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LIZ, LINDA EVANS SQUARE OFF IN FILMS

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Times Staff Writer

Welcome to the battle of the beauties.

In one corner, Elizabeth Taylor, starring with Robert Wagner in “There Must Be a Pony” for ABC. In the other, Linda Evans of “Dynasty,” starring in “The Last Frontier” for CBS.

They square off Sunday at 9 p.m.

Both women are knockouts--Evans looking remarkably stylish and astonishingly unsullied in the Australian outback, Taylor looking her best in years and showing it off repeatedly in tight-fitting jeans. Indeed, almost the first words out of Taylor’s mouth in “There Must Be a Pony” are “How do I look?”

In the end, however, both films are knocked out--romantic stories that fizzle instead of sizzle.

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“There Must Be a Pony” casts Taylor as a once-famous movie star who is attempting to get her life back in order after suffering a mental breakdown. Chad Lowe plays her confused teen-age son and Wagner is a new suitor, a man who offers both mother and son a much-needed sense of stability.

But only temporarily, it turns out. The film’s title is part of an admonition to keep looking for the good things in life, even when the bad ones are threatening to engulf you, as happens here.

Adapted by Mart Crowley from the novel by James Kirkwood, the movie lurches forward in fitful bursts, oblivious to narrative logic and character motivation. Individual scenes are well done but don’t track; you get the feeling the actors were trying to tell a different story from the one that Crowley and director Joseph Sargent had in mind.

Obviously neither side won. Neither do viewers.

“The Last Frontier” is a two-part saga in which Evans portrays a divorced mother of two teen-agers in Los Angeles who, in whirlwind fashion, meets an Australian cattle rancher, marries him and arranges to follow him to a drought-stricken, 2,000-square-mile spread in the middle of nowhere, where he lives with his two daughters.

When she gets there, he’s dead.

Our headstrong heroine resolves to stay, however. “I happen to think it’s important to take risks,” she explains. But what if she loses? “I can’t afford to lose,” she responds with appropriate resolve.

Filmed in Australia under the direction of Simon Wincer (“Phar Lap”), it’s part “Out of Africa,” part romance novel, part “Dynasty,” complete with a family feud and a jealous vendetta on the part of the woman (Judy Morris) who loved the man Evans married.

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All very familiar, in other words. There are the predictable encounters with snakes and fires and dust storms, and a predictably rocky romance with the son (Jack Thompson) of the neighboring rancher (Jason Robards) who wants to buy Evans out.

This might have passed for acceptably escapist melodrama if Evans could make us care more for her character, but her range of emotion seems only to encompass concern, anger and cool detachment. That seems to be enough for her role as Krystle on “Dynasty,” but it’s hardly sufficient to carry a four-hour film.

“The Last Frontier” concludes with a two-hour installment Tuesday at 9 p.m. It was produced by Tim Sanders and written by Michael Laurence and John Misto for executive producer Hal McElroy.

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