‘CHRISTMAS’ ANGEL MIXES MESSAGES

What do you tell your kids to do if a stranger comes along and tries to start a conversation?

Simple. “Never talk to strangers.”

Now, what if a stranger comes along and says, “Hi, I’m an angel. I used to be a cowboy but I drowned trying to save a kid like you and now I live in heaven. Would you to like to go to the North Pole with me and meet my good friend Santa?”

That one is really simple. “Run and tell Mommy and Daddy and they will get the people with nets to come and take the stranger away.”

In Walt Disney’s “One Magic Christmas,” a G-rated movie that has grossed about $11 million since Nov. 22, there is an angel like this. His name is Gideon, and he has such magical power that you may not notice that he is dressed more like a guy out to flash a Camp Fire Girls’ bus than to whisk a tyke off to the North Pole.

In the movie, Gideon is the real McAngel. He can deflect hockey pucks with a simple lighting bolt. He can make letters dance right out of a mailbox. He can even turn back the hands of time.

But, as played in heavy overcoat by the leathery Harry Dean Stanton, he looks seedy, and some people are concerned that small children who see the movie will be encouraged to forget what their parents have told them about strangers.

“I can just see some guy following this up, going up to a child and saying, ‘I am an angel, come with me,’ ” says Kathy Grimes, who does volunteer work with sexually abused preschoolers in Long Beach. “A little child cannot differentiate the reality from the movie. If the man says he’s Gideon, the child may believe him.”

A Disney spokesman said there have been few complaints about “One Magic Christmas,” a Christmas Eve fantasy fashioned after Frank Capra’s classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The movie is in 827 theaters across the country and is scheduled to run through Christmas.

Grimes said she objects more to what the angel says in the movie than how he looks.

“His appearance doesn’t bother me,” she said. “Molesters generally aren’t seedy. They dress nicely. What I don’t like is that he asks the child to keep a secret and then to go somewhere with him. Those are the things we are desperately trying to get children not to do.”

Philip Borsos, the film’s director, said this particular issue wasn’t raised during the writing of the script, but that the film makers attempted to provide enough information about Gideon right away so children would know he was special, that he had supernatural powers.

“We of course didn’t set out to tell children that it’s OK to talk to strangers on the street,” he said, “and I don’t think any child who saw the movie would get that idea from it.

“I understand and sympathize with the problem. But if a child molester went to that length (imitating Gideon) to abduct a child, then he would go to any length. He could dress up as Ronald McDonald or Bozo the Clown or Frosty the Snowman.”

Borsos said he thinks the reaction to Gideon has more to do with the adult moviegoer’s perception of Harry Dean Stanton as a screen villain than anything else. The critics who wrote that Stanton’s appearance was more devil than angel might agree.

“I am annoyed and very angry at the perception of Harry Dean Stanton,” Borsos said. “He is a very sweet man.”

Borsos had originally cast Richard Farnsworth in the role of Gideon, but the film ran into financial problems and production was put off for a year. By then, Farnsworth was unavailable.

Grimes said she doesn’t think it matters who played Gideon. It’s the idea that kids would respond to a guy calling himself an angel.

“I happen to think it is a very good movie,” Grimes said. “I just think parents should know this information is in there and that if they’re going to take their kids to see it, they should reinforce what they’ve told them. No strangers. No angels.”

NOW PLAYING: “Brazil,” Terry Gilliam’s $15-million Orwellian fantasy, opens today in New York.

Universal Pictures, which announced Monday that it would give the film a one-week Academy Award-qualifying run in Los Angeles and New York starting Dec. 25, yesterday amended the opening in order to qualify the film for awards from the New York Film Critics Assn.

The New York critics meet today to pass judgment on the films of 1985 and only films with assured release dates during the calendar year can be considered. The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., which has no written eligibility rules for films, met Saturday and voted “Brazil” awards for best picture, best director and best screenplay.

Universal distribution head William Soady said Tuesday that “Brazil” will play for one week in New York’s Loew’s Twin. The film will open in Los Angeles next Wednesday in Mann’s Westwood and the Beverly Cineplex and will not be pulled after one week.

Soady said the studio will attempt to find a larger theater for “Brazil” in Los Angeles, but the movie is opening in the most crowded period of the year and none of the big theaters is available.

“Everybody wants the movie,” he said, “but the theaters are committed to big Christmas movies.”

OFF THE WALL: It hasn’t been a very good year for movies, but poster collectors shouldn’t complain.

In fact, 1985 produced two Art Deco posters that may become classics, and for those last-minute Christmas shoppers with movie lovers on their lists, they are ideas worth framing.

One, titled “Temple of Dreams,” is the first commemorative poster for the American Cinematheque, a concept devoted to the promotion of and devotion for good films that will be housed in the rebuilt Pan Pacific Auditorium on Beverly Boulevard.

The poster, designed by Edward Byrd and illustrated by Joe Beserra, reproduces the colorful streamline moderne facade of the Pan Pacific.

The five-color lithograph silkscreen “Temple of Dreams” costs $20, unframed, at the American Cinematheque offices at 10060 Sunset Blvd. Limited edition signed posters are $100.

Robert Hoppe’s lithograph poster for “A Chorus Line” is better than the movie . . . and the play. You don’t see many movie posters in fine arts galleries, but right now, you’ll find this one.

“A Chorus Line” was commissioned by Mirage Editions, a fine arts publisher in Santa Monica, in conjunction with Embassy Pictures, which financed the $25-million movie.

The unframed 17-color lithograph costs $60. The 250 signed lithographs, priced at $400, are sold out.

For information on “Chorus Line” posters, call Mirage Editions (213-450-1129).