Gearing Up for Games

With the Olympics just around the corner, some video retailers will be dragging Olympic tapes out of storage next week to put on display.

Decent documentaries have been made about past Olympics, but some are hard to find. Usually the best tapes are released during the year following the games. Since the home video market, particularly the sales segment, is much stronger now than it was four years ago, expect five to 10 tapes about the upcoming games to be released later in the year.

Here’s a guide to the most prominent videos on the market. These are all available for rent or for sale--somewhere in the $10 to $30 range:

“Dreams of Gold” (Pacific Arts). Candidates for the 1984 Olympic team in action at the National Sports Festival. It’s occasionally a bit hokey, but includes some excellent cinematography, underscored by stirring electronic music.

“Tokyo Olympiad” (Tapeworm). Director Kon Ichikawa’s stunning examination of the 1964 Olympics at Tokyo, boasting superb cinematography and editing. Released in 1966, it’s arguably the best film ever done on the Olympics. The 170-minute version, subtitled and letterboxed, is the one you want. A 90-minute version, with cloying narration, was released by two small companies. Skip it.

“Olympics: The First 90 Years” (Cal Vista). The most fascinating footage in this first-rate, one-hour documentary, covering 1896 to 1984, is from the early years, featuring legendary figures such as Jim Thorpe.

“16 Days of Glory” (Paramount). Two volumes, about 145 minutes each, cogently summarizing and insightfully analyzing the 1984 games in Los Angeles. Both volumes are outstanding, together telling you everything you ever wanted to know about the ’84 event.

“Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin” (Paramount). The great sprinter and long jumper recalls his triumph--winning four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics and embarrassing Hilter, making the German dictator’s doctrine of Aryan supremacy look silly. An intriguing 46-minute documentary that offers insight into the gentlemanly Owens.

“Highlights of the 1988 Summer Olympics” (Wood Knapp). A 90-minute summary, featuring the triumphs of Janet Evans, Carl Lewis, Matt Biondi and the star of the Seoul games, Florence Griffith-Joyner. Informative but somewhat slow and way too talky, it focuses on the competition but also rehashes the assorted controversies.

“The Olympics: Images of Gold” (Karol). A whirlwind 25 minutes of glorious highlights of track and field, swimming and gymnastics, including stars such as Bruce Jenner.

“Visions of Eight” (Axon). A great idea, having eight movie directors do short films on the 1972 Munich Olympics and assembling them in one movie. But just because these directors--including Arthur Penn, John Schlesinger, Claude Lelouch and Mai Zetterling--can make feature films, it doesn’t mean they can make documentaries. Mostly pretentious.

What’s New on Video: “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot” (MCA/Universal, no set price). An action comedy with a funny premise--a cop (Sylvester Stallone) trying to cope with a nosy, overly protective mother (Estelle Getty).

“The Man in the Moon” (MGM/UA, $95). Starring Sam Waterson and Tess Harper, this small, overlooked family movie, set in a tiny Louisiana town in the ‘50s, covers some familiar territory--a teen-age girl (Reese Witherspoon) agonizing over a first love (Jason London). But with some canny dramatic twists, it is so absorbing and well-acted that some critics ranked it with last year’s best.

“Shakes the Clown” (Columbia TriStar, $90). Obnoxious comic Bobcat Goldthwait, who also wrote and directed, stars as a mean-spirited clown in this vulgar, one-dimensional movie that’s supposed to be an insightful portrait of the dark side of clowns but is so angry and tasteless that it’s barely watchable.

“The Great Mouse Detective” (Disney, $24). This delightful 1986 feature-length cartoon, which should be great fun for the kiddies, is a Sherlock Holmes mystery set in mousedom, with Basil of Baker Street tracking down a missing toymaker kidnaped by a pompous rat named Prof. Ratigan (the voice of Vincent Price).

“Assault on a Queen” (Paramount, $15). Horrible, 1966 Frank Sinatra adventure about an ocean liner heist. The music by Duke Ellington doesn’t really match.