ENTRIES IN THE HOLIDAY FILM DERBY

Using horse racing vernacular is a cheap and trivial way to preview the Christmas movie season. But the flag is up, the horses are on the track, the studio honchos and exhibitors are wringing their hands in the club-house, and here we go.

“Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” half of a powerful entry from Paramount Pictures, is by all insiders’ accounts the odds-on favorite to finish first among the 14 features going into wide national release between now and Christmas.

“The Voyage Home,” the second episode directed by Leonard Nimoy, has a time warp twist--the crew of the Starship Enterprise somehow lands in contemporary San Francisco--that has been irresistible to preview audiences and the movie figures to become the biggest moneymaker of the four “Star Trek” features. “The Voyage Home” opens Wednesday to take advantage of the long Thanksgiving holiday and will not look back. (Unless it wants to take one last look at “Solarbabies,” an MGM/UA science-fiction film that also opens Wednesday, after a couple of postponements.)

Most industry insiders are placing a big question mark next to Paramount’s other entry, “The Golden Child,” starring Eddie Murphy. It is Murphy’s first film since “Beverly Hills Cop,” which ran away from the rest of the Christmas field two years ago.

Paramount discovered Murphy’s box-office appeal as the odd-man-in (the con man who becomes a cop’s sidekick in “48 HRS.,” a low-life who gets to live like a millionaire in “Trading Places” and a street-wise Detroit cop in uptight Beverly Hills in “Beverly Hills Cop”). “The Golden Child,” starring Murphy as a Los Angeles man accidentally mistaken for an Eastern Messiah, would seem to be in that tradition.

But eyewitnesses say the film’s emphasis is on special effects and that comparisons with “Best Defense,” an early Eddie Murphy film that did poor box-office business are inevitable.

Nevertheless, “The Golden Child” will be one of the season’s top moneymakers and will help assure Paramount the dominant share of the season’s enormous purse. What a year Paramount is having! With “Top Gun,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee” and its two Christmas movies, the studio could end up having five of the year’s Top 10-grossing films.

It’s been a strange year for movie exhibitors. During the first seven months, business was way off. For the last four, it has been way up. To say that they have a case of nerves over what the rest of the year holds is to misdiagnose panic.

Beyond Paramount’s apparent sure-fire hits, the handicapping of this season’s field gets tough. There is a Clint Eastwood film, and that usually means big holiday business. Nobody can shoot energy into a leaden box office like Dirty Harry, or make audiences and exhibitors laugh together like Philoe Beddoe (the fistic brawler with the orangutan sidekick).

But “Heartbreak Ridge,” about a troubled Marine hero who takes his final tour of duty in Korea whipping a sloppy platoon into shape, is an Eastwood drama, and those are less predictable. The last time Eastwood got serious at Christmastime was in “The Honkytonk Man” in 1982. The film was one of the only flops in the star’s long career.

This lineup features one of the oddest holiday mixes since 1981, the year of the three Rs--”Reds,” “Rollover” and “Ragtime.” Normally, the studios load the schedule with comedies and action films, on the logical assumption that people want to idle their brains as well as their bodies during holiday shopping breaks.

It would have been interesting to sit in on the distribution meetings at 20th Century Fox when a Christmas release was decided for “The Morning After,” a thriller about an alcoholic actress (Jane Fonda) who emerges from a blackout bender to find herself in bed with a murder victim. There’s a tonic for a holiday thirst.

Fledgling De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, for its first Christmas Derby, is opening “Crimes of the Heart,” adapted from Beth Henley’s play about three emotionally frayed sisters (Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Diane Keaton) having a dicey reunion in Mississippi.

It is comedy-pathos, with a quality pedigree, competing in a time frame where slob humor is generally preferred. Even with its three major stars, it would seem to have limited appeal during the holidays. Nevertheless, it will be playing in more than 400 theaters by Christmas.

DEG’s other Christmas movie, “King Kong Lives,” is more in the spirit of things and the studio will trot it out in about 1,200 theaters. But exhibitors are nervous about a second sequel to the 1933 classic about a giant gorilla who apparently has as many lives as a cat.

Of the remaining films on the schedule, “The Three Amigos” would figure to have the broadest box-office appeal. The comedy adventure, about three silent screen stars who find themselves trying to save a small Mexican village from banditos, stars Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short.

Feedback from early screenings has been mixed, but Chase, whose films in 1985 grossed more than $200 million, along with Martin, will assure the film a strong start.

“Brighton Beach Memoirs,” the musings of an adolescent growing up in pre-World War II Brooklyn, may re-light Neil Simon’s star in Hollywood, as it apparently did on Broadway. Still, it is a sophisticated comedy and as the lone entry from Universal, it leaves that studio with little chance of repeating its performance of a year ago when it had “Out of Africa” and “The Money Pit.”

The season’s sleeper may be Warner Bros.’ “The Little Shop of Horrors,” a musical comedy adapted from the stage play that was adapted from Roger Corman’s 1960 horror film about a man-eating plant. The ending was reportedly re-shot to maintain audience sympathy, and the enthusiasm of preview audience eyewitnesses has been extremely high.

Tri-Star is another studio going with just one Christmas movie, Richard Pearce’s “No Mercy,” which stars Richard Gere as a cop tracking a murdered friend’s killer in the bayous of Louisiana. The theme ought to have strong box office appeal. The question is whether Gere has any left.

The last entry is Cannon’s “Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold,” a sequel to last summer’s “King Solomon’s Mines.” It’s rare that a studio commissions a sequel to a box-office disaster, but in this instance, the two pictures were optimistically filmed back-to-back.

What follows is a handicapper’s list of the Christmas films. It is only a forecast of the field’s box-office prospects. The worst film may win and the best may finish last, but the race for the money is on.

1--”Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (Paramount). Nimoy knows best.

2--”The Golden Child” (Paramount). Eddie Murphy’s star is golden.

3--”Heartbreak Ridge” (Warner Bros.). Eastwood in the saddle.

4--”The Little Shop of Horrors” (W.B.). May eat up the competition.

5--”The Three Amigos” (Orion). Starring the money Chase.

6-- “King Kong Lives” (DEG). Kids will go ape.

7-- “The Morning After” (Fox). Cheap way to dry out.

8--”The Lady and the Tramp” (Disney). Reissues are Disney’s War Bonds.

9--”Brighton Beach Memoirs” (Universal). Simon says, “I’m back!”

10--”The Mosquito Coast” (W.B.). It’s no resort.

11--”No Mercy” (Tri-Star). Foul-weather Gere.

12--”Crimes of the Heart” (DEG). Talks too much.

13--”Solarbabies” (MGM/UA). Will get scorched.

14--”Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold” (Cannon). Hark, I hear a Cannon shot.