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Film: For Andy's Hardiest

Warhol's '****'--All of 25 Hours--
Shown at New Cinema Playhouse

By HOWARD THOMPSON

IN this month's Andy Warhol picture, a stringy-haired blonde cranes her neck from a tangle of human forms, mumbling voices and blinking colors, peers straight at the camera and drawls, "Are you as bored as I am?" Baby, we were stultified.

Undaunted devotees of Warhol cinema shouldn't be disappointed in "****." That's what it is called--or, rather Mr. Warhol, whose films have long since risen above, or beyond, mere title credits, calls it. Maybe it's just as well. The photographer-director has also explained that "* * * *" with a full running time of 25 hours, refers to the movie ratings of The Daily News and possibly the deletion marks for certain four-letter words, not that they're deleted here.

Mr. Warhol ran the whole works--all 25 hours of it--Friday starting at 8:30 P.M. at the New Cinema Playhouse, 120 West 42d Street, and the management swore that about one-third of the original patrons were still present and upright as of midafternoon yesterday. Fortunately, for art and humanity, Mr. Warhol put on a two-hour version for a regular run at the theater just after the marathon showing ended last night. The question, as with any Warhol film, is why?

Mr. Warhol has superimposed three images on the screen, along with several soundtracks. Whether talking to themselves, one another or the camera, or wallowing around in frenzied deshabille or blinking in heavy-lidded stupor, they're truly a sight, for those who can take them, or even hear them. The subjects range from sex to hitchhiking to sex to Elsa Maxwell to sex to Ronald Reagan to sex, while the soundtrack beep-beeps and moans with a kind of stringy, electronic music. It ends up on the seashore with a cavorting round-up of mangy-looking beach sprites.

Most of the principal players are from the Warhol stock company, including International Velvet, Alan Midgette, Ondine, Ingrid Superstar, Mary Might and Nico. And those who have never heard Nico sing, like wind in a drainpipe, must hear it to believe it.

Three-on-one imagery--and what images!--may be revolutionary for Mr. Warhol, but it comes to nothing more than the tried and true process of montage, as old and familiar as the hills.


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