Sloganeering is the shrill charm and also the self-righteous weakness of this tirade about television. When Howard Beale (Peter Finch), a nerve-wracked, failing anchorman, intones "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," we enjoy both the gloating cynicism and the facile wisdom of Paddy Chayefsky's manic script. Yet this exaggerated drama of unchecked ambition and frenzied audience-seeking makes a compelling statement about the vulnerable position of the motiveless TV viewer, vis-à-vis the conspiratorial execs behind the video camera. Given the axe, newsmonger Beale makes some news of his own by announcing his impending suicide. It's something like first-blood in Tubeland and Beale finds himself unanchored and cruising towards stardom. Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), one of those rapacious programmers who forsakes flesh for gaudy fantasy, sees ample profit in Beale's preachy ramblings and he soon becomes the "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves," complete with stained glass set decor and well-timed ecstatic seizures. Though Network's evangelist "inveighs against the hypocrisies of our time," alienating the show's audience, his pleas and condemnations are quickly absorbed by the greater spectacle of the United Broadcasting System. And here lies the most terrifying insight of this breakneck story: that even jarring moments of anti-television can be consumed and defused by the diabolical onslaught of programming. Steve Seid