TV Miniseries ‘Favorite Son’ Receives Surprising R Rating

When a network TV movie comes to home video and carries a rating from the Motion Picture Assn. of America, it’s usually a G or PG. So how do you explain the R rating of the miniseries “Target: Favorite Son” (Vidmark, $90), starring Harry Hamlin and Linda Kozlowski?

The assumption, of course, is that footage was added that was too sexy or violent for the movie’s original broadcast on NBC in 1988. But Vidmark spokesman David Bowers insists that nothing was added.

A lot, though, was removed from this political thriller about the intrigues of an opportunistic senator’s presidential campaign. The six-hour miniseries, considered unusually sordid for network TV at the time, has been edited down to 115 minutes.

And the editing, Bowers suggests, inadvertently may have intensified the movie’s seaminess. Deleting some of the talkier passages, which offered balance in the original, has left an excess of the racier sequences.

Why did Vidmark bother with a rating? Because many stores don’t stock unrated videos, and TV movies, though previewed by network censors, aren’t rated. So distributors releasing them on home video often submit them to the MPAA to ensure the widest exposure. Bowers said Vidmark’s policy is to have all its TV movies rated.

Oscars: With “The Silence of the Lambs’ ” Academy Awards sweep, video stores will be heavily promoting the other films of major winners Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Demme.

Here’s a guide:

Be careful renting Foster’s movies. Her career is littered with bad movies, among them “The Blood of Others,” “Hotel New Hampshire,” “Mesmerized,” “Siesta” and “O’Hara’s Wife,” along with cutesy kiddie fare like “Candleshoe” and “Bugsy Malone.”

Aside from her best work--”The Accused” and “Taxi Driver”--a few others are worth a look:

* “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane” (Vestron, 1977). In this Canadian chiller, which co-stars Martin Sheen, Foster plays a sinister little girl with a grisly secret.

* “Foxes” (CBS-Fox, 1980). Buried in this low-key, often meandering drama about the trials of four teen girls growing up in the Valley is some terrific acting by Foster.

* “Stealing Home” (Warner, 1988). Underrated drama of a baseball player flashing back on a relationship to an old girlfriend (Foster) who has committed suicide.

* “Carny” (Commtron, 1980). This look at the seamy side of carnival life is really Gary Busey’s movie but Foster turns in her sexiest portrayal as a runaway teen temptress in a triangle with two hustlers (Busey and Robbie Robertson).

* “Backtrack” (Vestron, 1989). Just out, this overlooked drama, directed by and starring Dennis Hopper, features Foster in top form as the target of a hit man who’s in love with her.

Director Jonathan Demme, whose specialty has been finding offbeat approaches to run-of-the-mill topics, has never made a bad film. Rent any of his works, even lesser-known ones like “Crazy Mama,” “Citizens Band,” “Something Wild” and “Swing Shift” with the assurance that even a sub-par Demme film is above average.

His best:

* “Melvin and Howard” (MCA, 1980). A marvelously quirky comedy about the aftermath of a brief encounter between blue-collar Melvin and billionaire Howard Hughes. Mary Steenburgen’s performance won best supporting actress Oscar.

* “Married to the Mob” (Orion, 1988). Often hilarious comedy about the efforts of a mobster’s widow (Michelle Pfeiffer) to escape the mob. Co-starring Mercedes Ruehl in the second-best performance of her career, after “The Fisher King,” for which she won the Oscar Monday.

* “Last Embrace” (CBS-Fox, 1979). This little-known thriller, starring Roy Scheider as a CIA agent who thinks he’s marked for murder, is more engrossing than many with big reputations.

* “Swimming to Cambodia” (Warner, 1987). Demme makes subtle contributions to the impact of Spalding Gray’s snappy 90-minute monologue of his adventures and observations.

* “Stop Making Sense” (RCA/Columbia, 1984). The great Talking Heads concert movie that even intrigues many who don’t like concert movies or the Talking Heads.

In the Anthony Hopkins section of your video store, there’s a lot to avoid, including “Audrey Rose,” “A Bridge Too Far,” “The Looking Glass War,” “The Girl From Petrovka,” “A Change of Seasons,” “A Chorus of Disapproval,” “A Married Man,” “International Velvet” and “The Bounty.”

His best:

* “Eighty-Four Charing Cross Road” (RCA/Columbia, 1987). A small, touching comedy/drama about a relationship via correspondence between a New York literature buff (Anne Bancroft) and a London bookseller (Hopkins).

* “The Good Father” (CBS-Fox, 1987). After “Silence of the Lambs,” arguably the best performance of Hopkins’ career. He plays a father bitter over losing custody of his child.

* “The Elephant Man” (Paramount, 1980). Hopkins is fine in a supporting role, but the reason to see this one is the moving performance by John Hurt as the gentle, deformed “elephant man.”

* “Magic” (Nelson, 1978). If you prefer to see him playing a sinister character, he’s convincing in this so-so thriller about a psychotic ventriloquist.

What’s New on Video: Here are some recent releases:

* “Curly Sue” (Warner, $95). John Hughes wrote, produced and directed this sentimental, predictable comedy about a young girl (Alisan Porter) and her charming pal (Jim Belushi)--both street con artists--who get involved with a rich divorce lawyer (Kelly Lynch).

* “The Super” (FoxVideo, $95). A low-brow, occasionally funny comic vehicle for Joe Pesci, who plays a slumlord ordered by the court to live in one of his tenements and serve as the super.

* “Billy Bathgate” (Touchstone, $93). Critics liked Dustin Hoffman as Dutch Schultz in this expensive ‘30s gangster drama, which bombed at the box office, but mostly disliked the rest of the movie, which centers on bland teen-ager Billy Bathgate (Loren Dean), who idolizes Schultz.

* “Deceived” (Touchstone, $93). Goldie Hawn stars in this thriller, often absorbing despite some gaping holes, about a wife who learns her husband isn’t quite the man she thought he was.

* “Year of the Gun” (Columbia TriStar, no retail price). A plodding, convoluted political thriller about American journalists (Sharon Stone and Andrew McCarthy) caught in Rome in 1978.