”Blood Ties,” an original two-hour movie that premieres at 7 p.m. Sunday on Showtime, is dark and rough–full of menace and machismo and a plethora of face-slapping, gun-pointing and wine-drinking.
Shot on location in Sicily and Manhattan, it starts out as a tense tale of diabolical deviousness: An elderly New Yorker named Joe Salina (Michael Gazzo), who was indebted to the Mafia years ago, is kidnapped and his son, Julian (Brad Davis), a Baltimore engineer, is ordered to take a mysterious trip overseas or his father will die. On the plane to Palermo, he is told by Mark Ciuni (Vincent Spano), a brash, young Mafia flash, that he is to meet his distant cousin, Judge Giuliano Salina (Tony Lo Bianco), who has been cracking down on Mob activities and who is endangering a scheme to launder money brought in from drug trafficking. The ultimate assignment, Salina discovers once in Sicily, is to get himself invited inside the judge`s fortress-like apartment and kill him.
Directed and co-written (with Corrado Augias) by Italian filmmaker Giacomo Battiato, ”Blood Ties,” which, decidedly, is not for family viewing, is crammed with swagger-style dialogue, particularly from the mouth of Ciuni. ”I`m gonna bring you Judge Salina`s head, on this table,” he promises Don Vincenzo (Arnoldo Foa) at one point, and when the American balks at plugging his relative, Ciuni barks, ”That`s okay, I`ll keep your father alive so you can watch him die–right before your eyes.”
Somewhere in the middle, the movie loses its tautness and degenerates into just another slam-bang affair, losing any plausibility it had
established. Still, director Battiato provides some interesting touches, such as a strange, sadistic indoor horserace illuminated by the headlights of cars and the Mafia`s murky hideout in the depths of the macabre Palermo catacombs. There are also, in general, strong performances, especially those by Lo Bianco (who looks like a latter-day Richard Conte) as the firmly idealistic judge, the wonderfully scurrilous Spano (”Baby It`s You,” ”Creator”) as the cocaine-snorting mobster and Maria Conchita Alonso (”Moscow on the Hudson”) as his unhappily married, masochistic lover–a woman who, from the moment she enters the scene until she departs, appears to be in a state of perpetual heat. Considerably less convincing is the square-jawed Davis
(”Midnight Express”), who, in conveying a surly bravado (as well as an uncanny skill in marksmanship), is required to act more like a superhero than an ordinary Baltimore citizen. In fact, this may very well be the first screen portrayal of a Teflon engineer.
IN BRIEF . . .
— At a press conference set up to hype ”A Smoky Mountain Christmas” (8 p.m. Sunday on ABC-Ch. 7), Dolly Parton confided to a gathering of television critics that her first made-for-TV movie was ”a combination of Snow White and Sleepin` Beauty.” Actually, it turns out to be more like a gooey gumdrop, best handled by those viewers who end up takin` a pass.
Parton stars as a high-powered, but frazzled country singer who slips out of Hollywood, packs up her guitar and deep-dish necklines and heads for the hills of home. Entering a friend`s cabin in the Smokies, she discovers seven orphans who have run away from the children`s institution and who quickly become the recipients of her colloquialisms. (”My grandma taught me to skin a rabbit so fast you`d think that sucker had a zipper on it.”) Along the way, she also encounters a lecherous, mean-spirited sheriff (Bo Hopkins), the purportedly fearsome Mountain Dan (a bearded Lee Majors), the slinky local witch (Anita Morris of Broadway`s ”Nine”) and a sleazy photographer (Dan Hedaya) who`s trying to get a Dolly shot.
The movie marks, if that`s the word, the directing debut of Henry Winkler, and features six Parton-penned original songs, which, with titles such as ”Look on the Bright Side” and ”I`d Like to Spend Christmas with Santa,” do not exactly loom as chart-busters.
— ”The Christmas Star” (6 p.m. Sunday on ABC-Ch. 7), a marzipan-sweet
”Disney Sunday Movie” that draws upon Santa, swag and salvation, has it all: A down-but-not-out American-nuclear family that is about to be evicted just before Christmas by their cackling landlord (Rene Auberjonois), a gruff- but-really-lovable con artist (Ed Asner) who escapes from prison disguised as Kris Kringle and enlists the children of said family to recover half a million dollars stashed away after a years-old department store robbery, a sardonic, fedora-wearing detective (Fred Gwynne), a Margaret O`Brien-like moppet (Vicki Wauchope), a sick dog and a warm puppy.
