Advertisement

The Graduate (KCOP Sunday at 8 p.m.)...

Share

The Graduate (KCOP Sunday at 8 p.m.) is Mike Nichols’ watershed 1967 comedy, about a confused young California college graduate (Dustin Hoffman) who is seduced by a friend of his parents (Anne Bancroft). Written by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, with songs by Simon and Garfunkel, it’s a comic romance that breathes with menace and paranoia--and ‘60s audiences adored it.

Teen Wolf (KCOP Monday at 8 p.m.) of the title is Michael J. Fox, as a latter-day werewolf. It’s a monstrously forced and unfunny comedy of modern-day lycanthropy, blood, basketball and babes: a Rod Daniel-directed fiasco that mysteriously caught on in 1985--a bad year for movies. Burglar (KCOP Friday at 8 p.m.), from 1987, is the kind of movie Whoopi Goldberg had to escape from. Playing a cat burglar turned sleuth, she’s trapped in a triple threat: a comedy without laughs, a thriller with no suspense, and a romance that never happens. Bob Goldthwait co-stars; Hugh Wilson (“Police Academy”) directs.

Swamp Thing (KTLA Saturday at 6 p.m.), with its disfigured scientist roaming the swamps and avenging the helpless, may have been a comic book classic, but the 1982 movie doesn’t really pass monster muster--even with Wes (“Nightmare on Elm Street”) Craven calling the shots and Louis Jourdan pulling off some amusingly campy villainy.

Advertisement

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (KCOP Saturday at 6 p.m.) is a sophisticated 1984 “revision” of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tale of Lord John Clayton a.k.a. Tarzan. Hugh Hudson directed and most of the movie was scripted, pseudonymously, by Robert Towne. The first half-hour, set in Africa, is marvelous, but both Clayton (Christopher Lambert) and the film flounder when they reach civilization.

Fourth Story (CBS Saturday at 8 p.m.), with Mark Harmon, is a modern L.A. private eye hodgepodge, given some character, atmosphere and depth by director Ivan (“Cutter’s Way”) Passer.

In The Magnificent Seven (KTLA Saturday at 8 p.m.), a Mexican town, suffering yearly raids by the local bandits, hires a troupe of mercenaries for a bloody defensive stand. This rousing 1960 John Sturges Western has one of the cinema’s most instantly recognizable scores (by Elmer Bernstein) and a top cast: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and the over-the-top bandit chief, Eli Wallach. But it pales next to its great source, Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai.”

Advertisement