VIDEO : MARKETERS COME UP WITH A CLASSIC IDEA.

Byline: Robert Bianco Special to the Daily News

See what Walt's wrought.

Disney may not have been the first company to sell videos, but it's certainly been the smartest. When the company decided to release its animated classics to the sell-through market, skeptics thought Disney was sacrificing a long-term asset for a short-term profit. Instead, Disney fueled an explosion in video sales and created a huge new audience for its future releases - and re-releases. By making the cartoons available for a short time only, it ensured there'd always be a ready audience for the next video go-round.

And whatever the ads may say, there will always be a next go-round. Any video you can launch, you can relaunch if the package is right.

Other companies have caught on to the Disney method: releasing films and then removing them from circulation to be released again. Sometimes they provide added incentives the second time around, like recovered footage or newly remastered prints - sometimes just a new box. The one thing you can count on is that the box will say ``classic,'' a video term-of-art that refers to any film made before 1995.

This trend toward the classics is nothing but good news for movie buffs, who have been patiently waiting for some unreleased old favorite, or who have watched some favorite old tape fray around the edges. These new collectors' series ensure the ready availability of some of Hollywood's best films, which might otherwise have been pushed off the shelves to make way for new releases. Now they are new releases.

The latest entrant into the classic-revival class is MGM/UA, which launches its Vintage Classics label for ``previously hard-to-find and formerly unavailable titles'' this week. Priced at $19.98, the Vintage releases come complete with the movie's original theatrical trailer.

Vintage makes its debut with four courtroom dramas: ``Witness for the Prosecution'' (1957), the Agatha Christie mystery starring Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power; ``Inherit the Wind'' (1960), starring Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, and in a rare dramatic role, the late Gene Kelly; ``Judgment at Nuremberg'' (1961), with Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland (the only one of the four releases also available in letter-box format); and ``12 Angry Men'' (1957) with Henry Fonda, which was recently revived in Los Angeles as ``12 Angry People.'' What, you think repackaging is limited to videos?

At MCA/Universal, the classics line is known as Universal Cinema Classics. Its current releases also include original theatrical trailers, and sell for $14.98.

Unlike the four MGM releases, however, which were all previously available on video, the four Universal Cinema Classic releases are video debuts. Probably the most eagerly awaited of the four is ``The Blue Dahlia'' (1946), which features a script by Raymond Chandler (his first original screenplay) and a starring appearance by one of the definitive film-noir screen teams, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

The other three classics are, well, a little less classic. ``Singapore'' (1947) is built on the unlikely teaming of Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner as long-lost lovers separated by crime and amnesia. If the Far East doesn't appeal to you, Universal is also releasing the 1956 remake of ``Singapore,'' ``Istanbul,'' which stars Errol Flynn and Cornell Borchers. If you take only a quick glance at the picture on ``Istanbul's'' box, you may think Flynn's co-star is Ingrid Bergman, which is why it pays to take more than a quick glance.

The final Cinema Classic release is Charlie Chaplin's last film, ``A Countess From Hong Kong'' (1967), a misguided romantic comedy burdened by the decidedly unromantic pairing of Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando. Despite the talents involved, ``Countess'' has pretty much always been considered a bomb - which means someone out there is about to declare it an undiscovered classic. Come to think of it, I guess Universal just did.

The week's last classic is the previously unreleased ``Boomerang!'' (1947, Fox Video, $19.98), which joins the Fox Video's Studio Classic Collection. Directed by Elia Kazan, the movie stars Dana Andrews as a district attorney who begins to doubt the guilt of the man who's confessed to the crime. ``Boomerang!'' was based on actual events, which makes it a precursor of TV's true-crime melodramas - but don't hold that against it.

Elsewhere in video:

In the early '60s, for reasons that are not quite clear, schools all over America showed the Oscar-winning 1956 French film ``The Red Balloon,'' leaving many boomers with fond, if vague, memories of the film. It's now available in a remastered version from Public Media Home Video for $14.95. To get the full effect, however, you probably have to get your local principal to run it for you in the auditorium.

I'm sure ``Seven'' (1995, Turner, priced for rental) is a very well-made film. I'm also sure I don't want to see it. If I want gruesome murder on my TV, I'll watch the nightly news.

MEMO: Robert Bianco's column appears on Fridays.

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Photo: Among the repackaged classics hitting stores this we ek is ``Inherit the Wind'' (1960), a dramatic re-enactment of 1925's Scopes Monkey Trial, starring Spencer Tracy, left, and Fredric March.