`HUNCHBACK' CARRIES MANY WEIGHTY MESSAGES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Writer

If members of the Southern Baptist Convention follow through on boycotting products from the Walt Disney Co., they'll miss the company's new animated musical, ``The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' - a movie which, ironically, addresses issues of religion, sexuality, intolerance and hypocrisy more directly than any previous Disney cartoon.

Opening June 21 and based on Victor Hugo's classic 1831 novel, the G-rated spectacular is certainly geared, like all Disney animated features, to a family audience. It's got funny singing gargoyles, a cuddlier-than-usual Quasimodo and a happy ending that diverges from the novel and previous live-action movie versions.

But the drama still revolves around the pious, persecution-prone Judge Claude Frollo's repressed lust for the sensual Gypsy dancer Esmeralda (whose voice, and perhaps some curvaceous design elements, were provided by Demi Moore). There's also a show-stopping production number, ``Hellfire,'' in which the Gypsy-hating Frollo imagines he sees Esmeralda's seductive form gyrating from his fireplace, as he cries to heaven about how the devilish woman has bewitched him.

While the villainous Frollo is not the movie's only religious character (Notre Dame's Archdeacon, for example, is as kind and forgiving as Frollo is cruel), members of ``Hunchback's'' creative team acknowledge that the movie makes provocative points.

``Many of the themes that were relevant in the 1830s are relevant today,'' the movie's producer, Don Hahn, said at a press junket Sunday, before the Southern Baptist boycott was announced. ``The idea of a character like Frollo, who is outwardly very righteous and inside very twisted, is something that fascinated Victor Hugo.''

``Frollo is a tragic figure, rather than an out-and-out mindless villain,'' according to British actor Tony Jay, who voiced the character. ``He has reasons - you understand him, if not condone him. He's got weaknesses that are human. He's obsessed with power and ambition, and he's a religious zealot who believes that everything he does is God's will. Anybody that believes all that, of course, is doomed.''

Lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the words for ``Hellfire'' and several other religious-themed songs in the movie, does not believe that ``Hunchback'' is doomed in the eyes of religious conservatives - providing, of course, that they see it.

``People don't give members of the religious community quite as much credit as I think they deserve,'' said Schwartz, who wrote the Grammy-winning music for the stage show ``Godspell'' - which updated the Christ story to contemporary times. ``If they feel you've done something honest and thoughtful, they're actually very supportive.

``Things that I thought would be enormously controversial in `Godspell' were not just accepted, but embraced,'' Schwartz said. ``So I'd actually be surprised if there was a negative reaction (to `Hunchback').''

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Photo: The pious, persecution-prone Judge Claude Frollo, le ft, with Quasimodo, is ``a religious zealot who believes that everything he does is God's will. Anybody that believes all that, of course, is doomed,'' says actor Tony Jay, who provides the character's voice.