‘The Last Don II’ Delivers More Violence and Cliches

Once more into the crypt.

Like an obsessed grave robber, Mario Puzo keeps exhuming his wormy, rotted-through concept that was once “The Godfather” and, undeterred by the absence of flesh on these moldy bones, continues sending the cadaver to makeup and wardrobe.

Instead of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” though, Sunday and Tuesday nights at CBS feature lots of mobsters brooding in dark rooms, a deranged mob auntie who seduces a Roman Catholic priest and thick-tongued mugs who talk like this: “What’s a mattah wit you?”

The cement shoes are a giveaway. Of course, it’s “The Last Don II,” brain-dead progeny of “The Last Don I,” the May 1997 ratings monster that affirmed--despite noisy anti-violence protests--just how much Americans adore their gore, the more nauseatingly gratuitous the better.

That bodes well for CBS, given that the four-hour body count in “The Last Don II” is about neck and neck with the cliche count. In other words, epic. In the first hour alone, a mobster is squashed by a steel beam, an innocent mother dies after opening a package that turns out to be a bomb, another mother and her children are massacred, an aging don is shot in the head in front of his grandson, kids are murdered and a schoolteacher’s throat is cut in church.

All of this comes after the death of Don Domenico Clericuzio, head of the Mafia’s most powerful family. Danny Aiello is back briefly as the antique Don Clericuzio, all bent and shrunk to the size of “SCTV’s” Sid Dithers when he keels over at 86. Recalled from Paris to fill the breach is Jason Gedrick, back as the don’s deceptively quiet-spoken nephew, Cross, whose killing ways multiply significantly after his coronation.

Returning also is Kirstie Alley as Don Clericuzio’s daughter, Rose Marie, who has found the Lord after all these years but remains mad as a loon. In her cross hairs now is the highly libidinous Father Luca Tonarine (Jason Isaacs), another of those wayward TV priests who break their vows of celibacy.

Like its predecessor, “The Last Don II” was inspired by characters from Puzo’s novel “The Last Don,” but written by Joyce Eliason. The cupboard is bare, for it’s stunning how much of this is recycled Corleone: the mass assassinations that repay enemies; sending a misbehaving Hollywood figure a message by having him awaken in bloody bedsheets, this time two human bodies at the foot of his bed instead of a horse’s head.

Meanwhile, Gedrick’s Cross is about as Mafioso as the River Don and more than a bit dim to boot. It’s obvious almost from the start who’s secretly conspiring to take control of the family. If we can figure it out, why can’t he?

If only this were the last don. But alas, the only way to stop the procreation is to wrap the author’s word processor in a condom.

* “The Last Don II” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday on CBS (Channel 2). The network has rated it TV-14-LSV (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, with advisories for coarse language, sex and violence).