Cinema: No Zorba

The Day the Fish Came Out. After three days, said Benjamin Franklin, guests and fish begin to stink. After 109 minutes, this particular Fish proves an intolerable guest. Not that the film is without distinction: it was directed by Michael Cacoyannis (Zorba the Greek). It may also be the homosexiest movie since Modesty Blaise. Two fliers (Tom Courtenay and Colin Blakeley) crash-land their nuclear weaponry on a mythical Greek island and spend the rest of the film in their Jockey shorts playing peekaboo with the villagers. Backing them up are a squad of sylphish soldiers dressed in mufti: the cunningest white booties, fishnet T shirts, lavender and puce shorts. Backing them up is an inconstant nympho (Candice Bergen) who moves with the natural fluid grace of a hand puppet.

Cacoyannis, who not only produced and wrote the script but designed the chorus boys' clothes, tries hard to pull everyone together at the finale to make a momentous point about the atomic age. With no result. His 1,000,000-mega-ton bomb has enough cinematic overkill to bore to death every man, woman and hermaphrodite from here to Athens.