RAILSBACK IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK AGAIN IN ‘LIFEFORCE’

Steve Railsback is one actor for whom interesting things have long been forecast.

It started with CBS’ “Helter Skelter” in which he turned in a darkly compelling performance as Charles Manson. And it began again after his work in “The Stunt Man” with Peter O’Toole.

“Steve cannot fail to do well,” said O’Toole when that film was over. Richard Rush, who directed, agreed.

But “Helter Skelter” was made in 1976 and “The Stunt Man” in 1980. What’s happened since? Oh, he’s made some movies but none in which he could use his “coiled spring intensity” as one critic called it.

Now, however, another door has opened. Railsback, 37, is the undisputed star of a $22-million thriller, “Lifeforce,” directed by Tobe Hooper, the man who made “Poltergeist.” Dan O’Bannon, who scripted “Alien,” wrote this story with Don Jakoby.

Railsback, so often frustrated in the past in his search for good material, is understandably elated.

“I’ve just seen it,” he said the other day (the movie opens June 28) “and I think Tobe’s done a marvelous job. The special effects, too, are tremendous.”

The story, basically, is about a space exploration to check on Halley’s comet that appears only once every 76 years. En route the astronauts encounter an alien ship--150 miles long.

“It really is spectacular stuff,” Railsback said.

He met Hooper nine years ago and they always hoped to work together. So when Canon offered Hooper this, their biggest project to date, he insisted that Railsback should star.

Filmed in Britain, with the talented John Dykstra handling special visual effects, the movie was originally scheduled for 17 weeks. It went five weeks over. “The Canon people were great,” Railsback said. “All they told Tobe was: ‘Keep going.’ ”

Railsback, who made his first movie in 1971 (“The Visitors”) feels he has waited a long time for this--his biggest starring break.

“I did think things would start happening after ‘The Stunt Man’ ,” he said. “The critics all loved it but commercially it wasn’t the kind of movie that gets you parts. Richard Rush, who I consider a genius, hasn’t worked since. Though that’s probably by choice.

“I owe that man such a lot. Eighteen months before he got ‘The Stunt Man’ financed he offered me the role. During that time he had three chances to make the film with other actors but he never went back on his word. That’s pretty rare in this town, wouldn’t you say?”

MONEY BACK: Tony Curtis, who enjoyed a small flurry of attention seven years ago with a novel “Kid Andrew Cody and Julie Sparrow”--”I made $280,000 from it,” he told me proudly--immediately began a second book entitled “Star Struck.”

“It’s about Hollywood,” he told me, “and to make it seem more realistic I’m using real people’s names. I have Clark Gable eating in the commissary with Louella Parsons and Fred Astaire hurrying through his salad to get back on the set.”

What happened?

The other day in the Manhattan U. S. District Court Curtis was ordered to pay back a $50,000 advance from Doubleday who described the manuscript as “junk--pure and simple, so badly written that it could not even be edited into shape or even rewritten into shape. . . .”

FAMILIAR: One of Marlene Dietrich’s few remaining friends in show business is Van Johnson who is now planning to fly to Paris to see the reclusive legend at her Avenue Montaigne apartment.

What does he call her?

Marlene? Miss Dietrich? Neither. He calls her “Kraut.”

NOT SO HOT: Clio Goldsmith, the 28-year-old French actress who came here a couple of years ago with her movie “The Gift,” now has a leading role in a French TV series “Life Goes On.”

She doesn’t think much of it. Or of her chances of getting anywhere as an actress.

“I don’t have much talent,” she says. “I’m just a thin little woman with a pointed face leading a rather stupid life. . . .”

Hard to imagine a Hollywood actress talking like that--even if it were true.