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Show Warning Sign' sets yp bnochemDcal hazard Quickies by Rick Brough --Hf f "m" ' J Warning Sign "Warning Sign" is the latest of a minor trend in science fiction films the Genetic Monster movie. It's routinely enjoyable, and maybe its only novelty is the way the menace is released through a chain reaction of little careless actions. At a biotechnical plant in Utah, a doctor's doc-tor's lab coat snags a piece of tape, which in turn picks up a little test tube. The tube falls to the floor unnoticed, un-noticed, someone steps on it and a "biohazard" is created. It's as simple as Mrs. O'Leary's cow and more devastating. The automatic security system shuts down the building around the trapped workers. But the plant's dirty dir-ty little secret escapes, along with the germs. It seems the lab, ostensibly osten-sibly concerned with genetic techniques techni-ques for agriculture, really is cooking cook-ing up a germ-warfare formula for the Pentagon. The germ is a howling success it turns its victims into psychopaths before it kills them. The local sheriff (Sam Waterston) tries to uncover the truth of what's happening inside the building. The good news is he can talk via his truck radio with the security officer inside. in-side. The bad news is the officer is his wife (Kathleen Quinlan). Their only hope is getting help from the former whiz kid at the lab (Jeffrey DeMunn), now burned-out and drunk. The film borrows from several other movies: There's the genetic mishap from "Andromeda Strain," with one vital clue available to solve the disaster. For unknown reasons, one person (here, Quinlan) doesn't have the disease. We also have the suspicion-of-government idea ("Endangered ("En-dangered Species") and the people-going-bonkers theme ("Impulse"). The sheriff even has a phobia about germs, akin to Roy Scheider's fear of water in "Jaws." Fortunately, it's well-paced and has some nice shivery performances, perfor-mances, especially from Quinlan, DeMunn, and G. W. Bailey as the unsteady administrator of the lab. Yaphet Kotto, as the government man in charge of the cover-up, seems to be rolling his forked tongue around in his mouth. And Richard Dysart, as an infected scientist, falls into a dementia that is unnervingly jovial. He's a hearty uncle who, incidentally, in-cidentally, wants to slaughter you. -RB CodeName: Emerald Will the Nazis foil the D-day invasion inva-sion of World War II? You've got to be kidding! Ed Harris stars as a double agent who works for the Nazis as an agent named Emerald though his loyalties are really with British Intelligence. In-telligence. His unique position comes in handy when the Germans manage to capture a young lieutenant lieute-nant (Eric Stoltz), who is one of the Overlords, a strategic group of soldiers privy to the secret location and time of the invasion. Emerald succeeds in getting on the Nazi interrogation team in order to protect the D-Day plan. Naturally, Natural-ly, there's not much suspense about whether the Allies really succeeded. Instead, the movie poses several other questions: Will Emerald and his lover in the French underground escape from the Nazis? Will he be forced to kill the young lieutenant rather than rescue him? And which one of three Nazi officers (Horst Bucholz, Max Von Sydow, Helmut Berger) is really an "inside man" for the British, helping Emerald? These questions barely manage to keep your interest, and the movie is dull cat-and-mouse intrigue. The performances are capable enough, especially Stoltz's (who was last seen as Rocky Dennis in "Mask"). But Harris' hero is played with too much the air of a bland Boy Scout. -RB Now Showing At the Holiday Village Cinemas : I Starchaser : The Legend of Orin I (not yet rated) I 'Cocoon I Maxie (not yet rated) I Compromising Positions I Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam As the star of a feature-length movie, Jim Varney makes you yearn for one of his commercials. Or rather, you wish he had a better script and direction. Varney appears only breifly as the famous commercial pitchman Ernest P. Worrell. Most of the time, he is Dr. Otto, who possesses a hand growing on top of his head, dresses like a junkyard Ming the Merciless and talks like Squiggy on "Happy Days." He is aiming his Beam to cause despair and instability in the financial center of the world Cin-cinnatti. Cin-cinnatti. The only two people who can save the day are an inept squeaky-clean preppy (Myke Mueller) and his female companion (Leslie Welch). Dr. Otto pops up to foil them in different dif-ferent guises an Australian mercenary, a pirate or Bloody Mama. At one point, the heroes are tied up to be killed by a garbage monster. But they're saved when it turns out the hero knows the monster. "I pulled a thorn out of his paw when he was a Baggie," he explains. ex-plains. That's one of the better lines in this wildly erratic movie. The dialogue goes from one-liners that are an OK imitation of Robin Williams to utterly flaccid material. Some of the indoor sets (especially Dr. Otto's lab) are filled with lavish-looking, lavish-looking, crazy detail. Other scenes Kathleen Quinlan and Sam Waterstom (middle) are a small-town sheriff and his security guard wife caught up in a terrifying gene-splicing accident and Jeffrey DeMunn is their ally in "Warning Sign." called Steven, for obvious reasons), Burr does nothing except watch the destruction and issue dire warnings about Godzilla, though occasionally he gives a baleful look at a young American major who suggests giving giv-ing the monster "a megadose of horse tranquilizer." RB look like the crew stopped by the highway and walked into the nearby woods to film the story. The movie won't help Varney climb out of commercial-land. Knowhutlmean? -RB y2Godzillal985 A jet pilot fires a missile at Godzilla, God-zilla, snarling, "Sayonara, sucker!" No such luck. The big lizard is back, and he won't be so easy to knock out. However, sentiment for the classic '50s creature is the only reason to sit through this pallid update unless you get a kick out of watching a guy in a rubber lizard suit kick his way through cheesy sets. Godzilla is revived by a volcanic eruption, much to the horror of a nation na-tion full of badly-dubbed Japanese. Among the Oriental cast, our favorite is the actor who plays the prime minister, who reacts to each new disaster with a look of indigestion. indiges-tion. The monster gobbles up radiation radia-tion and characters make several ponderous statements about Godzilla God-zilla as a symbol of man's meddling with nature. ,v ( ,-wiv The 1956 original was Japanese-made, Japanese-made, but American actor Raymond Burr filmed English scenes that were awkwardly patched into the movie. Now, to show how far we've come, all-new scenes with Burr are awkwardly patched into the movie. Playing reporter Steve Martin (now 1 k A Classic Recommended Good double feature material Time-killer For masochists only |