Zalman King

Kim Basinger has spelled steam on the big screen for the better part of a decade--some of it just too hot for American movie audiences to handle. Well, don't despair. If you have a laser player, she can steam up your living room TV screen in unrated releases of two of her sexiest performances: "The Getaway" from MCA/Universal Home Video, $35, and "9 1/2 Weeks" from MGM/UA Home Video, $40.

What do directors Barry Sonnenfeld ("Men in Black"), Zalman King ("9 1/2 Weeks") and Wes Craven ("Scream") and producer Mark Johnson ("Rain Man"), have in common? If you answered "They're producing new prime-time TV series" (or "They have happy accountants"), go to the head of the class.

"Why fix it if it isn't broken?" Everytime there is a controversy over Hollywood's movie ratings system, Motion Picture Assn. of America President Jack Valenti says, "Why fix it if it isn't broken?" When critics suggest ways to improve a system that has not changed substantially in its 22 years, Jack Valenti--who launched it way back then--says, "Why fix it if it isn't broken?"

There may well have been a movie in "9 1/2 Weeks" (selected theaters), a woman's pseudonymous "memoir" of a masochistic love affair that became too dangerous for even her to endure. At its most powerful, it was a disturbing portrait of the obliteration of the self by an all-consuming passion. But to tell that story, you'd have to tell it.

If Sgt. Ernie Bilko had paid attention to the original title of his series, he could have saved himself a lot of trouble. The name, which weeks after the 1955 premiere was changed to "The Phil Silvers Show," started out as "You'll Never Get Rich." Because Bilko's in the Army now and doesn't make the big bucks at Fort Baxter in Roseville, Kan., he's always looking to hit it big--usually with somebody else's money. On a daily basis--with the help of Cpls.

Agnes Varda has been directing films for 55 years. So it's no wonder she even directs an interview. "Well, what about you?" asks the award-winning French filmmaker, a youthful 81. "Are you a critic or a reviewer? Do you know who is reviewing the film? I do interviews. "So you do the 'hello, hello,' " she says.

This much can be said for Roman Polanski's carnal hoot-fest "Bitter Moon"--it keeps you wondering from scene to scene if the director has gone bonkers. No doubt a lot of the lunacy is intentional, but it's still lunacy. And not terribly enjoyable lunacy either. The film plays like a dirty joke that somehow got lost in the translation. Polanski, with his screenwriters Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn, must have figured that an obsessive sadomasochistic love triangle (or is it a love parallelogram?