During Hollywood’s silent era, most people remember Rudolph Valentino as cinema’s reigning “Latin Lover.” But there was another dashing, dark-eyed actor who, though now mostly forgotten, regularly challenged Valentino for the crown.

Ramon Novarro was for many years in the 1920s a hot property in Hollywood and one of the industry’s most sought-after romantic leading men. As one of MGM’s top box-office attractions, Novarro headlined such classic films as “The Student Prince,” “Mata Hari” and the original, silent version of “Ben-Hur,” and shared the screen with such luminous leading ladies as Myrna Loy, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer.

But his film legacy was tarnished by the sordid nature of his untimely death, and that story is told in grim detail in the riveting but tragic biography “Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro” (University Press of Mississippi, $25). The 416-page paperback is the work of Andre Soares, a California screenwriter who is also chief editor of “Alternative Film Guide.”

Soares’ writes that Novarro was born Ramon Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family. He came to America in 1913 to flee the violence of civil war in his native country.

Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, Novarro was a Latin heartthrob, idolized by millions and the star of some 50 motion pictures, whose fame as a “Latin lover” rivaled Valentino’s (who was, in fact, Italian).

A lifelong bachelor who carefully cultivated his image as a man deeply devoted to his family and his Roman Catholic faith, Novarro was settled into easy retirement in a comfortable Spanish-style home in Laurel Canyon by 1968. And that’s when his legacy was radically changed.

On Halloween of that year, Novarro’s nude, bloodied corpse was found in his house, igniting one of Hollywood’s most infamous scandals. As it turns out, the actor’s off-screen life was far removed from his romantic on-screen image, and for many years he hid his homosexuality as he regularly enjoyed the company of male hustlers.

Soares’ gruesomely specific account details how Novarro’s night with two young male companions ended in tragedy and scandal.

Soares presents the full picture in grim, colorful detail, not only of the star’s rise to fame and his emotional conflicts over his sexual orientation, but of the grisly nature of his death and its sensational aftermath (in which brothers Paul and Tom Ferguson were convicted of murder).

Exhaustively researched and drawing on fresh interviews with Novarro’s surviving friends, family, co-stars and the men convicted of his murder, “Beyond Paradise” offers many unique insights into the conflicted life of one of Hollywood’s most important early stars. It’s a compelling and fascinating dissection of myth and murder and the often disturbing disconnect between a life lived on screen and the one lived off.

- Dennis King

Steve Talley and Eric Roberts

BY GENE TRIPLETT

Newspaper movies were almost a genre unto themselves once upon a time, like Westerns, romances, sci-fi epics and cop thrillers.

Intrepid reporters — self-described “ink-stained wretches” — were the heroes (or villains) of such classics as “His Girl Friday,” “The Harder They Fall,” “All the President’s Men” and, as recently as 2007, the excellent “Zodiac.”

Journalists were depicted as valiant (if sometimes boozy and unkempt) keepers of the First Amendment flame, public watchdogs sounding the alarm against crime and corruption, bloodhounds of truth sniffing out and exposing all manner of social menace and moral decay.

But in this Internet age of instant information, such films are now as few and far between as newspapers themselves are rapidly becoming.

This makes something of a rare treat out of “Deadline,” a suspenseful, fact-based drama about two investigative warriors of the daily print medium — played by Steve Talley and Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts (“Runaway Train”) — who flush out the culprits in a cold-case race killing in the Deep South.

“I’ve already gotten feedback from journalists who are saying, ‘You know, this kind of helps remind me why I got into the business,’” screenwriter Mark Ethridge said in a recent phone interview.

“I hope it helps remind the public why they need journalists,” he said.

The independent feature about headline heroics gets its Oklahoma City premiere at Harkins Bricktown Theatres on Thursday, complete with a live Q&A between audience and filmmakers via telephone hook-up following the screening.

More good news is that proceeds from the event will benefit the United Way of Central Oklahoma.

The screening will be hosted by The Oklahoman, just as local newspapers have hosted events in more than 40 other cities where “Deadline” has already premiered. Many of those events have featured in-person appearances by cast members and filmmakers.

This series of benefit premieres is a new method of movie release and distribution concocted by Nashville independent filmmaker Curt Hahn, producer and director of “Deadline.”

“We looked in the Guiness Book of World Records to see how many movie premieres one movie has had,” Hahn said from a tour bus that was also carrying Ethridge and some of the film’s cast members across the country.

“They don’t even have a category for it. But I promise you, if they did we’d own it.”

Other newspapers that have hosted benefit premieres for “Deadline” include the Miami Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Detroit Free Press and the Houston Chronicle.

The film releases nationwide on Friday.

“When you look at what happens when a band puts out a new CD, they go on the road to tour to support the release of their CD, right?” Hahn said. “It’s the exact same idea as that. … We just thought it was by far the most effective way that we could come up with to reach the maximum number of people for the amount of budget we could afford to do with an independent film.”

Hahn, 62, is the founder of Film House, a Nashville film production company that has specialized in TV commercials and government public service announcements for 36 years. Its subsidiary, Transcendent, has produced the independent feature “No Regrets” (2004) with Janine Turner and Kate Jackson, and co-produced “Two Weeks” (2007), starring Sally Field and Ben Chapin. The latter was released through MGM.

Ethridge, who is a high school classmate of Hahn’s, adapted “Deadline” from his own novel, “Grievances,” which in turn is based on an actual investigative story Ethridge broke when he was a reporter with The Charlotte Observer.

“I always wanted to novelize it,” Ethridge said. “I thought about making it a true book, but the fact of it is I’m actually not interesting enough to be a protagonist in a novel, so I had to embellish me a little bit I suppose.”

Ethridge said the amount of dramatic license he took with the story is “actually a matter of degree. What Curt likes to say is that all of the movie is true but not all of it is factual.”

In the film, Steve Talley (“Hole in One”) plays the Ethridge-based character Matt Harper, a young reporter at the fictional Nashville Times who has become disillusioned with management and is on the verge of being fired from his job when a young woman (Lauren Jenkins) from a rich Alabama family brings him information about the murder of an African-American teenage boy that has gone unsolved for 19 years.

Harper’s editor agrees to dispatch him to the small Alabama town where the killing occurred, provided that the more experienced Ronnie Bullock (Eric Roberts) — a grizzled, politically incorrect, booze-loving, gun-toting, veteran newspaperman — goes along for the ride.

“He’s pretty much 100 percent real,” Ethridge said of Roberts’ character. “That is transcribed dialog and not invention … He was a pistol-packin’ reporter and his name was John York. Totally old school. All the devices and the gin in the bottom drawer. I’m not sure if he had that, but he might have. So what you have in some ways is this wonderful story of kind of a Mutt and Jeff reporting team. The young whippersnapper and the old grizzled veteran. You can get a good amount of tension between those.”

And along with the tribute to the kind of in-depth, justice-seeking, shoe-leather-burning investigative reporting that makes newspaper journalism great, “Deadline” also carries meditations on issues of race, family and redemption that could classify it as a faith-based film.

“It’s not overtly Christian,” Ethridge said. “Jesus is never mentioned. But in the African-American community in particular, church plays such an important role, particularly in the South, and ministers of African-American churches are not the spiritual leaders, they’re social leaders. So it’s not an accident that Dr. (Martin Luther) King and Ralph Abernathy were ministers who led the civil rights marches.

“So the fact that there is an important role for an African-American preacher in this movie is not surprising,” Ethridge said. “And it’s also true that it depicts the faith part because it is about redemption. It’s about wrongs that have been committed that have been righted. It’s about people that have been wronged that justice is being achieved for, and it’s about personal redemption. And there are characters as you might imagine with relationship issues that need to be resolved. And I think that’s where that faith-based element comes from. And that’s been a really nice surprise.”

MOVIE PREMIERE

“Deadline”

When: 7 p.m. Thursday.

Where: Harkins Bricktown Cinemas, 150 E Reno Ave.

Tickets: Basic $25; silver sponsor $50; gold sponsor $75; platinum $100; diamond $250.

Rating: PG-13 for some mature thematic material.

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Rat Scratch Fever”

Writer, director, cinematographer, editor, actor, special-effects tech Jeff Leroy is the very epitome of do-it-yourself, micro-budget filmmaking. A veteran of the horror and Z-movie fringes with a dozen or so schlocky credits on his resume, Leroy’s most buzzed-about work of cobbled-together horror, “Rat Scratch Fever,” hits the DVD market on Tuesday.

Employing a cast of low-budget horror veterans that includes Ford Austin, Sean Cain and Phoebe Dollar, Leroy has concocted a story about a failed space mission that results in humongous alien rats being transported back to Los Angeles, developing a taste for human flesh and then causing bloody, rabid chaos in the City of Angels and beyond.

Typical of his everything-but-the-kitchen-sink style, Leroy employs several decidedly homemade techniques to construct his larger-than-life sci-fi adventure. He uses miniature sets, puppets, processed green-screen shots and the kindness of friends to make up for his miniscule budget. Trailers for the cheeky result have been circulating on fan sites for more than a year, so anticipation for this release is running at a fever pitch among horror and camp aficionados.

Some are touting this as Leroy’s “masterpiece,” which is saying a lot for a guy whose filmography includes such titles as “Eyes of the Werewolf,” “Creepies” and “Creepies 2,” “Werewolf in a Women’s Prison” and the TV series “Poorman’s Bikini Beach.”

“Rat Scratch Fever” is not rated and runs 90 minutes. It’s being released by Media Blasters, Inc.

- Dennis King

Jason Biggs

The “American Pie” series developed a cult following by serving up steamy, seamy helpings of juvenile angst, adult insecurity, sexual humiliation and outrageous potty gags, always leavened with forgiving dollops of sweet sentimentality on top.

But “American Reunion,” the fourth slice in the unabashedly cringe-inducing franchise – after “American Pie 1 and 2” and “American Wedding” (plus four tepid direct-to-video spinoffs) – tips the scales perilously toward gross comic gluttony. Unfortunately, the ingredients of this “Pie” are mostly stale.

Sticking to the series’ pattern of following a core group of nerdy pals from East Great Falls High School – Jim (Jason Biggs), Oz (Chris Klein), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas)– as they make a prom-night pact to lose their virginity, as they party-hearty at a summer resort and as the sexually awkward, pie-loving Jim finally weds “band geek” Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), “American Reunion” is just what the name implies.

It’s time for the gang’s high school reunion, and the friends, family and significant others return to their picturesque Michigan burg lugging along groaning loads of adult baggage.

Jim and Michelle are now parents of a rambunctious, thumb-sucking boy and the magic – read that: sex – seems to have gone out of their marriage (not to mention the fact that Jim still has a thing for internet porn and tube socks). Oz has a cool job as host of an L.A. sports talk show and a buxom bimbo girlfriend (“30 Rock’s” Katrina Bowden), but he still carries a torch for down-to-earth Heather (Mena Suvari). Kevin, sporting a weaselly beard, is a whipped, soap-opera-loving househusband with a successful working wife and a lingering longing for boring classmate Vicky (Tara Reid). And Finch arrives on a sleek motorcycle, a mysterious world traveler whose pompous tales of adventure mask some really mundane secrets.

And then, of course, there’s the snarky, rabidly obnoxious Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott), the “Stifmeister,” now stuck in a dead-end office job but still prone to those rude, crude, troublemaking antics that dominate most films in the series.

Various lesser classmates show up briefly (for instance, Natasha Lyonne’s Jessica to set up a quick lesbian joke). Jim’s sweet-natured, now widowed dad (the always game Eugene Levy) turns up in all his nattering glory, and he’s coaxed into a naughty flirtation with Stifler’s buxom mom (Jennifer Coolidge).

Biggs’ nice-guy Jim is the steady center of the wildly episodic story that tries to tie up a lot of loose strands. But Scott’s gleefully misanthropic Stifler is the swizzle stick that stirs this stringently R-rated comic cocktail. Levy, as always, provides the sweet soul that takes a little of the edge off the over-the-top raunch.

Co-directors and writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (co-creators of the “Harold and Kumar” movies) are right in their comfort zone juggling this sort chaotic, episodic mishmash of a story that delivers sexually charged slapstick and raw bathroom humor with just enough heart-felt sentiment to make it palatable.

And that’s probably the secret that makes the “American Pie” films – and “American Reunion” – such sure hits with fans. They may be terribly gross and outrageously raunchy, but they’re never really mean.

- Dennis King

“American Reunion”

R
1:53
2 stars
Starring: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Seann William Scott
(Crude and sexual humor throughout, nudity, language, brief drug use and teen drinking)

There’s a picture of Sean Connery in white shirt and tie riding a vintage Schwinn bicycle around the Universal back lot during the filming of “Marnie.” There’s Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth pedaling a French-made tandem bicycle on a break from shooting “The Lady in Question.” There’s a photo of Ray Walston and Anthony Perkins playing bicycle polo during a break in filming “Tall Story.” And there’s sour-faced Alfred Hitchcock awkwardly straddling a bike at the Cannes Film Festival while promoting “Frenzy.”

These are just a few of the vintage photos contained in film critic Steven Rea’s whimsical, fascinating coffee-table book “Hollywood Rides a Bike: Cycling With the Stars” (Angel City Press, $20), an affectionate homage to two of the author’s great passions – movies and bicycles.

The image-filled, 160-page book features candid photos and studio publicity shots of stars tooling around studio back lots and through various Hollywood neighborhoods aboard an array of bicycles – ranging from rust-bucket clunkers to sleek racing bikes and from decked-out street cruisers to odd-ball experimental rides and antique high-wheels.

The roster of stars caught in candid cycling moments is delightful and dazzling. There’s Humphrey Bogart in suit and tie, a flirtatious Sophia Loren, a teenaged Elizabeth Taylor, a young Lauren Bacall, a sprightly Shirley Temple, a cool Kevin Bacon, a nubile Brigitte Bardot and much more. It’s like the Hollywood Walk of Fame on two (and sometimes three) wheels.

Rea, longtime film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, is an avid cycling enthusiast. He says he doesn’t own a car, but he does have a collection of several rare and vintage bicycles.

About a year ago, Rea hit upon the inspiration to combine his passion for cycling and his love of movie history (and his penchant for hunting down rare old photos of stars on wheels) into a Tumblr web blog (Rides a Bike). The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Soon, emails and accolades were flooding in, and Rea discovered a new world of sources for movie star photos and anecdotes.

Turns out movie buffs and bike fanatics are simpatico crowds. The blog begat the book, and now the book appears to be drawing more and more people to the blog.

And Rea, who as film critics will, waxes poetic in words and imagery about the glamour of movie stardom and the glory of whizzing around like a free and zestful child on two wheels.

With new photos being discovered every day, and with several search targets on his radar (Rea is determined to find a picture of Albert Finney on a bike), the author hints that “Hollywood Rides a Bike: The Sequel” might come rolling along in the future.

- Dennis King

He’s an oddly named London copper with a tragic past and an avuncular, plodding way of getting at the solution to a crime. And he’s shipped off to the foggy northern provinces where he’s partnered with an ambitious, quick-on-the-trigger young detective sergeant who’s brashly impatient with his boss’s old-school ways.

That’s the essential set-up for the BBC crime series “Inspector George Gently,” a cerebral police procedural that’s winning a devoted following in the U.S. and that now has a spanking new first season out on Blu-ray DVD.

“George Gently – Series 1” offers up the first three 90-minute episodes of the series that first aired on British TV in 2007-8, and it aptly sets up the series’ premise and showcases the craggy beauty of the show’s locale (supposedly set in Northumberland, the first season was actually shot along the Irish coast).

Drawn from a series of 30-plus “George Gently” crime novels by the late Alan Hunter that were published from 1955-99, the series stars veteran TV actor Martin Shaw (“Judge John Deed”) as world-weary Inspector Gently and wiry Lee Ingleby (“Nicholas Nickleby”) as Detective Sergeant John Bacchus.

“Series 1” includes the pilot and two following episodes that are set in 1964, an era when England was wracked by social unrest and roiling cultural change – when corruption and violence were rampant in both London and rural environs and racist cops were often the norm.

Gently strides through this tawdry world like a noble knight errant, and the pilot (though drawn from the eighth book in the series) does an admirable job of establishing the stalwart personality of this disciplined, staunchly anti-corrupt cop and his prickly relationship with new partner Bacchus, a hard-nosed copper who’s inclined to cut legal corners.

The dramatic set-up of the pilot (titled “Gently Go Man”) finds the honorable Gently in London, at odds with his politically devious superiors, when his beloved wife is killed in a hit-and-run accident (in fact, it’s a cold murder engineered by a vicious gangster).

Following a tip about the murder, Gently agrees to take on one last cast in rustic Northumberland, where he’s teamed with the skeptical Bacchus and digs into a case that turns on a charge of homosexuality, still technically illegal in that time.

With the dynamic between the brainy, careful boss and hot-headed sergeant neatly established, the two following episodes – “The Burning Man” and “Bomber’s Moon” – build on that relationship and lay out complex, satisfyingly sinister crime puzzles that any mystery fan will quickly embrace. And the dominant presence of Shaw, tough yet vulnerable, noble yet flawed, results in a British copper memorable enough to sustain the series through four seasons and running.

“George Gently – Series 1” is the perfect introduction to this noble crime fighter. The Blu-ray extras here are sparse (text interviews with cast members), but the widescreen images and pristine photography beautifully capture the series’ moody, magnificent setting.

- Dennis King

Stephen King once said of novelist Donald E. Westlake that on sunny days he wrote comic crime novels under his real name about a hapless crook named Dortmunder, and on dark and rainy days he wrote serious pulp fiction under the pen name of Richard Stark about a hardboiled heister named Parker. At one point in his career, Westlake commanded more money as Stark than he did under his real name, and Parker was one of the most popular characters in the crime genre.

No less than six movies (not to mention a new series of graphic novels) have been based on the Parker books, beginning in 1967 with director John Boorman’s brilliantly stylized thriller “Point Blank,” based the first book in the series, “The Hunter,” and starring Lee Marvin as the relentless and remorseless anti-hero (with his name changed to Walker). The same book was adapted for the screen again in 1999 with less artistic success as “Payback,” starring Mel Gibson in the re-named character of Porter.

 Director John Flynn’s “The Outfit” (1973), starring Robert Duvall as Parker (changed to Macklin) is an obscure gem worth seeking out, as is French director Jean-Luc Godard’s “Made in U.S.A.” (1966), which is a very loose (and unauthorized) adaptation of “The Jugger.” A little-seen 1983 Canadian film treatment of “Slayground,” starring Peter Coyote as Parker (changed to Stone), is incoherent and unwatchable.

Which brings us to 1968′s “The Split” (now manufactured on demand by Warner Archives at wbshop.com) starring Jim Brown as Parker (renamed McLaine). It’s based on “The Seventh,” about the robbery of a professional football stadium’s box office receipts in the midst of a big game. Somehow, screenwriter Robert Sabaroff and director Gordon Flemyng managed to drain the story of all the noir atmospherics and suspenseful unpredictability that were hallmarks of the Parker books. The sunny L.A. locations look bleached out and storyline is as routine and clichéd as a ’60s made-for-TV movie. But it’s interesting to watch the stellar cast that includes Julie Harris, Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, James Whitmore and Donald Sutherland, all at their sinister best in spite of the mediocre script and direction.

 The period fashions and funky Quincy Jones soundtrack are a lot of fun, too. And “The Split” has the distinction of being the first movie to earn an “R” rating under the then-new MPAA system, but the violence that branded it is pretty tame by today’s standards, and especially Stark standards.

— Gene Triplett

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“Anatomy of a Bigfoot Hoax”

“Finding Bigfoot,” one of the big-buzz shows on cable’s Animal Planet, is just the latest evidence of our endless fascination with the notion that something big, hairy and mysterious lurks in the deepest, darkest forests. And in 2008, that national mania to believe in the unbelievable led to a hokey swindle that became national news and is the subject of the clunky, self-serving documentary “Anatomy of a Bigfoot Hoax” (due out on DVD just in time for April Fool’s Day).

The film is largely the work of Tom Biscardi, a determined player in the nutty world of Bigfoot aficionados who himself had – depending on how you view it – either a duplicitous or a dunderheaded role in the hoax.

The event started simply enough: in July 2008, a couple of yahoos in rural Georgia reportedly discovered the frozen body of a dead Sasquatch in a forest and posted a video on YouTube.

Soon, the video went viral and Biscardi, CEO of Searching for Bigfoot Inc., was called in to investigate and arranged a $50,000 good-faith payment to the two yokels. Then followed a big media frenzy with many major TV networks covering the story and a tsunami of internet hits on Google.

But the whole thing quickly became unraveled when the Bigfoot body arrived in a block of ice, and Searching for Bigfoot “researchers” thawed it out. Turns out the monster was just a rubber Halloween costume.

Biscardi, who early on had gone on TV to vouch for the authenticity of the discovery, was left with egg on his face, and “Anatomy of a Bigfoot Hoax” is his strained effort to paint himself as an innocent victim of the tawdry affair.

Well, it all set off a big argument within the Bigfoot community as Biscardi’s supporters and detractors have weighed in to defend or debunk the film. Whatever, the documentary offers a goofy peek into the world of true believers and conspiracy fanciers and for that alone has a certain oddball entertainment value.

“Anatomy of a Bigfoot Hoax” is not rated and runs 60 minutes. It is – not surprisingly – being released by Searching For Bigfoot, Inc.

- Dennis King

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Liam Neeson is no stranger to portraying mythical characters on screen.

Liam Neeson

The Irish-born actor with the craggy countenance, husky Celtic brogue and raspy, baritone voice is familiar to many moviegoers as the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn in “Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace” and as the wizened voice of Aslan the lion in the “Chronicles of Narnia” film trilogy. Among other larger-than-life characters he’s essayed on screen – Oskar Schindler in “Schindler’s List,” the title characters in “Ethan Frome,” “Michael Collins” and “Rob Roy,” the fugitive Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” and the gritty survivor Ottway in “The Gray.”

But Neeson admits with a wry smile that few characters in his burgeoning resume can top the role of Zeus, the so-called “Father of Gods and men” from Greek mythology who ruled Mount Olympus and leads a heady ensemble cast in “Wrath of the Titans,” the macho, special-effects-laden follow-up to 2010’s “Clash of the Titans.”

Neeson, who said he learned most of his Greek mythology from watching old Western movies, leads a cast that includes fellow god-like actors Ralph Fiennes as Hades, Danny Huston as Poseidon and rugged Sam Worthington as Zeus’ son and half-god Perseus, heroic conqueror of the monstrous Kraken in “Clash.”

“Wrath of the Titans” picks up a decade after the first film, when Perseus is trying to settle into a human-scaled life as a fisherman and raise his young son in peace. But there’s trouble on Olympus as the gods’ power is weakened and the imprisoned Titans, led by the ferocious Kronos (father of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon), are threatening to overthrow the gods and unleash chaos on the world. Zeus soon appears to enlist his reluctant son Perseus to come to the aid of the struggling gods.

During press interviews at the Ritz Carlton Hotel hosted by Warner Bros., Neeson, absent the long locks and flowing beard of his character, talked about his attraction to the “Titans” films and the place of mythology in movies.

“Besides the usual action and excitement, these stories (from Greek mythology) tap in to every culture in the world,” Neeson said. “And they’re essentially the same story, which is an innocent has to go through a trial or ordeal to save the society, comes out the other end and I think learns something that advances his society onward.

“Hmm,” he mused. “I must write that down.”

Neeson said he first clued in to the larger pattern of epic heroism in action movies by watching American Westerns as a kid.
“Westerns are Greek mythology,” he said. “It’s all the same story, you know. Certainly for me it was Westerns, and eventually in my 20s I started reading Greek mythology. And in preparation for ‘The Phantom Menace.’ You had to, because ‘Star Wars’ is all about Greek mythology stories.”

Also akin to “Star Wars,” the “Titans” movies required Neeson and his fellow actors to work a lot in front of green screens, delivering their lines alone to cue points on the set where digital effects would later be added.

“I’m from the old school, from the first ‘Star Wars,’ where we used colored tennis balls as focal cues,” Neeson said of green-screen acting. “And I kind of liked my tennis balls. I got used to them. On this film we had lots of little colored bits of tape. And you had to act sometimes with bits of tape, but that’s OK.”

Much more fun, Neeson said, was acting opposite Ralph Fiennes, who was the villain of the piece as Hades, Zeus’ devious brother and chief rival.

“Ralph is one of my dearest, oldest friends. So it was terrific,” said Neeson. “When we did the first one, ‘Clash of the Titans,’ we found it hard to act with each other, so I would look at his forehead and he would look at my forehead, because sometimes when we made eye contact it got quite silly. But we were more restrained this time, and we had a lot more deeper, darker issues to act. So we didn’t laugh as much.”

Still, Neeson said with a chuckle, there was one giant climactic scene in the film when Zeus and Hades join forces in a final showdown, which required the two grand actors to pretend to deflect CGI thunderbolts and hurl them back at their enemies in an awkward green-screen dance.

“We both felt like pillocks (British slang for “fools”),” Neeson said with a rueful shake of his head. “Because, we were on a real set in Wales, with hundreds and hundreds of extras and stuff, and we’re (gesturing wildly and throwing thunder bolts with our hands). And I’m looking and him to see what he’s doing, and he’s looking at me to see what I’m doing. It all felt a little bit silly. But in scenes like that, you just have to go for it.” Then, under he breath, he added with a wink “That was what they paid me millions for.”

What is it about ripe, stinky Hollywood cheese that makes so many grand, respected actors willing to cast off all ego and make zestful fools of themselves?

Sam Worthington

Every actor worth his salt has made them – big, overblown, blockbusters glutted with spectacular set pieces, half-baked stories and incessantly intrusive special effects. So perhaps we might understand the big-paycheck lure to Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Danny Huston and “Avatar” hero Sam Worthington that was proffered by the incoherent mess of “Wrath of the Titans,” the bigger, louder, bolder follow-up to the 2010 cheesefest, “Clash of the Titans.”

(Perhaps the childlike taglines for these two groaning curiosities give some clue as to their simplistic ambitions: “Titans Will Clash” and “Feel the Wrath” Duh.)

In addition to the huge star power that went into the making of this de facto sequel (along with the Big Three top liners, there’s a sly turn by the ever wily Bill Nighy, an appealingly earthy contribution from Toby “War Horse” Kebbell and a brisk, feminist touch from pretty, buff Rosamund Pike), there are enough computer-generated effects to overload an entire trilogy and a 3D aspect that’s mildly entertaining (rocks hurtling toward your face) but offers nothing original.

The story spins several classic and made-up aspects of Greek mythology and turns the thing into a standard-issue sword-and-sandal epic – complete with rugged hero (Worthington’s brusque Kraken-killer Perseus), fading Greek gods (Neeson’s sage Zeus, Fiennes’ hideous Hades and Huston’s water-logged Poseidon) and a slew of swirling, snarling, pirouetting, slithering, thudding CGI monsters (multi-headed Chimeras, lumbering Cyclops, bullish Minotaurs, and legions of fierce, duel-torso Makhi warriors).

Trouble is, the CGI effects are so jittery and busy that they overwhelm the actors (even titans like Neeson and Fiennes; even a brash mug like Worthington). The action moves swiftly but not very cogently through some pretty intricate and interesting sets (note especially the interlocking, puzzle-like Underworld labyrinth). And the computer monsters are filmed with such glancing, breathless speed that we never have a chance to see them clearly and register how horrid and appalling they’re supposed to be.

It’s a puzzle and a shame, really. A puzzle because “Clash of the Titans” was so roundly booed by critics (although blindly embraced by international audiences) that you’d think a sequel would be a dubious project. A shame because there are some positive things going on here – a fresh breathe of humor from Nighy as the demented inventor Hephaestus and from Kebbell as Poseidon’s ne’er-do-well son Agenor, a snarling villain turn by Edgar Ramirez as Zeus’s evil son Ares, and some pretty impressive sets and costumes.

But “Wrath of the Titans” never reconciles its campy impulses with its bully-boy briskness or its self-serious haminess. While it might have been ham and cheese on wry, instead it’s just an overstuffed hoagie that’s merely hokey.

- Dennis King

“Wrath of the Titans”

PG-13
1:39
1 ½ stars
Starring: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Toby Kebbell, Rosamund Pike
(Sequences of fantasy violence and action)