VIDEO : BIG MONTH FOR OLDIES BUT GOODIES.

Byline: John Hartl Seattle Times

The highest-profile vintage films on tape this month are Disney's ``The Jungle Book,'' which arrived in stores Tuesday ($27 per cassette), and the anniversary restorations of ``Dirty Dancing'' (LIVE, $20) and ``Cabaret'' (Warner Home Video, $20), which are coming later this month.

All have been immensely successful before on videotape and will probably clean up again. But there's also a hefty list of older movies that are making their video debuts in October.

Perhaps the most requested one is Michael Powell's 1946 British fantasy, ``Stairway to Heaven,'' which is called ``A Matter of Life and Death'' in England. Reminiscent of ``Here Comes Mr. Jordan'' and ``A Guy Called Joe,'' it stars David Niven as a romantic World War II pilot who believes he's been to heaven after bailing out of his plane without a parachute. Columbia TriStar's $20 tape, which is out on Oct. 14, was made from the recent theatrical restoration presented by Martin Scorsese.

Also new from Columbia on Oct. 14 is a much nastier piece of work: Jack Garfein's 1957 drama, ``The Strange One'' (also $20), starring Ben Gazzara as Jocko De Paris, a sadistic cadet officer who rules a Southern military academy through intimidation and abuse. George Peppard is his chief opponent. Based on the Calder Willingham novel, ``End as a Man,'' which was inspired by Willingham's own experiences at military school, it was once advertised as ``the first picture filmed entirely by a cast and technicians from The Actors' Studio, New York.''

Several years before they co-starred in ``The English Patient,'' Ralph Fiennes played Heathcliff and Juliette Binoche was Cathy in a British production of Emily Bronte's ``Wuthering Heights'' that covered more of the novel than the 1939 Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon version. It's rental-priced from Paramount on Oct. 14.

A couple of Eric Rohmer's early shorts are new from Fox Lorber Home Video, which is releasing ``The Girl at the Monceau Bakery'' (1962) and ``Suzanne's Career'' (1963) on one $80 cassette that runs 78 minutes. They were the first in a series of six ``Moral Tales'' that later included such classic Rohmer features as ``La Collectioneuse'' (1966), the Oscar-nominated ``My Night at Maud's'' (1969), ``Claire's Knee'' (1970) and ``Chloe in the Afternoon'' (1972). Fox Lorber is reissuing them for $20 apiece.

Also new this month are a couple of compilations: ``The Unknown Marx Brothers'' (Fox Lorber, $20), made up of film clips, interviews home movies and outtakes, and ``The Lumiere Brothers' First Films'' (Kino on Video, $50), an hourlong look at the pioneering French filmmakers who created 85 shorts between 1895 and 1897.

Although the Lumieres are identified mostly with brief documentaries of trains and factory workers, this tape demonstrates that they were also making the first comedies and suspense films. The narrator, Bertrand Tavernier, sometimes gets carried away with his praise of the ``great beauty'' and ``tremendous movement'' in these little films, but his enthusiasm is contagious.

Available on laser disc only: ``The Lubitsch Touch'' (MCA Home Video, $190), a five-disc boxed set made up of seven feature films Lubitsch directed at Paramount in the early 1930s. None has been released on tape or disc before, not even such classic comedies as ``Trouble in Paradise,'' with Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins as Parisian jewel thieves, and ``Design For Living,'' starring Hopkins, Gary Cooper and Fredric March in a 1933 adaptation of Noel Coward's racy play about a menage-a-trois.

Also included are Lubitsch's witty contribution to the compilation film, ``If I Had Million''; the 1930 comedy, ``Monte Carlo,'' featuring the irrepressible Jack Buchanan; ``The Love Parade,'' an operetta that earned an Oscar nomination for best picture of 1929; ``One Hour With You,'' which was nominated for best picture of 1932; and ``The Smiling Lieutenant,'' an early Claudette Colbert picture that has been legally unavailable for decades. It's the kind of laser-only package that keeps laser fans from being tempted by DVD, which is primarily blockbuster-driven at this point.

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Photo

Photo: Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche portray Heathcliff and Cathy in a British production of Emily Bronte's ``Wuthering Heights.''