Stronger on production design than substance, the...
Stronger on production design than substance, the 1991 Addams Family (NBC Sunday at 9 p.m.), starring Raul Julia as Gomez and Anjelica Huston as Morticia, turns on the most modest of plots. The beloved ghouls of Charles Addams’ amusingly sinister New Yorker cartoons areinvolved with hidden treasure, a crooked lawyer (Dan Hedaya) and a mother-obsessed yegg (Christopher Lloyd) who may or may not be Gomez’s long-lost brother.
In An American Werewolf in London (KCAL Sunday at 9 p.m.), director John Landis juxtaposes humor and gore so outrageously that you don’t know whether to laugh or cringe. The 1981 film is not for the squeamish or the vey young. But many will consider it a poignant, delirious treat. David Naughton and Griffin Dunne are a couple of nice guys from New York hiking through northern England when they meet the unexpected on the moors.
The 1991 Warlock (KTLA Monday at 8 p.m.), a supernatural shocker about “Satan’s son” (Julian Sands) running amok, begins in Boston during the witch hunts. It time-warps over to modern Los Angeles and back to Beantown, but without a trace of originality interfering with the demonic doings.
The Seventh Sign (KTLA Tuesday at 8 p.m.), a heavy-breathing 1988 supernatural thriller, envisions a chic apocalypse that culminates in the pregnancy of a Venice Beach woman (Demi Moore), a race to prevent an execution and, finally, no less than the second coming of Christ.
The 1991 Class Action (KTLA Wednesday at 8 p.m.) is good, chewy entertainment, part courtroom pyrotechnics, part Machiavellian legal maneuvers. Father-and-daughter attorneys--defender of the underdog Gene Hackman and sharp corporate lawyer Mary Elizabeth Mastroantonio--find themselves on opposite sides of a class-action suit involving defective automobiles.
Twins (KTLA Thursday at 8 p.m.), an overblown, self-destructing 1988 comedy-thriller, wastes Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny De Vito as fraternal--well, you weren’t expecting identical--twins.
Part of the appeal of the 1991 Bugsy (NBC Friday at 8 p.m.) lies in the fact that both gangster extraordinaire Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel and Warren Beatty, who plays him, seem to be charmers for whom the ordinary rules of life don’t seem to apply. Beatty, writer James Toback and director Barry Levinson each brought markedly different sensibilities to the project. The result--though not without flaws--is a satisfying film that delivers a full measure of stylish entertainment. Key developments are Siegel’s growing infatuation with good-time girl Virginia Hill (Annette Bening) and his dream of turning Las Vegas into a gambling mecca.
Ernest Scared Stupid (ABC Saturday at 8 p.m.) is a silly Halloween horror comedy--the fourth in the goofy “Ernest” series starring Jim Varney--but at least it has the stylish, witty presence of Eartha Kitt as a kind of backwoods Louise Nevelson with an interest in the occult.
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