HAVE NO FEAR : EXPERTS CONTEND THAT SCARY RIDES, CREEPY STORIES ACTUALLY CAN BE GOOD FOR KIDS.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Space invaders lay waste to the White House.

A hideously deformed misfit haunts a Paris cathedral.

Man-eating lizards swoop down on a raft filled with helpless human prey.

Just your basic, wholesome childhood fantasies right?

Apparently, yes. And if you believe Phil Hettema, such seemingly horrific fare may in fact be healthy for young minds.

``This stuff has probably been controversial since the Brothers Grimm wrote their stories, but that's what storytelling is all about,'' says Hettema, senior vice president of attraction development for Universal Studios Hollywood.

As the summer gets under way, Southern California kids are, as usual, being inundated with visions of mayhem, menace and grotesquerie. From amusement park attractions like Universal's new Jurassic Park ride to movie blockbusters such as Disney's ``The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' and the PG-13-rated aliens epic ``Independence Day,'' there's no shortage of raw material for a year's worth of prepubescent nightmares.

Yet as head of the team that developed the Jurassic Park ride (which opens Friday to the general public), Hettema asserts that fear can be not only fun for children and adolescents, but therapeutic as well.

While parents, educators and media watchdogs wring their hands over contemporary kiddie entertainment, a case can be made that dark subject matter helps children tame their inner demons and resolve universal fears of abandonment, death and annihilation.

That principle may apply no less to the slickly packaged, $100 million Jurassic Park ride than to hoary tales like ``Little Red Riding Hood,'' movie classics like ``Bambi'' or prize-winning modern children's fiction such as Maurice Sendak's ``Where the Wild Things Are.''

``I think one of the things that's sorely lacking in our society is places to let (children's) imaginations roam,'' says Hettema. Amusement park rides can be ``a form of escapism,'' he adds, but they also are cathartic, especially for kids.

Robert Butterworth, a Los Angeles-based child psychologist, agrees that children can be psychologically fortified by facing their phobias in the safe, controlled environments of amusement parks and cineplexes. As evidence, Butterworth remembers his own father putting him on the dreaded Parachute ride at Coney Island.

``I survived it, and in some ways it's a rite of passage,'' Butterworth says.

Judy Collins, co-owner of Creative Play Resources, a Northridge children's bookstore, says she used to take her children to Universal Studios to help them grasp that movie monsters are only make-believe, and not harmful.

``They (children) can take more than you think they can take, but you just sort of have to be there to guide them through it,'' Collins says.

Perhaps the most influential voice for exposing kids to the monsters of the id was Bruno Bettelheim, the late Austrian author and psychologist.

In ``The Uses of Enchantment,'' his class study of fairy tales, Bettelheim argued that scary stories allow kids to flex their imaginations and master the most primitive human needs and anxieties: the fear of being thought worthless, the fear of being left alone and the fear of being destroyed by more powerful beings, whether giants, T-rexes or, yes, Mommy and Daddy.

Bettelheim also stressed that children learn more from ancient narratives and archetypal characters - the evil stepmother, the simpleton, the knight in shining armor - than from well-meaning modern children's books that strive to be reassuring.

But Universal's Hettema suggests that kids aren't the only ones who can benefit from confronting their inner Ultrasauruses. Adults, too, may find release in Jurassic Park, which climaxes in a swift drop down an 84-foot chute.

``There aren't a lot of places where adults can do what kids need to do, which is to let go and be a kid again,'' he says. ``It's fun to let yourself believe and let yourself be scared, and let go when you scream on the way down.''

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Drawing: (color) no caption (scary images from movies inc luding Wicked Witch of the West, dinosaurs, Frankenstein)

Jon Gerung/Daily News