Page 8-Saturday, August 12, 1978-The Michigan Daily Laura Mars': Cinematic vacuum By CHRISTOPHER POTTER Virtually the only intriguing thing about the just-released Eyes of Laura Mars is exactly how it ever came into being in the first place. This self- declared thriller has so very little to say about anything at all that it would seem the only excuse for filming it was to make a lot of money and further the ca- reer of producer John Peters, more famous as Barbra Streisand's live-in. Des- pite the film's extended promo and press blitz, despite the frenetic TV and theater commercials geared to make Brian De Palma's bizzarest works look moribund by comparison, Eyes of Laura, Mars turns out to be one on the most limp, ar- tistically anonymous films in recent memory. Eyes' meandering but simple plot gauzily focuses on the world of Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway), a superstar of fashion and glamour photography with prediliction towards sado-masochistic tableaux in her celuloid creations a la Helmut Newton (who actually took most of the photos depicted in the film). Laura's sphere of stylized mock violen- ce suddenly turns shudderingly real when she finds her chic existence subliminaly terrorized by a psychopathic murderer fond of offing his victims through the eye with an ice pick. THROUGH SOME never-explained or even broached telekinetic osmosis, Laura finds herself able to "see" through the eyes of the killer every time he stalks and dispatches a new quarry. Each victim, of course, turns out to be a friend of Laura's, a fact one assumes would soon make her about as popular as Legionnaire's Disease. However, all her compatriots - the living ones at least - are sweetly supportive to her in her time of ocular crisis, especially a handsome young police detective (Tommy Lee Jones) assigned to crack the bizarre and perplexing case. Naturally, cop and heroine soon fall madly in love in a coupling that's at least slightly less preposterous than Dunaway's bondage-inspired fling with Rob Redford in 3 Days of the Condor. Though their romance proves little help in solving the ongoing murders, Laura hangs in there gamely, until the inevitable moment her personal TV network picks up none other than her- self being stalked by our friendly urban maniac, who approaches closer, closer, then... ONE SEARCHES vainly for a thread of purpose running through these wan horrifics. IsEyes meant to be a stylized denunciation of media-glamorized violence? Clearly not - Laura har- bors no guilt feelings over her kinky camera creations, nor does the movie. If murder lurks in the heart of the city, the fault must lie somewhere with sewer rats or TV violence - Laura remains Pollyanna pure. Is the film intended as an authoritative peek into the exotic, erotic jet-set world of glamour photography? If so, then one would have to re-evaluate the entire fashion mystique, since director Irving Ker- shner limits his Beautiful People scrutinization to a few panoramas of slightly dingy studios and stiflingly cramped portable dressing rooms. MORE IMPORTANTLY, Eyes doesn't fit the suspense mold either on the cops-and-robbers or the super- natural plain. Kershner exhibits minimal talents as a tension-builder, and the film's studied shocker ending is telegraphed long before it laboriously peaks. Laura's extra- sensory gifts arouse neither sensation Tommy Lee Jones and Faye Dunnaway star in "Eyes of Laura Mars," a vapid thriller currently at the Campus Theatre. Fcficti a a on fuse in this clone tale In His Image: The Cloning of a Man, By David Rorvik, Lippincott, 208 pp., $8.95. By Stephen Pickover W S. GILBERT cattily wrote, "things are seldom what they seem." . Yet when fiction carelessly masquerades as non-fiction the jbke has gone far enough. Surely David Rorvik does not expect very many people to believe his superficially beguiling, but scientifically shoddy piece of propaganda, In His Image: The Cloning of a Man. Despite his name-dropping habits, his attempt at science is practically non-existent, making the book useless for the layman or as a reference for scientists. And it's unfortunately written, not even worth a perusal in the John. What is cloning, this concept surrounded by mystery? The frog, first suc- cessfully cloned by Dr, Gurdon, provides an example of how the process operates. Normally, the female lays eggs which are then fertilized by the sperm of the male. Each of the pronuclei (sperm and eggs), as theya re caled in the jargon, contain half the DNA normally found in a happy adult frog, so that when they unite they form the full compliment of DNA. DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, the mysterious intertwined chains of proteins that contains genes, the biological signals that instruct individual cells how to develop-into slimy skin for frogs and fingers and toes for humans, for example. Each creature's DNA is different, so when male frog DNA fuses with female frog DNA, a unique tadpole is formed. Now, suppose all See BOOKS, Page9, nor skepticism among either her frien- ds or the authorities; while a De Palma film would compound such powers with governmental paranoia and com- munity apocalypse, the people of Eyes barely bat an eyelash over their acquaintance's mystic endowment, treating it as if they'd perhaps discovered she had perfect pitch. The cops make no use of Laura's in- sight to-help nail their killer, nor does Laura herself, even though she realizes quite early on she is the maniac's ultimate target. Instead she spends most of the film simply standing or sit- ting sround, nervously and unresour- cefully awaiting her dark-alley ar- megeddon. Thus Eyes settles dismally into the familiarity of the routine whodunit, with Kershner relegating Laura's telepathic energies to no more than a gimmick to advertise the film. EYES WORKS least of all on the level of characterization. Writers John Car- penter and David Zelag Goodman choose not to provide the remotest in- sight or deal into any of their protagonists, not even the trivia of everyday likes and dislikes. We know that Laura is a photographer, that most of her compatriots assist her profession in one way or another, that she has an ex-husband who isn't very nice, that her new lover moonlights as a cop. That's essentially all the information we're fed, and at film's end we're still at ground zero. You couldn't even call Eyes' charac- ters cliche-ridden-they're all delineated with such a bare-bones in- completeness that sometimes they seem scarcely to exist at all. And who, confronted with such human ab- struseness, could really give a damn if all these clouded, vaguely unpleasant shadow people are getting bumped off left and right anyhow? ONE KEEPS hoping to spot a train of campy hilarity weaving through the dramatic vacuum. On a woodland tryst with her policeman, Laura exclaims: "It's incredible! Amidst all of this (the murders), I can't stop thinking of you!" It's a line to savor and treasure, as is a subsequent sequence when Laura, temporarily blinded by a murder vision, careens her automobile through sidewalks, other cars and eventually buildings in a sequence to rival the best of the Keystone Kops. Unfortunately, such wonderments occur far too sporadically to effectively lift Eyes' dominant anesthesia. Needless to say, the film is not an ac- tors' showcase. Dunaway is forced throughout to descend to the level of the Davis-Crawford fallen idols horror genre set; She gets lots of chances to roll her psychic eyeballs close up at the screen, is thrown two or three hysterical breakdown scenes to munch on, but since she's been given no per- sonality to develop and also no active role in solving her own case, her character thus remains stillborn in both the passiveand active sense. NOT THAT anyone else fares any better. Tommy Lee Jones solidifies his standing as Hollywood's leading catatonia case, paralyticallymumbling his way through a performance that would make John Beck's dim romantic turn in The Other Side of Midnight look Vafentinoesque by comparison. Brad Dourif (Cuckoo's Nest's Billy Bibbit) skulks scruffily around the edges of the plot as Laura's seedy chauffeur, looking for all the world like he's just finished watching Michael J. Pollard in- Bonnie and Clyde ten times ina row. Raul Julia looks and acts Franken- steinish as Laura's cad of an ex- husband, while models Darlanne Fluegel and Lisa Taylor are See FILM, Page 9