Jfk-Assassination Tapes Precede Stone's Epic

It's been more than 28 years since President Kennedy's murder, but the debate about who did it and why has rarely been more passionate.

Several television specials commemorating the anniversary of Nov. 22, 1963, were shown last month. "Mermaids" and "Dogfight," two recent movies set in late 1963, dealt with the assassination's impact on young idealists. Oliver Stone's "JFK," a $40 million three-hour epic about the investigation of the crime, opens Friday in theaters.

Stone's movie, starring Kevin Costner as New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, has been the subject of cover stories in Esquire and Life magazines, as well as paperback reissues of two books that inspired the script: Garrison's "On the Trail of the Assassins" (Warner Books, $6) and Jim Marrs' "Crossfire: the Plot That Killed Kennedy" (Carroll & Graf, $14).

There is also no lack of conspiracy-theory movies and tapes in video stores.

3G Home Video's "Who Didn't Kill JFK" ($10) was written and directed by Marrs, who maintains that a complicated conspiracy was responsible for the president's death. The tape attempts to prove that photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald holding guns and communist newspapers were faked by those who planned the execution.

Also available from 3G Home Video is "The Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover" ($15), a collection of three tapes about long-suppressed FBI files that includes information about the assassination as well as the Kennedys' involvement with Marilyn Monroe. One of the cassettes is titled "Presidential Indiscretions and Political Payoffs."

Rhino Video's "Best Evidence: The Research Video" ($15) is a 35-minute video digest of David S. Lifton's 1981 book, "Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy." Using a frame-by-frame examination of Abraham Zapruder's Super 8 movie of the assassination, and interviews with witnesses at the autopsy, Lifton argues that the wounds in Kennedy's head were altered and his doctors lied to conform to the official explanation that he was shot from behind.

Lifton says he applauds Stone for bringing the subject out into the open again, but he claims that "JFK" will lack the seriousness of his own work: "Stone's film is simply an interesting consciousness-raising story - it's entertainment."

But it can't be less serious than "Marilyn and the Kennedys: Say Goodbye to the President" (Key Video, $20), a 1986 BBC documentary that spends 71 minutes examining evidence that John and Robert Kennedy both had affairs with Marilyn Monroe, and that Robert Kennedy had something to do with her death in 1962. The ghoulish style of this tape is often pure National Enquirer, particularly when it uses out-of-context clips of Monroe's movie and television appearances to comment on her emotional state.

Although the granddaddy of conspiracy films - Mark Lane and Emile de Antonio's 122-minute documentary, "Rush to Judgment" (1966) - has not been released on cassette, an hour-long film about Lane's theories, "The Plot to Kill JFK," is available for $30 from Movies Unlimited.

"The Killing of President Kennedy: New Revelations 20 Years Later" (VidAmerica, $20) is an intriguing update of Lane's ideas, using material about connections between the Mafia and the CIA that was released to the public only in the early 1980s.

"Reasonable Doubt: The Single Bullet Theory" (Movies Unlimited, $30) is an hour-long tape about the Warren Commission's conclusions. "JFK: The Day the Nation Cried" (Movies Unlimited, $20) uses television news coverage to recall the long weekend of Kennedy's death and funeral. The Oscar-nominated but badly dated 1964 documentary, "Four Days in November" (MGM/UA Home Video, $30), takes more than two hours to do the same thing.

Much better is "John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Celebration of His Life and Times" (Reader's Digest, $70), a three-part, three-hour tape that aired on The Disney Channel three years ago and may be the best summing-up of his career. Only 10 minutes are devoted to the assassination.

Also giving a broader view are two well-acted mid-1980s miniseries: "Kennedy" (Prism Entertainment, $30), with Martin Sheen and Blair Brown as the president and first lady, and "Robert F. Kennedy: His Life and Times" (RCA Columbia, $60), with the late Brad Davis as Robert and Cliff De Young as JFK.

The movie that most resembles the all-star "JFK" is "Executive Action" (Movies Unlimited, $60), a 1973 thriller in which Burt Lancaster, Will Geer and Robert Ryan play powerful right-wingers who conspire to kill the president because they fear the Kennedy dynasty, the president's sympathy with blacks, a possibly early pullout in Vietnam and the nuclear test-ban treaty.

The credits claim that the late Dalton Trumbo's script was based on a story by Mark Lane, although Trumbo claimed he rejected Lane's story because it could not be supported by the facts. The film was a critical and commercial failure, although it stirred up some media interest when it opened in mid-November 1973.

Most of these movies and videos are propelled by an overwhelming obsession with the Kennedy assassination. One that doesn't is "Greetings" (Movies Unlimited, $60), a cheeky low-budget 1968 comedy that helped make stars of the young Robert De Niro and director Brian De Palma.

Gerritt Graham plays De Niro's morbid pal, a young man who is consumed with doubts about the Warren Commission's report and can't stop talking about his conviction that JFK was shot by an army officer. He ends up getting killed by a sniper while on his way to the Statue of Liberty - undoubtedly the victim of another conspiracy. -------------------------------

NEW VIDEOS IN STORES THIS WEEK

Wednesday - "An African Dream," Michael J. Fox in "Doc Hollywood," Steve Vidler in "Encounter at Raven's Gate," Timothy Daly in "Love or Money," Don Michael Paul in "Rich Girl," Steve Railsback in "Alligator II: The Mutation," John Candy in "Delirious," Elliott Gould in "Inside Out," Robert Dornhelm's "Requiem for Dominic," Jean Stapleton in "All in the Family 20th Anniversary Special," "Delta Force 3," Kevin Bacon in "Pyrates," Roger Moore in "Fire, Ice and Dynamite," "National Audubon Society Series: Sharks, Greed and Wildlife, Ancient Forests."

Thursday - Vanilla Ice in "Cool As Ice," Ed O'Neill in "Dutch," Leslie Nielsen in "The Naked Gun 2 1/2," Aki Kaurismaki's "Leningrad Cowboys Go America," Bertrand Tavernier's "Life and Nothing But," Robert Wagner in "Indiscreet," Eric Rochant's "Love Without Pity," Gian-Maria Volunte in "Open Doors," Sammi Davis in "The Perfect Bride," Michael Ironside in "Deadly Surveillance," "The Age of Ballyhoo," "America's Romance With Space," "Black Shadows on the Silver Screen," "The Building of the Capitol," "How We Got the Vote," "Inaugural Souvenir," "Just Around the Corner," "The Legendary West," "A Moment in Time," "The Moving Picture Boys in The Great War," "Patent Pending," "We All Came to America," "Working For the Lord," "The Pirates of Dark Water."

New laserdiscs: Grant Williams in "The Incredible Shrinking Man," Clint Eastwood in "Joe Kidd," John Ritter in "Problem Child 2," Dolly Parton in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," "Hanna Barbera's Christmas," Michael Rooker in "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," Clint Eastwood in "For a Few Dollars More" (letterboxed), Billy Crystal in "City Slickers," Anthony Quinn in "The Shoes of the Fisherman" (letterboxed), Fred Astaire in "Funny Face" (letterboxed), Kevin Kline in "Soapdish," Brian Dennehy in "The Belly of an Architect," Robin Williams in "The World According to Garp."