NO ONE IS UP FOR A DOWNER

A few months ago, I dragged a couple of chums to a raucous Japanese comedy. I thought it was terrific. They hated it so much that they stopped talking to me.

A few weeks ago, I asked that same bunch of friends (we were on speaking terms again) to see “Platoon,” Oliver Stone’s terrifying, ground-zero account of the Vietnam War.

“No way,” said one pal. “Too depressing.”

“I’ve already had a tough week,” said another. “Who needs to be reminded of all that stuff?”

I can understand why my “friends” try to avoid the kind of movies I am often assigned to review. (Would you rush out to see “The Naked Cage” or “Troll”?)

But now the most challenging movie they want to watch is “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee.”

Can it be that moviegoers don’t like to be disturbed anymore?

Given a choice between a cheery, reassuring comedy and an eerie, brooding drama, most people will opt for the sunny side. It seems just a few years ago that commentators were saying no one could be shocked anymore--but now shock value is back. No one wants to hear the call of the wild.

Has the Reagan era’s feel-good politics infiltrated the arts? Are movies just reflecting our mid-’80s distaste for raw, harsh emotions? Or do we just expect less from movies today? Whatever, this is a lousy time for confronting demons--put something sinister on the screen and today’s pampered moviegoers will run for cover. Examples:

I cajoled a couple of friends to see “Something Wild,” Jonathan Demme’s black comedy about a dizzy temptress who lures a straight-arrow tax consultant into bizarre adventures. But when the movie shifted gears, moving from giddy daydreams to more unsettling territory, my companions grew tense and uneasy, shifting awkwardly in their seats.

“It could’ve been a really funny movie,” one complained afterward. “But it got so caught up in all that warped violence in the second half that it . . . well, it just got too scary.”

If “Something Wild” was too scary, you can imagine the kind of outrage inspired by “Blue Velvet.” It’s one thing for a nutty French director like Jean-Luc Godard to lampoon religious dogma in “Hail Mary,” but David Lynch’s lurid sexual fantasies struck much closer to home, offering a seamy, “Twilight Zone” vision of hometown America.

I went to see the cause celebre by myself--even my wife, normally an adventuresome movie buff, refused to go. The critics are still squabbling over some of Lynch’s gruesome imagery. Roger Ebert, normally a patron of such ambitious material, was so offended that he blasted the film as “an immature satire” full of scenes where a woman is “degraded and humiliated and made to suffer obscenely.”

Realizing that emotions were running high, I would preface my praise by saying, “You’ll either love it or hate it, but some of the scenes are so awesome that. . . .”

“That” was usually as far as I got.

“You liked that movie?” my barber said incredulously. “What are you, some kind of pervert?”

What do audiences find so threatening about these films? Part of the answer is obvious--moviegoers prefer escapist entertainment to forbidding visions. Innocence has always been more appealing than bitter experience, especially in the United States, a country which, in politics as well as the arts, prefers illusion to reality. The age of the anti-hero is over--now we go for cocky young studs, beefy adventurers and friendly ghosts.

Explained a friend, “Going to see a movie like ‘Something Wild’ is like being out on a fun date and halfway through, your girl turns around and pulls a gun on you. You’d have to admit that the date didn’t turn out the way you’d planned.”

Yet Hollywood has been receptive in past eras to more risky business. In the ‘30s, gangster films enjoyed enormous popularity, elevating hoodlums into heroes. It’s easy to forget that the original “Scarface” was celebrated as a juicy slice of social realism.

But ‘80s audiences were shocked by Brian De Palma’s remake of the same film, which cooly re-cast its title character as a maniacal drug czar. Did De Palma really glorify the violence of the drug trade, or merely present a tragedy of blindness and excess?

Today’s audiences are intimidated by all that warped excess--they want their movie idols straight, with no chaser.

Judging from current movie mythology, you’d guess that the ‘50s was a time of freshly scrubbed normalcy--a carefully manicured world of soda fountains, crew cuts and pep rallies. Call it “Stand By Me” without the body. It’s no secret that one of the most popular storytelling techniques in recent years, to judge from the success of “Back to the Future” and “Peggy Sue Got Married,” is the genie-like notion of time travel. It’s an irresistible visual treat, especially since by flinging our heroes (and heroines) headlong into the easygoing Eisenhower era, film makers have the opportunity to regale us with satire and nostalgia.

Yet the late-’40s and ‘50s film genre which has grown the most in stature--the film noir --offers a dark view of the world, offering us not evil characters, but everyday characters capable of evil. It’s a notion that seems perfectly in sync with the undercurrent of the age of mushroom-clouded anxiety.

Maybe that’s why “Blue Velvet” packs such a nasty punch--it sends the sentimental, Hallmark card-ideal of ‘50s nostalgia careening smack into the shadowy realm of the film noir, undercutting our romantic notions with a jagged stroke of perversion and humiliation.

It’s no wonder the collision of the two wildly disparate sensibilities sent out such a shock wave--it’s as if Frank Capra had made “Taxi Driver.”

Much of the critical debate around movies like “Blue Velvet” focused on the issue of taste. Is it degrading to show an abused, naked woman standing on a lawn, obviously in shock? Should a film maker, whatever his motives, graphically depict a psychopath beating and raping a woman--and then have her attempt to arouse a teen-age boy?

Stuart Gordon, a noted theater director who’s become a cult figure for films like “Re-Animator,” noted recently that the thrill of making horror movies came from smashing civilized taboos. It’s no surprise that film-goers view horror movies as nightmare visions: It’s this dream logic that allows us to enjoy the violence and gruesome frights without taking it as seriously as films set in more real-life settings.

For directors like Gordon, Lynch and Martin Scorsese, stretching the boundaries of good taste is part of the artistry, largely because, as Gordon puts it: “Good taste is how societies repress what they don’t want to confront.”

What is it that ‘80s audiences don’t want to confront? First look at the films that have been embraced at the box office. Whether it’s “Top Gun” or “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee,” “Rocky IV” or “Karate Kid II,” they’ve been tidy heroic tales, brimming either with gung-ho adventurers or can-do kids. It’s hip to be square. But what’s missing from these movies is the agonizing sense of self-doubt, the intriguing interplay of emotions, the erotic charge of sexual electricity. “Top Gun” is the only one of those films to feature any sex, but the only mystery there is which reel will feature the bedroom scenes.

Why are audiences willing to sit in dark theaters--and yet shy away from films that explore the baffling recesses of our sensory-overloaded culture. Why are we so frightened by the topsy-turvy world of “Something Wild?” Why is the breezy bravado of “Top Gun” so much more appealing than the edgy paranoia of “Platoon”?

Perhaps ‘80s audiences--weaned on the mindlessness of TV and weary of the rough-edges of the outside world--want to escape more than ever. Maybe that’s another key to the success of films like “Back to the Future.” Their roller-coaster sprints back in time offer a comfortable distance and perspective, jokingly celebrating nostalgia instead of subverting it. This affection for the banal seems undelibly stamped in today’s film-goers--movies like “Blue Velvet” make them jittery, like a timid suburbanite who locks his car door when he sees a bunch of noisy teen-agers at a red light.

It’s even commonplace now--”Little Shop of Horrors” merely being the most recent example--for film makers to add a cheery, crowd-pleasing finale so moviegoers aren’t disturbed by a downbeat ending. You can bet if “Casablanca” were remade next year, the Bogie character wouldn’t go away empty-handed.

Today’s adventuresome film makers have gotten the message. At the end of “Something Wild,” its yuppie hero returns from his strange adventures to what’s left of his placid suburban oasis. And his kooky companion can’t help but wonder: “What are you gonna do now that you’ve seen how the other half lives--the other half of you?”

Maybe that’s part of our problem as filmgoers. We’re not just scared of the dark--we’re scared of our own imaginations.