Rushes

PORKY'S

Scrawl a bit of American Graffiti across the front door of Animal House and you have a rough idea of Porky's effect. It has some of Graffiti's sweetness of spirit, but none of its style or depth of feeling; it has some of Animal's raunchiness, but none of its loony anarchy. The title refers to a '50s bawdy house where six Florida youths search for sexual initiation, find humiliation, and then, by revenging themselves on its proprietor, achieve a sort of do-it-yourself rite de passage. The rest of the time they spend spying on the girls' locker room and recalling the sex jokes of yesteryear. Bob Clark (Murder by Decree) is the writer-director here. If he knew how to stage comedy, or find a scene's point, Porky's might have achieved something more than the lackadaisical good nature Clark shyly offers.

DEATHTRAP

He can no longer write a successful mystery play, but Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) can still stage one. In his own living room. For real. With his wife's inheritance at stake. His plot has wit and intricacy going for it--so much so that it cannot be described, lest the fun be spoiled for those who have not yet seen Ira Levin's original Broadway hit. Director Sidney Lumet has, perhaps, permitted the volume to be turned up too high, with the result that Caine and the other principals, Christopher Reeve and Dyan Cannon, sometimes seem screechy when they reach for the high notes. But one can still appreciate the professionalism with which Levin crafted them and the larky spirits with which the performers force the suspension of incredulity.

AMIN-THE RISE AND FALL

"Doctor," reproves the Black Lion of Uganda, "for an African you are looking very white." Statesman, sportsman, raconteur, eccentric gourmet, General Idi Amin Dada made a lot of people blanch in his eight years as Uganda's dictator. With Amin now in asylum in Saudi Arabia, Director Sharad Patel has felt free to turn this biopic into a minstrel show of atrocity. Amin struts across his domain like Kong with a salad of Day-Glo medals pinned to his chest. Amin expels Asian workers from Uganda and distributes the spoils to his private army of hitmen. Amin services an interracial harem. Amin juggles the lives of Arab radicals and Jewish captives at Entebbe airport. Amin eats the flesh of an honest judge he has ordered killed. Perhaps Patel too lovingly details the baroque torture, and Joseph Olita's unsteady command of the acting craft often makes Amin seem too cuddly a cannibal. Still, the film serves as an effective comic-book primer on the most colorful mass murderer of the '70s.

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