OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD SUCCESS IN SCI-FI LAND\Fantasy films blast off at the box office, fueled by the genre's\devotees.

Byline: Steven Rea Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

On a Wednesday in May 1977, George Lucas stood opposite the fabled Mann's Chinese theater and watched a line of people four abreast snake down Hollywood Boulevard.

The director of "American Graffiti" assumed that a studio premiere was imminent, celebs ready to alight from limos into a hubbub of flashing bulbs.

He was wrong: The queue of excited fans was there for the first show on the opening day of "Star Wars." Even Lucas, the film's creator, hadn't anticipated the kind of reaction the rollicking sci-fi adventure was destined to generate.

There had been little publicity about "Star Wars," partly because the studio itself had only the vaguest clues as to what the finished movie would look like. "But the word had got out to the science-fiction and fantasy enthusiasts."

Today, "Star Wars" is the third-biggest moneymaker in Hollywood history - behind two other science-fiction titles: "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and "Jurassic Park."

Few audiences are as intense as sci-fi fans, or as independent. Their disregard for mainstream movie reviews, studio hype and big-name casting makes them inscrutable to some industry analysts, who consider sci-fi enthusiasts the loose cannons of the filmgoing world.

Last year saw "Species" - in which a leggy superbabe transmogrifies into a tentacled ooze-monster from another galaxy - score big both with critics and at the box office. And "StarGate," an old-fashioned time-travel yarn with Kurt Russell in search of an Egyptian godhead, came from nowhere in late 1994 to gross more than $200 million worldwide. The fact that both films had low star-wattage and directors without a track record in the genre was irrelevant to fans.

The sci-fi trend continues in 1996. Three weeks ago, "12 Monkeys," Terry Gilliam's viral holocaust fantasy, opened nationally with grosses that made it No. 1 at the box office. Its receipts have now topped $40 million, and the Golden Globe win for co-star Brad Pitt promises to keep the momentum going, surprising those who deemed "12 Monkeys" too dark and complicated for mainstream audiences.

Friday, another sci-fi adventure - "Screamers," a 21st-century tale of techno-carnage on a planet called Sirius 6B - opened on 1,600 screens. "RoboCop's" Peter Weller is the sole name star of the film, whose director, Christian Duguay, is a Quebecer with a resume that includes the low-budget horror sequels "Scanners II" and "III." Yet there's a sense among many in the business that "Screamers," which has generated terrific word of mouth since it was screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September, could break out to a wide audience.

"Screamers," despite its horror-movie title ("I hate the title," laments director Duguay), comes with a strong pedigree. Like sci-fi hits "Blade Runner" and "Total Recall," "Screamers" is based on a story by cult novelist Phillip K. Dick. And Dan O'Bannon, who scripted "Alien" and "Total Recall," co-wrote the screenplay.

If "Screamers" does turn into a big event, murmurs of surprise inevitably will follow.

"Why it's considered bewildering when a science-fiction film succeeds in the marketplace is bewildering in itself," said one studio marketing executive. "Science fiction always figures in the box office. Look at the top 10 money-earners of all time: 'E.T.,' 'Star Wars,' 'The Empire Strikes Back.' ... There's an automatic cachet."

"Time and time again, the box office has proved that there is an insatiable appetite for good sci-fi films," agreed Gerry Rich, president of worldwide marketing for MGM/UA, responsible for "StarGate" and "Species."

The core audience for sci-fi films - the "enthusiasts" who lined up for Lucas' "Star Wars" on opening day - is a market that Rich tapped when his studio was readying "StarGate" for release. MGM marketers set up one of the first dedicated sites for a film on the Internet, luring hordes of cyber-jockeying sci-fi fans with an on-line "StarGate" campaign. (Executives at Fox plan to use the same strategy for "StarGate" director Roland Emmerich's "Independence Day," an aliens-invade-Earth epic set for July 4.)

To lay the groundwork for "Screamers," Triumph execs have primed the core sci-fi audience with teaser reels, T-shirts and testimonials on the science-fiction convention circuit - a network of confabs where fans and filmmakers discuss the latest genre fare, from comic book-spawned superheroes to sequels of cult classics such as John Carpenter's "Escape From L.A.," which is due this summer.

"It's the only niche (movie) market where the fans are organized almost to the same extent that aviation fans or automobile fans are organized," said a studio consultant who specializes in reaching such groups. "There's not a single other niche that has this kind of fan base, that is so in touch with each other.

"Here are 3 (million) to 4 million people that, through magazines and on-line services, communicate passionately with each other. ... It gives you a wonderful army of people that you can tap fairly easily.

"But they also can smell a phony. They can smell hype; they know when they're being ripped off. They know when they're being exploited, and those are the films that they tend to backlash on."

Take, for example, "Judge Dredd." Sylvester Stallone's futuristic, comic book-inspired special-effects debacle was one of the costliest flops of 1995. Likewise, the cyberpunk thrillers "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Strange Days" fared dismally.

The "cybershock films," said Martin Grove, film analyst for the Hollywood Reporter and CNN, "were tough to market because the films themselves were not well-defined." And the emphasis on hardware and technology, he added, left audiences cold.

As for "Judge Dredd," "Stallone, a big star, spent most of the movie with his face covered by a mask," noted Grove.

"The material went through rewrite after rewrite. Usually, projects that get bogged down in years and years of reworking never seem to really come to life. They wind up being the product of so many different points of view - you know, committee work."

"Screamers," too, has a long history: Executive producer Chuck Fries first optioned the Dick story, "Second Variety," in the early '80s. But Duguay and Weller have, says the director, maintained the original vision of the Dick tale, about a species of blade-wielding killing creatures on a dying mining planet.

"The story of a man-made species that evolves to the point where it turns against its creator is a concept that's been used before," conceded Duguay. "But I think we've applied a whole philosophy of human values around it.

"People tend to associate science fiction mainly with new technologies, with man's loss of control over the technology. ... But we've tried to examine the human values behind it and not just exploit the flashy visible aspects. ... The matte paintings and special effects illustrate the dramatic content instead of just being there as an eye-pleasing backdrop."

Producer Charles Roven, enjoying the success of his "12 Monkeys" - which has wall-to-wall eye-pleasing backdrops - agrees that to succeed, science fiction must have an essential human component.

Roven is a big fan of William Gibson, the cyberpunk author behind "Johnny Mnemonic," "but certainly his works are very difficult to translate." Roven knows: His Atlas Entertainment is developing Gibson's book "Count Zero" for Turner Pictures.

"I think that no matter what genre of film you're dealing with," said Roven, "whether it's science-fiction or comedy, the most important thing it needs to have from an audience is a genuine affection for the characters.

"What I hope that we were successful in doing with '12 Monkeys' was presenting characters whose goals are the kind that people can relate to. Or characters, if you're seeing the film through their eyes, who you feel sympathy for.

"Everybody tries to reach that in their films. I don't think that anybody sets out to make a film with the intention of alienating audiences. But sometimes we're more successful, you know, and sometimes we're less successful. And it seems to be that we've been successful here."

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Photo (1--3) Above left, a tyrannosaurus gets much too close for Sam Neill's comfort in the 1993 blockbuster "Jurassic Park." Audiences flocked to theaters to see Henry Thomas bond with an extraterrestrial, top right, in 1982's "E.T." Above right, a female alien needs a date in the worst way in last year's "Species." (4) Carrie Fisher and robot pal R2D2 escape villains in 1977's outer-space action drama "Star Wars." (5) Trying to track the source of a killer virus, Bruce Willis time-travels from 2035 to 1996 in the current box-office hit "12 Monkeys."