GRODIN KNOWS GOOD COMEDY

Charles Grodin thinks his new movie, “Last Resort” (opening here May 9) is probably the funniest picture he’s ever been in. It cost under $1 million.

And he’s sure “Ishtar,” in which he stars alongside Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, will be hilarious too. That cost “around $35 million.”

“So this year I’m in one of the least expensive and one of the most expensive movies made,” he said the other day. “But all I can tell you is that even with unlimited money, we couldn’t have found better people for ‘Last Resort.’ ”

We’ll see. But in the past, Grodin--the actor whom one critic described as having “the face of a born dupe”--has shown he knows good comedy when it slips through his mailbox. And he’s very high on this low-budget movie directed by comedy actress Zane Buzby and written by Steve Zacharias and Jeff Buhai.

It’s about a family’s disastrous holiday vacation at a nightmarish Caribbean resort.

“Last Resort” was filmed on Catalina. “Ishtar” was made on location in Morocco; Grodin plays a CIA man intent on tracking down two itinerant entertainers played by Hoffman and Beatty. The film is directed by Elaine May.

“They didn’t want to pay me my usual fee for the movie,” said Grodin. “I suppose they’d used up all the money on Dustin and Warren. So at first I said no. I don’t mind reducing my money for a low-budget picture, but not for something like ‘Ishtar.’ When they asked Elaine to name her second choice for the role, she said, ‘I don’t have one. I want him.’ And that was that.”

It’s the third time he’s worked for May (she directed him in “Heartbreak Kid” and co-wrote “Heaven Can Wait”) and it reteams him with Beatty, with whom he made “Heaven.” It also marks the first time he’s seen Hoffman since they were both up for “The Graduate” in 1967.

“I was actually first choice for ‘The Graduate,’ ” Grodin said. “I turned it down because I didn’t think the $500 a week they offered was enough. So Dustin got it (he upped the price to $750).”

Grodin, who wrote and starred in “Movers and Shakers” last year, hopes now to concentrate on finding material for himself.

“I keep remembering something Warren told me. ‘Until you start being responsible for your own projects, you’ll never have the career you want.’ And it’s true. Even though Warren was a big star before he made ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ ‘Shampoo’ and ‘Heaven Can Wait,’ those are the major movies of his career. He produced all of them and now he’s produced ‘Ishtar.’ Clever fellow, that Warren.”

HOT DATE: Tony Perkins, who both directed and stars in “Psycho III,” is taking the movie to the Cannes Film Festival next month. It will be screened, out of competition, on the last day.

Perkins is cautiously optimistic about the picture that marks his debut as a director.

“I’ve been out of town with too many shows to get overexcited at this point,” he said this week, “but Universal seems to have high expectations for the movie. They’re opening it July 2, which is a very hot date.”

NEW LINE: “F/X,” the taut thriller directed by Robert Mandel and starring Bryan Brown, was expected by almost everyone to prove a runaway smash. It didn’t happen, though so far it’s taken in a very respectable $18 million for Orion.

Now, judging correctly that the title was a put-off--many thought it must be a science-fiction story--they’ll add a new line to the title, “Murder by Illusion,” when it opens in Europe this summer.

NO PROBLEM: According to a new book out in June--”The Richest Man in the World; The Story of Adnan Khashoggi” by Ronald Kessler--the billionaire arms dealer’s annual expenses exceed $120 million. Presumably he almost could have bought George Hamilton’s $6-million house here with his American Express card. According to the book, his monthly limit on the card is $5 million.