Vestron Film-Fest Entry, `Paint It Black,' Goes Straight To Videotape

Thanks to the financial troubles of Vestron Pictures, several of the company's high-profile movies have been left in limbo - some of them picked up by other distributors (``Little Monsters,'' ``Blue Steel''), some of them still on the shelf (including one film starring Jodie Foster and Dennis Hopper), and some of them turning up on video (``Twister,'' ``Wonderland'').

Tim Hunter's 1989 Vestron thriller, ``Paint It Black,'' which was shown at film festivals but never turned up in theaters, makes its videocassette debut March 28.

Hunter's first picture since the memorable ``River's Edge,'' it's a thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock's ``Strangers on a Train,'' starring Rick Rossovich as a Santa Barbara metal sculptor, Sally Kirkland as a gallery owner who is stringing him along, and Doug Savant as a devoted, psychotic fan. Martin Landau and Peter Frechette are also in the cast.

The audience at one festival last year was so enthusiastic that Hunter got his hopes up about its eventual theatrical release. He was hired to direct after the original director left, and rewrote much of the script, developing the Savant role considerably.

``I didn't know if I could make it good, but I thought I could make it entertaining,'' said Hunter after the screening. ``I made the Savant character an art-obsessive thief, gave him his Pee-wee clothes and funny glasses and established his motivation, and I beefed up Sally's part, so you feel more for her. I was shooting all day and rewriting all night. There's still about 8 1/2 minutes of the other guy's footage.'' (Roger Holzberg was the first director.)

Hunter said he thought the script was too close to ``Strangers on a Train'' originally, and that he didn't want ``a scene-by-scene rip-off. It's fairly free-floating in its homages to Hitchcock, with references to `Psycho,' `Marnie,' `Vertigo' and `North by Northwest,' as well as `Strangers.' ''

He took the job because, even though ``River's Edge'' eventually became a critical and commercial success, he had received no offers after its release in 1986. At the festival screening, Hunter said he had just signed to direct ``Robocop II,'' though that deal eventually fell through. Hunter is currently in negotiations to direct a major-studio film called ``Success.''

Will ``Paint It Black'' finally find a home on video? It's the kind of violent, offbeat thriller that usually rents well on cassette, and it has enough recognizable names (Kirkland and Landau are recent Oscar nominees) to become a late-night cable fixture.

Critical response has been mixed. Variety, which caught up with it at the Palm Springs Film Festival in January, dismissed it as ``an uneven, amateurish thriller,'' but Richard T. Jameson, writing last fall in Pacific Northwest magazine, praised it as ``a sardonic commentary on contemporary audience values.'' He was intrigued by Hunter's ambiguous approach to the two central characters: ``In his warped way, Savant . . . has a purer devotion to art than Rossovich . . . Which will the audience cheer, and why?''

While it's no ``Strangers on a Train,'' I thought ``Paint It Black'' succeeded on Hunter's terms - it's an entertaining potboiler - and it's full of eccentric dark-comedy touches and good performances (as well as a couple of gratuitously gruesome touches). Kirkland is watchable as always, and Savant really takes off, fulfilling the promise he showed in ``Masquerade.''

As for Variety's claim that it's amateurish, I'll take ``Paint It Black'' over ``Revenge,'' ``Leatherface,'' ``Nightbreed'' and most of the other professional thrillers that have been released to theaters recently. Unlike those heavily promoted turkeys, Hunter's film shows what a savvy filmmaker can do with hash. He may not have turned a sow's ear into a silk purse, but he has created a guilty pleasure to be savored.

Video notes: The pointless trimming of 10 minutes from the videocassette version of Martin Donovan's ``Apartment Zero'' has not gone unnoticed in New York, where the theatrical version, now advertised as ``the uncut version,'' has become a midnight-movie cult. Last week, The New York Post's Jami Bernard interviewed Donovan, who said he was pressured by the cassette distributor to cut the film from 124 to 114 minutes because it was ``too long,'' and Elliot Silverstein of the Directors' Guild of America, who said the re-editing ``is open to serious ethical questions.'' The uncut version of ``Apartment Zero'' has been playing continuously at Seattle theaters since it opened here more than six months ago. It's currently at the Crest Cinemas.

Video Watch by John Hartl appears Sundays in Arts & Entertainment.

NEW VIDEOS in stores this week:

Tuesday - Patrick Macnee in ``The Masque of the Red Death.''

Wednesday -``Queen of Hearts,'' Michael J. Fox in ``Casualties of War,'' Tom Selleck in ``An Innocent Man,'' William Holden in ``Picnic,'' David Warner in ``Tripwire,'' Jean Arthur in ``The More the Merrier,'' Treat Williams in ``Night of the Sharks,'' Ned Beatty in ``Shadows in the Storm,'' Terry O'Quinn in ``Stepfather 2: Make Room For Daddy,'' Jim Brown in ``Crack House,'' Lino Brocka's ``Fight for Us.''

Thursday - Wes Craven's ``Shocker,'' Jason Connery in ``Casablanca Express.''