE souvenir hunt, Erica witnesses the murder of a crusty old blackmarket dealer. Horrified, she runs through an open-air market, knocking over dozens of vegetable stands. Even when a path clears for _V~ _ -l * ncr, sue careens aDOUi, destroying people's wares, screaming incomprehensibly and just generally providing the Arabs with something to laugh at. On another memorable excursion, this one into the Valley of the Kings, Erica is thrown into a tomb. There, she trips over mounds upon mounds of unwrapped mummies and is attacked by bats. Upon escaping, she is made love to by Frank Langella. double-crossed bv Maurice Ronet and laughed at by several more Arabs. Is it any wonder she can't get her research done? And if you think the situations Erica gets into are hilarious, you'll split your sides over the dialogue she utters as they unfold. A few examples: "I WAS JUST checking to see if the labels have been ripped off the mattress." (Erica to the hotel bellboy, * after he's discovered her pirates I * * ung uouKsiores nere in town. >elf-same paper found itself in me hideous bums hanging out teys. As soon as they saw this, an and headed to Columbia nart businessmen in pinstripe ed the jobs. irs passed when the prices :keting in the two places of rhe owners were no longer gentlefolk but grisly, grimy, aracters who answered a single response: "Ay." asnfifl of this U/hnlo pharo/lo x ? - ?.m ft VUUIQUU ' suspected the pirates had ery worker in the two places the same with their hair tied tail and a parrot perched on People never even noticed see File, page 9 J III. .11 nou Egyptologist Les/y-Anne D two witness a murder in "I I \ V Lesley-Anne Down is thr discover the secret of an ai hiding under the bed from an imaginary thug.) "My God, they're biiiig!" (Erica, upon first glimpsing v uic yy i ctuiiuh. I "I don't like having my face slapped, even when I am hysterical." (Erica, after slapping the face of a man who's just slapped her in an effort to stop her from screaming.) With lines like that, it's amazing that the performers and the rest of the creative personnel could have taken "Sphinx" seriously. But every scene, no matter how small or insignificant, is played absolutely straight. In that Byrum's script gives the viewer so many opportunities to poke fun at, PP ji* ^i!k' - * m* This ghastly pirate proparo* cents to pay for a book. Not .. ' LS,du -Jl v^ own is forced to be quiet by /V Sphinx." eatened by John Rhys-Davit icient Egyptian tomb in "Sphii and even talk back to, the rs characters 44Snhin*M should pu well become the next an "Rocky Horror Picture so Show." Jo SCHAFFNER'S DIREC- J?1 TION, as always, is stoic, 1 but Michael J. Lewis' score PV heaves and blares, booms jv and thuds with every at- 11 tempt on Erica's Vfe or well- .. being. And with each 11 glimpse of a pyramid, a mosque, the Sphinx or the V Nile, finger cymbals ting, as , if to add an air of mystery to ' all the splendor. There is no acting in the IJ pic lure. Down screams and ou whimpers her way through se one convoluted scene after pi< another, while Langella go flares his nostrils and Ronet an ' -JlMboa. ? to draw a sabre against a sti e the long hair. (Photo by Chip * 1_ I mo | i I laurice Ronet after the ^ H m N ?s as he attempts to j j lises and lowers his ! ebrows (sometimes one j id then the other, ! metimes both at once). | hn Gielgud is on hand only j lg enough to have his [ roat slashed and his head ! shed through a plate of I iss. He should consider j mself lucky. t Because bad movie^ are a ! me a dozen and true hoots t e becoming harH to finH ms as wretched as this S ould not go unseen. In fact, is one has to be seen to be lieved. I "Sphinx" may be tlandishly stupid, but it's I ldom dull and a funnier ice of trash you're not ing to find anywhere, at I ytime, at any price. I jdent who lacks three 1 Lowell)