AMID OLD `ALIEN' ROT, SOME NEW ICKINESS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Just when you thought there were no new wrinkles to squeeze out of the ``Alien'' franchise, some very sick imaginations have brought fresh, demented riffs to the old rot.

Essentially a remake of the first film, ``Alien Resurrection'' gets its kick by dredging up all the series' underlying ickiness about reproduction and maternal instincts running riot.

With an insane script from TV's master of genre satire, ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer's'' Joss Whedon, and France's lover of baroque perversity Jean-Pierre Jeunet (``Delicatessen,'' ``City of Lost Children'') at the helm, this fourth entry mixes the chase-and-eviscerate basics with ``I-can't-believe-we're-doing-another-one-of-these'' humor.

The latter works much better when it's visualized (Brad Dourif as an alien-breeding lab rat who looks alarmingly apt trying to mimic the monsters' facial expressions) than when verbalized (too many clever quips leech tension out of life-and-death predicaments).

But the really shrewd moves here involve Ripley's new relationship with the aliens - and with everyone else. As you'll recall, she incinerated herself at the end of the last movie, taking the baby brood queen forming inside her chest along with her.

Two hundred years later, a bunch of military scientists successfully clone both Ripley and her passenger back to life. The alien queen is quickly extracted, the better to start stamping out the supersoldier insectoid things that these techno-creeps always want to control and exploit. On the evilest scientist's whim, the now useless Ripley is allowed to live, too, though she's hardly her old self and must be kept in semi-isolation aboard a massive, orbiting space pen.

This turns out to be bad news for everyone in the movie, but immensely good news for Sigourney Weaver. With a little alien DNA coursing through her genes and a set of social behaviors only partially relearned, Ripley is transformed into a deadpan, if chilling force of basic instinct. Weaver has a field day playing this atavistic creature for all the nasty fun she's worth. And when Ripley has to deal with the most bizarre emotional situations - a traumatic introduction to her less successful test-tube ``sisters,'' the nagging urge to mother her worst enemies - Weaver keeps it compelling with strong but economical strokes.

The feminine impulse stuff gets even more complicated when undercover alien-killer Call (Winona Ryder) comes on board, pretending to be part of a motley smuggling crew. Daughter/killer/lover vibes bounce between her and Ripley from their first encounter, and Call has secrets that, once revealed, call the natures of what's really human and alien into further question.

But enough about the really interesting stuff here. Jeunet stages the gore with copious, slime-oozing aplomb. He dreams up adequately clever variations on tired cliffhanger motifs and composes a pretty impressive underwater nail-biter. As always, a new monster emerges from the bloody muck, and it might be the most imaginatively compelling mutation of all.

Try as they might, though, Jeunet and Whedon can't disguise the fact that the basics of any ``Alien'' movie are the same as in all of the others. The chest-bursting, the double-toothy maws, the industrial future claustrophobia; this is where some real mutant imagination needs to be applied if we must go on one of these death trips again.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Alien Resurrection'' (R; violence, language, nudity).

The stars: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya, J.E. Freeman, Michael Wincott and Brad Dourif.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Written by Joss Whedon. Produced by Bill Badalato, Gordon Carroll, David Giler and Walter Hill. Released by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: One hour, 49 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: In pursuit of the fleeing crew, the alien creature swims through the ship's submerged galley in ``Alien Resurrection.''