1ST CASUALTIES LISTED IN CHRISTMAS MOVIE WARS

Normally, the casualties from Hollywood’s annual Christmas deluge of films don’t start showing up until sometime around Christmas, after one or two films have established themselves as hits and another dozen or so are trying to figure out what hit them.

This year, attrition has already set in. Four full weeks before Thanksgiving--when the first of the holiday movies will be released--the field has already been trimmed by about one-third.

Instead of having a choice of 14 or 15 major studio movies in wide national release, moviegoers this year will have only 10. Instead of each major studio bringing out two movies, which has been the recent pattern, most are banking on just one.

“You really have two weeks to make it during Christmas, and that’s it,” says Orion Pictures’ Irwin Yablans, explaining why the studio decided to pull its Tim Conway comedy, “The Longshot,” out of Christmas and skip the season altogether.

“If you don’t have a huge picture, you can get lost before anyone knows you’re out there,” Yablans says. “We think we have a better chance with ‘The Longshot’ after the holidays.”

In the past few years, the studios have gone after Christmas as if it were a marathon instead of a sprint, and learned that a bad start can mean no finish. They spent millions buying into a crowded TV commercial period, hoping to get out front in a race where the stakes are high whether you win or lose.

Last year’s winner, “Beverly Hills Cop,” went on to gross more than $200 million, while most of the others were merely bodies thrown in front of Eddie Murphy’s truck.

“I think ‘Cop’ finally convinced the studios that Christmas is a sucker’s bet,” says one studio marketing executive. “No matter how good a movie you think you’ve got, you can’t protect yourself in two weeks against a phenomenon like that.”

Competition doesn’t explain all the dropouts on the schedule. Universal’s “The Money Pit,” a Steven Spielberg-produced romantic comedy starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long, seems perfect holiday fare. But the studio pulled it two weeks ago amid rumors that it was in need of major re-editing.

Columbia had earlier announced it was postponing the release of Richard Pryor’s “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling,” again amid rumored production problems.

Despite the thinner field--or perhaps because of it--the mood at both the exhibition and studio levels is upbeat. “Rocky IV” and “Jewel of the Nile” (the sequel to “Romancing the Stone”) are regarded as sure moneymakers, and many people think that the Dan Aykroyd/Chevy Chase comedy “Spies Like Us” may prove to be the biggest hit of all.

“101 Dalmations” should do the usual $20 million Disney has come to expect from re-issues of its animated classics, and if “Santa Claus the Movie” is any good at all, it has to do well. Parents with young children--a vast target audience that is generally ignored by Hollywood--may find the “true story” of Santa irresistible.

Then there is “Out of Africa,” a romantic drama starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, director Sydney Pollack’s first film since “Tootsie,” and reportedly the first legitimate four-hanky weeper since “Terms of Endearment.”

The only rap against “Out of Africa” is that it skews toward older audiences, a marketing hoodoo that didn’t seem to hurt “Terms” or “On Golden Pond,” both of which cleaned up at Christmas.

The other four national releases are:

“Enemy Mine,” Wolfgang Petersen’s $30-million science-fiction yarn about a pair of rival space jockeys (Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett Jr.) who crash land on a hostile planet.

“White Nights,” Taylor Hackford’s social drama about two dancers--an American expatriate (Gregory Hines) and a Russian defector (Mikhail Baryshnikov)--who try to get out of Moscow without having to do an Iron Curtain call. (The movie opens in limited release in mid-November, then goes wide at Christmas.)

“Clue,” a comedy whodunit based on the board game.

“Young Sherlock Holmes,” a palship movie about the young Holmes and the young Watson, directed by Barry Levinson (“Diner,” “The Natural”) for executive producer Steven Spielberg.

NO NEWS BEFORE ITS TIME: The Directors Guild of America is playing its own “Third Man” theme while preparing for Saturday’s posthumous tribute to Orson Welles.

The DGA has lined up about 20 guest speakers for the tribute, which also will include clips from several of Welles’ films, but the guild’s public relations firm, insisting that it is acting on orders from the DGA, has decided to keep the list a mystery until the right moment.

“We’re going to put all the names out at one time,” said Rick Claussen, of Warn, Claussen, Glaub and Associates in North Hollywood. “They (the DGA) want to keep control on this.”

The tribute, which is free to the public, will begin at 2 p.m. at the Directors Guild theater, 7950 Sunset Blvd.

NECKING: Imagine Dracula in a sushi bar. Or windsurfing the breakers near the Santa Monica Pier. Or strolling among the weirdos on Hollywood Boulevard.

Would anybody notice?

We’ll find out when “Love at Second Bite: Dracula Comes to Hollywood” reaches our local theaters late next year. Producer George Schlatter, who has one of the best (one of the few?) senses of humor in Hollywood, has signed George Hamilton to reprise his role in the 1978 vampire spoof “Love at First Bite.”

Robert Kaufman, who wrote the original script, is writing the sequel now, says Schlatter, and the film will go into production next spring. Schlatter says he hopes to reunite as many of the key “First Bite” figures as possible, including director Stan Dragoti and actress Susan Saint James, who played the count’s main squeeze in “First Bite.”

“Second Bite” will bring Dracula to Hollywood from New York, Schlatter says, and get him involved in everything from health clubs to the film business, and in contact with people who make blood-sucking seem like kid stuff.

“Dracula really abhors anything seedy,” Schlatter says. “He has impeccable tastes. He just has this one annoying habit.”