HEADS ROLL IN `RELIC,' BUT IT'S A GRISLY GUTTER BALL.

Byline: Desmond Ryan Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

The creature stalking the basements and tunnels beneath Chicago's Museum of Natural History in ``The Relic'' decapitates its prey and then eats choice parts of their brains. Its first victims must have been the four screenwriters.

There is no other rational explanation for the brain-dead content of a film whose slick, gruesome effects can't disguise writing and plotting of consistent sloppiness. Heads roll so often in ``The Relic'' that cult followers of Sam Peckinpah's ``Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia'' may feel threatened. In ``Alfredo Garcia,'' Warren Oates motored around Mexico with a head in a burlap sack and only a swarm of flies for company. The dialogue may have been a bit one-sided, but it was several cuts above anything heard in ``The Relic.''

Peter Hyams, normally a skilled hand when it comes to thrillers, casts restraint to the winds with the same abandon that the monster - a drooling creation from the king of creature features Stan Winston - tosses torsos and other body parts all over the screen. The power of the viewer to imagine beyond what is specifically shown is rarely tapped.

Perhaps Hyams recognized that wouldn't matter under the sorry circumstances set up by the screenplay, and went for broke. ``The Relic'' plays as a shopworn souvenir of better movies, notably the first two ``Alien'' pictures, last year's ``Species'' and ``Jaws.'' In ``Jaws,'' the establishment wanted the beaches kept open for business despite the presence of a great white shark. Here a museum must host an important fund-raising gala, and a few bodies piling up downstairs should not be allowed to interfere with the champagne and canapes.

Poor Penelope Ann Miller is the evolutionary biologist stuck with the hardly revolutionary premise. A shipment arrives from Brazil and, amid much mumbled jumbo and forays into DNA reminscent of a slow day at the first O.J. trial, we gradually learn the terrible secret that fostered the thing that dines on brains.

It's a diet that agrees with the creature, since he's demonstrably smarter than the other folks in the museum. In horror movie tradition, they are forever wandering into dark tunnels in the direction of ominous noises and foul smells.

Poor Tom Sizemore is the maverick detective who has to protect Miller and other guests trapped by sealed fire doors and bad lines from the script. Somehow he must meet the challenge of keeping his head when all about him are losing theirs.

Hyams remembers enough from the infinitely superior movies he has directed, such as ``Outland,'' to ratchet up the tension of individual moments. But ``The Relic'' is an exercise that deserves a head count more than a review.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Relic'' (R; monster violence and gore).

The stars: Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, James Whitmore and Audra Lindley.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Peter Hyams. Written by Amy Holden Jones, John Raffo, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Produced by Gale Anne Hurd and Sam Mercer. Released by Paramont Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 48 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Tom Sizemore plays detective Vincent D'Agnosta, who is investigating a series of gruesome murders in a natural history museum in ``The Relic.''