The New Pictures

Bullfight (Janus Films) is a feature-length European-made documentary which brings to U.S. moviegoers all the blood and gore that Hollywood's code of ethics has denied them. Where Hollywood cameras have averted their gaze because of the bans on scenes of cruelty to animals, Bullfight stares fixedly and spares the viewer no detail of "the moment of truth."

Often spotty and frequently disjointed, the film traces the history of bullfighting from Rome's Circus Maximus to Ava Gardner, examines a matador's life from his eating habits (little or no food before a fight so that he can be operated on immediately if a goring lays open his belly) to his occupational hazards (an estimated 10% of bullfighters are killed in the ring, 13% are crippled, 40% are wounded at least 20 times in their careers).

The picture takes a quick look at the world's great bullfighters. There is ugly little Juan Belmonte, who developed close-in fighting around World War I because of his weak legs, inventing a style that made him seem a partner with the bull in a series of dance figures. There are shots of the hypnotic Arruza, the elegant Dominguin, the lady bullfighter, Conchita Cintron, who fought on horseback.

Best scenes are those of the late great Andalusian Manolete, who was fatally gored in Linares, Spain in 1947 at the age of 30. The long-nosed, sad-eyed Manolete performs the weaving dance of death with the black bull in a manner as purely simple and beautiful as he himself was homely, gives the aspiring aficionado a hint of the poetry of blood that has fascinated writer-intellectuals from Theophile Gautier to Hemingway.

The Fastest Gun Alive (MGM) misfires before it is clear of the holster. The gun (a frontier-model .45) belongs to Broderick Crawford, a hulking fellow with itchy fingers and the single-barreled aim of killing any man who claims to be quicker on the draw. But even as he drills a slower man out in Silver Rapids, a blind seer mocks him: "No matter how fast you are, there's always somebody faster." Crawford like to have strangled him for it.

Hero Glenn Ford is discovered in the guise of a meek and peace-loving storekeeper. Everybody in Cross Creek knows he hasn't packed a gun or tipped a glass in four years. But Glenn breaks out in a sweat whenever anybody mentions the shooting over at Silver Rapids. What's worse, he doesn't even pitch horseshoes with the old gang any more. Finally he bolts from the store, jounces into the saloon and announces, "I would like to go out of my mind." With the help of a bottle of raw hooch, he darn near does. Then, to the astonishment of everyone, he blurts: "I'm the fastest gun alive!" and promptly sets out to prove it by digging his six-shooter out of an old barrel and potting two silver dollars in midair.

Most everybody proclaims taciturn Glenn a local hero except his wife (Jeanne Crain), who mutters darkly of Glenn's troubled past (seems his father was shot by a fast gun) and the evils of gunslinging. Next day Glenn offers up his weapon on the church altar, explaining that he must skip town because "trouble collects around a fast gun." Too late. Enter bellicose Brod, hankering to drill Glenn. As the congregation sings Holy, Holy, Holy, Glenn dutifully straps on his holster for the showdown. As Miss Crain mumbles after the fireworks, "I guess that takes care of everything."

Secrets of the Reef (Butterfield & Wolf) is a submarine gem, dredged from the waters of the Bahamas and Florida's Marineland oceanarium and polished by three bright young Harvardmen (Lloyd Ritter, Robert Young and Murray Lerner). The product of a three-year effort and a paltry $150,000, it is one of the best films thus far of the brave new underworld of the skindiver, where the actors are all baresark and the dialogue is in bubbles.

Unlike many other natural history movies--especially some in the current Disney cycle--it is not flossed up with camera tricks or laff-riot editing. When Secrets' love-smitten pair of octopuses meet, they do not croon to each other Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey; they simply mate, an act whose essential mechanics are obscured by a romantic flailing of tentacles.

The recurrent cycle of life is captured in the tidal swarming of a cloudlike school of silvery pilchards, their glinting symphony of movement matched by the sparkling (though often deafening) score of young Composer Clinton Elliott. But as a facts-of-life lesson, some children may find Secrets confusing. How will Mother explain the convulsive spectacle of a father sea horse in labor, struggling to eject from his pouch the young sea colts hatched from eggs deposited there by his carefree mate?

In the ceaseless fish-eat-fish mood of the reef world ("Most living creatures, including ourselves, live on other creatures," reminds the narrator), there are no more or less evil villains, only keener appetites and larger gullets. Best comic is a baby sea turtle who hungrily attacks the film's true hero, a shy, sensitive octopus many times the turtle's size. The assault only bores the octopus. Secrets ends with a wild battle between the octopus and the movie's most sinister actor, a moray eel. Result: a draw, with the myopic eel's keen sense of smell fouled up by the wounded octopus' ink defenses.

Toy Tiger (Universal-International) opens with a snarl that turns out to be worse than its bight. In the middle of the snarl are the imperious executive vice president of a big Manhattan advertising agency (Laraine Day) and her art director (Jeff Chandler). Laraine is a pushbutton career woman who likes to push people around. Jeff is tired of being pushed. He wants to trade in his Ivy League button-downs and Brooks Brothers tweeds for faded denims, and give up art directing for Art. But Madison Avenue holds him fast in its golden gyves until a little child (Tim Hovey) shows him how to cut the knot. Since everybody but Jeff knows from the beginning that Tim is Laraine's son and needs a father to replace the one he lost in an auto crash, it is only a matter of 88 minutes before the one person in the dark learns how the movie will end.

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