`HEFNER': UNINTERESTING; UNAUTHORIZED RABBIT TALE IS FODDER FOR A VERY DULL EVENING.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

The one time I wangled an invite to the Playboy Mansion was when Hugh Hefner was in the midst of his allegedly fairy-tale marriage, and it was clear that family-man Hef had other priorities than keeping current with contemporary theories of home decorating and/or naughty fun.

Horrid shag carpeting - orange, I believe - decked out the game room, which also boasted an antique Space Invaders video game, out of order. The only naked body I saw was that of - ugh! - a really old guy cavorting in the grotto with a couple of floozies. The biggest celebrities on hand were Bill Maher and Bud Cort. As for the community tub of Vaseline in the men's room - well, let's just say it didn't evoke the whiff of sophistication the magazine tries to pretend it does.

Hef himself ethereally roamed the joint with an air of self-absorbed stupefaction, in a seeming state of disconnect from the circus surrounding him.

Nothing could be more disillusioning than the real thing, although the USA Network's ``Hefner: Unauthorized'' give it its best shot.

``Hef U'' exists mainly because someone realized that the marketing plan alone would ensure decent viewership.

The ad campaign's images of scantily clad women and the self-knowing tagline ``Watch it for the articles'' (a better line than any in the film itself) suggest a smirky, saucy good time under the ruse of sociological edification, sort of like Hef's magazine itself.

Instead, the filmmakers are hustlers. ``Hefner: Unauthorized'' is a bewildering mess that's unwilling even to commit to its borderline contempt for the subject; worse, it's not even deliriously crummy enough to have camp value.

It's presented as a standard-issue, rags-to-riches story, with the requisite bumps along the way, the biggest being a mild scandal in the '70s involving the suicide of Hef's coked-out personal assistant, Bobbie Arnstein, played with fatuous zeal by Natasha Gregson Wagner.

Cribbing from actually watchable films such as ``Sunset Boulevard'' and ``American Beauty,'' ``Hefner: Unauthorized'' thinks it's being audacious and clever by presenting its story from Bobbie's point of view; Wagner's narration is delivered half with bubble-headed awe and half with a snidely disapproving sneer.

She actually says things like, ``King Arthur had a round table, but King Hef had a round bed.''

At times the film feels, surreally, like Arnstein wrote it from the grave herself to show what a great gal she was and what a (nominal) heel Hef was - it's as much her story as it is about the founder of Playboy.

Discussing her own death, Bobbie intones, ``Suicide is a loser's gig - I'm not recommending it.'' Talk about your revisionist histories - that alone is all the proof you need that the filmmakers prefer to whitewash everything in sight rather than get a clue about their characters' inner lives, or human psychology in general.

Randall Batinkoff looks a little like Hef, but clutters his performance with too much nervous energy to credibly convey Hef's own self-styled sense of suavity. He plays his early scenes with a cliched gee-whiz earnestness, and in general comes off like a preppy frat boy wound too tightly to even loosen his tie; his seduction scenes with women are fairly risible.

In one scene in which Hef's cantankerous sense of entitlement is permanently encroached upon, he recalls nothing so much as Crispin Glover melting down in front of David Letterman.

Since Arnstein (hasn't America been clamoring for her story?) died in 1975, ``Hefner: Unauthorized'' deals with the last 25 years of Hef's life - in particular, his marriage, subsequent divorce and current pathetic diddling around - in a mere scene. That scene also takes time to hint that he's still haunted by Bobbie.

This movie is only for people who don't see the irony in calling Playboy a ``gentleman's'' or ``adult'' magazine.

Ever notice how the kinds of guys who become white supremacists are precisely the kinds of guys who provide incontrovertible proof that the whole idea of white supremacy is utter lunacy?

Which makes Hollywood's depiction of Aryan groups in films so uninteresting - there's never any depiction of explicable motivation for these guys, just one-dimensional, boringly unbridled hatred. In Hollywood's eyes, they're always guys with bad taste in their home furnishings and haircuts. Shooting movies about hate groups is like shooting fish in a barrel.

``Brotherhood of Murder,'' premiering tonight on Showtime, likewise doesn't bother with subtleties.

Based on the true story of The Order, whose crimes included, among other things, the assassination of Denver talk-radio host Alan Berg, it stars William Baldwin as Tom Martinez, a member of the group who cooperated with the Feds to bring it down.

Tom's not a particularly bright bulb - all it takes is a losing a job, getting mildly heckled by a couple of black teens and listening to the not-terribly-charismatic burbling of Bob Mathews (Peter Gallagher) for him to fall in with these bumptious bumpkins.

His wife Susan (Kelly Lynch) suspects something's up, but she doesn't press the issue.

One scene in this dramaturgical mishmash should tell you all you need to know.

Bob and the members of his group, crammed into a booth at a diner, all order milk and apple pie, ostensibly to prove how clean-cut and all-American they are.

The waitress offers, inexplicably, to bring them cherry pie, even though the diner's not out of apple pie.

Bob, with pointless menace to his demeanor, insists that the pie be apple.

The waitress casts a fearful eye toward the group.

Then we're treated to a couple of ill-chosen shots in which nothing happens except a background extra pauses awkwardly and a short-order cook serves up something that clearly isn't pie.

One guy has an allergic reaction to his pie and clumsily bolts to the parking lot to throw up (maybe he saw the rushes of this sequence); Tom gets up to help his comrade, only to have another member of the gang ominously order him to remain seated.

Hmm, it dawns on Tom, maybe these fellows aren't so swell after all. Hmm, it dawns on the audience, maybe the filmmakers haven't a clue how to mount a plausible scene.

Gene Wilder is a big fan of old movies, but is that any reason for his latest, ``The Lady in Question,'' which he co-wrote, to feel as creaky as an ancient potboiler?

A sequel to his earlier telefilm, ``Murder in a Small Town,'' ``Lady'' stars Wilder as theater director Cash Carter, who like a certain Jessica Fletcher has a propensity for being around when dead bodies pop up and figuring out who made them dead.

Here, it's 1938, and the Nazi movement is strengthening in Europe.

A woman - putatively the lady in question, though that's not really made clear - who helps Jews flee Germany turns up dead in her Connecticut home, and there's no end of suspects, including a Nazi traveling incognito, a German maid, the victim's bitter traveling companion and two bratty relatives.

Cash - a surprisingly colorless character - figures it all out with a minimum of muss and fuss, but it's hardly droll or satisfying; it's video wallpaper blandly processed for easy consumption.

Wait till it comes in handy caplet form.

The Facts

The show: ``Hefner: Unauthorized.''

Who: Randall Batinkoff, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Rebecca Herbst.

What: Biopic about the guy who made rabbits seem sexy.

Where: USA Network.

When: 8 tonight.

Our rating: One and one half stars

The show: ``Brotherhood of Murder.''

What: Docudrama about a man's travails with a white-supremacist group.

Who: William Baldwin, Peter Gallagher, Kelly Lynch.

Where: Showtime.

When: 8 tonight; also Dec. 16 and 27.

Our rating: One and one half stars

The show: ``The Lady in Question.''

What: Cash Carter murder mystery.

Who: Gene Wilder, Cherry Jones, Mike Starr.

Where: A&E.

When: 9 tonight.

Our rating: Two stars

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

PHOTO (1) ``Hefner: Unauthorized,'' with Natasha Gregson Wagner and Randall Batinkoff, airs at 8 p.m. on USA Network.

(2 ) ``Brotherhood of Murder,'' about a man's involvement with a white-supremacist group, stars William Baldwin at 8 tonight on Showtime.

(3) Gene Wilder co-wrote and stars in the Cash Carter mystery ``The Lady in Question,'' also featuring Cherry Jones, at 9 tonight on A&E.