MCCORMICK'S QUICK TAKES: HUMAN TRUTHS STRANGER THAN FICTION.

Blade Runner (Columbia, 1982). In Ridley Scott's violent and smoky blend of post-apocalyptic sci-fi and hard-boiled film noir, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is an ex-cop conscripted to hunt down and destroy Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and four other runaway cyborgs that have come back to Earth in search of their maker and a little revenge. Along the way, Deckard--a Philip Marlowe clone complete with trench coat, gravelly voice-over, and a taste for single malt scotch--falls for an angelic looking android (Sean Young) who thinks she's a real live girl and is forced to recognize both the all-too-human passions of his robotic prey and the less-than-humane sympathies of their Homo sapien creators.

In the end, humanity seems to be less a question of wiring or DNA and more a matter of the heart. * * *

The Stepford Wives (Columbia, 1975). Imagine a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Valley of the Dolls, and you've got a general sense of Ira Levin and William Goldman's chilling sci-fi thriller about two suburban wives trapped in a Connecticut village where all the other women suffer from a chronic case of mindless marital bliss.

Katharine Ross and Paula Prentiss can't figure why they're the only wives in Stepford who aren't reading articles on 1,000 ways to please their hubbies or don't act like someone put Valium in the water supply.

Levin, who terrified us with Rosemary's Baby and/he Boys From Brazil, spins a monstrous fable about a men's club that turns women into sex objects in ways not even Hugh Hefner ever imagined. * * *

Toy Stray 2 (Buena Vista, 1999). In Pixar and Disney's original computer-animated comedy, Woody (Tom Hanks) was a charming and incredibly lifelike plaything that finds itself discarded from the top of the toy pile when he's displaced by the latest cool toy from Hasbro or Mattel. A child's love, Woody discovers, may not be for ever--at least if you're a creature with a wooden head.

This time out, Woody is on the receiving end of some pretty different affections when a greedy toy collector spots what he believes is a prize collectable. Valued only for the cash he can bring in, our oak-brained cowboy is kidnapped and has to be rescued by a toy box full of friends, who, it seems, know more about steadfast love than any of the computer-generated humans in this film. * * *

2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM, 1968). Stanley Kubrick's film version of Arthur Clarke's short story raises many more questions (several of them religious and metaphysical) about human nature and intelligence than it answers, which may explain an appeal that has endured long after its best special effects were transcended by Star Wars and other sci-fi flicks.

Humans, it seems, are the violent tool-making descendants of chimps--and the progenitors of soulless and murdering computers. Or are we star-children on the verge of evolving into E.T.'s cousins? What is clear is that humanity's intelligence has been a two-edged sword and that technology will not redeem us unless we make sure it is humane. * * * 1/2