SIGOURNEY SCORNS A SCI-FI MOVIE TRADITION

Telepathic lunar cat ladies in black leotards with plunging necklines and fetching little chokers. Martian girls in blue satin mini-skirts. A female Earthling taking to the stars in short-shorts. Zsa Zsa Gabor as a Venusian (with Hungarian accent) in a slit-skirt gown.

Velcome, dahhhhlings, to outer space--as depicted by Hollywood in the ‘50s.

The images grew more eye-popping in the ‘60s when Mamie Van Doren shimmied into view in “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women” (1968). (Genre voyeurs will recognize this one as the 1962 Russian entry “Planet of Storms,” with additional footage shot by then-fledgling film maker Peter Bogdanovich.) As one British critic mused of Van Doren’s role of “a telepathic amphibian native Venerian in sea-shell bra”: “It’s not the sort of thing you see too often.”

Also getting a lot of exposure, at the time, was an extremely fit Jane Fonda (with piles of flowing blond hair) flitting and flirting about the year 40,000 in “Barbarella” (1968).

There she was (based on the character from the erotic comic strip by France’s Jean Claude Forest), shorting out a Pleasure Machine, engaging in sex (by touching fingertips!) with revolutionary David Hemmings, trapped in the evil queen’s Chamber of Dreams and fending off people-eating dolls. And still she found the time to wear slinky, see-through costumes (with boots), and to do a mean anti-gravity striptease.

So what’s with Sigourney Weaver?

Compared to her antecedent sisters, the hero of “Alien” and now “Aliens,” is drab.

Never once does Weaver--a.k.a. Ripley--so much as squeeze into a flouncy gown. (We’d hardly know she had a figure, were it not for two brief scenes in her undies as she gets in and out of her deep-sleep chamber.) All she packed were some utilitarian jump suits .

Sure, she’s got more to think about than fashion. Returning to the planet that claimed the lives of her crew companions can’t be easy. Along with memories of the alien, she’s got the fate of 60 or so mysteriously missing families to consider.

But does that mean she should shunt aside tradition?

Even in the midst of a Venusian rebellion, Zsa Zsa kept her perfect French roll perfect.

Despite the lunar travails (including giant spiders) of “Cat Women of the Moon” (1954), Marie Windsor found the time to pull out her compact.

Then there was that final shot of scientist Faith Domergue in “This Island Earth” (1955), as she snuggled into co-star Rex Reason. Her lustrous make-up, complete with full, red lips, gave no hint that she’d survived a tumble in a river, an unexpected journey to the planet Metaluma, explosions caused by the warring Zahgons, a nick-of-time escape from Metaluma just before it exploded and even an attack by a gigantic mutant with an exposed brain.

Domergue may not have been the screen’s most convincing scientist--but she knew grooming.

Ripley, on the other hand, appears to have left her cosmetic bag back home with Jonesey, her cat. Her face, shown in lots of close-ups, seems devoid of make-up. (We can even see the pores in her skin.) Not even a dab of mascara!

And her short, tousled hair cut looks, well, short and tousled. It also looks, suspiciously, like one of those cuts that women give themselves when they’re upset about something.

No wonder Ripley returns home without Mr. Right.

True, she found an ally in a colonial marine (Michael Biehn). But, unlike her older sisters, she never gets to faint and be rescued by him and swept up into his arms. Heck, she winds up rescuing him --and gets him safely to the escape ship.

Then, with only 19 minutes to go (the whole planet is a ticking bomb!), she really goes into action, strapping together a pair of awesome guns and descending into the bowels of the LV-46 compound to save Carrie Henn, the youngster who brings out Ripley’s mighty maternal instincts.

Still later, after the two have presumably blasted away to safety, Ripley goes mano a mano against the biggest, baddest alien of them all--the one that’s been laying all those deadly eggs.

What ensues is a battle of the Hot (tempered) Mamas, with Ripley daring to tell the massive crustacean, who’s menacing the girl, “Get away from her, you bitch!”

The audience loves that moment. And the “girl fight” that follows.

“I can handle myself.”

That’s what Ripley tells one of her colleagues, following her first lesson on the how-tos of artillery. (We excuse her ignorance. . . . Before turning Rambette, her expertise was as warrant officer on a salvage ship.)

As it turns out, neither she nor this movie are kidding. Delivered with jolts of realism--including squishy state-of-the-art gore--it’s light years away from its sci-fi ancestors, campy and otherwise.

That sort of lets Ripley off the hook.

With so many bullets, so much bloodshed and the resulting body count (human and alien), a girl simply doesn’t have time anymore to adhere to all the traditions.

Still, you’d think she could have at least worked in that old stand-by--a hair-raising scream. Just for old times’ sake.