August 5, 1984

Simon Wincer sat in the back of a taxicab with three cans of film on his lap one sweltering afternoon in Manhattan last summer, cursing the heat and the midtown traffic. ''What movie you got in those cans?'' the driver asked. ''It's called 'Phar Lap,' '' the director replied. ''He was a race horse in Australia.'' ''Phar Lap? You gotta be kidding,'' the driver said, pulling out of the lane and committing the first of several traffic violations that got Mr. Wincer to his destination just in time. ''I saw him run at Agua Caliente in 1932. He was the best. I always thought someone should make a movie outta him.''

Cleanup crews worked round the clock Friday night and today to swab up an estimated 5,000 tons of tar-like crude oil that smeared miles of the Texas coast from the Louisiana line to below Galveston Bay. With heavy equipment, vacuum trucks and acres of plastic batting, they fought the wind-driven wash of oil from an 85-mile-long slick from a British tanker that ran aground off Louisiana Monday, inundating broad areas of shoreline all along the upper Texas coast. But gentle low tides helped guide the oil away from critical marine and wildlife breeding areas in Galveston Bay. Slick Moving Southeast The huge serpentine slick, which split into two prongs on its leading edge as it moved slowly southeast down the shore, turned inland Friday night and continued to lap ashore late this afternoon.

The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission has approved the basic design for a 28-unit apartment house to be built in the heart of the Greenwich Village Historic District on the Avenue of the Americas between Waverly and Washington Places. The six-story building, to be called Washington Place, will rise to on a 16,800-square-foot parcel, the site of a former Kinney parking lot. It will occupy the entire eastern blockfront of the avenue and extend about 30 feet along both Washington and Waverly Places.

Until recently, the commercial base of Franklin Township, N.J., which stretches from New Brunswick to Princeton, had been mostly agricultural. But seven years ago, hoping to spur commercial development, township officials allocated about $7 million to a program to improve such public facilities as roads and sewage systems.

President Reagan took the campaign offensive on the tax issue today by vowing to veto any income tax rise and accusing Walter F. Mondale of planning increases that would average $1,500 a household. ''I will propose no increase in personal income taxes,'' the President declared in a paid political radio address from his ranch here, ''and I will veto any tax bill that would raise personal income tax rates for working Americans or that would fail to make our tax system simpler or more fair.'' In vowing to use the veto, Mr. Reagan went further than he did previously in rejecting Mr. Mondale's charge that he had a ''secret'' plan to raise taxes if he was re-elected. Statement Not Qualified The President also did not repeat the qualified wording he has used lately in campaign appearances in which he said he might eventually have to consider a tax increase as ''a last resort'' after trimming the Federal budget deeply. Some of his political advisers, gauging the effectiveness of the Mondale charge lately, had been urging a more clear-cut rebuttal of the Democrat's ''secret plan'' charge.