CONSENSUS ! ! ! CRITICS RATE ‘HANNAH’ BEST, PRINCE WORST

There are no Marquis of Queensberry Rules for film critics. When, at the end of every year, the surly old pros climb into the ring to duke it out over their personal favorites, anything goes--invective, voting tricks, below-the-belt hyperbole.

But now the rhetoric has settled and there is a consensus, however fragile, on the best and the worst movies of 1986.

To take account of factions and drift among critics, 100 newspaper and magazine reviewers across the country were surveyed and their bests and worsts were tabulated.

For once, there was unanimity on best (“Hannah and Her Sisters”) and on worst (Prince’s “Under the Cherry Moon”). As usual, this being Calendar’s seventh annual collection of these assessments, there was a riot of disagreement about everything in between, critics being a notoriously individualistic lot.

For beginners, critics rarely agree on just how good or bad a year it actually was. For Jeff Simon of the Buffalo News, “1986 may have been the worst movie year--ever.” Scott Cain of the Atlanta Constitution begged to differ: “Contrary to the crybabies’ lament . . . it seems to me that the number of high-quality pictures is impressively large.”

It was a year that puzzled critics early on, what with disappointments like the Jack Nicholson-Meryl Streep anti-romantic “Heartburn” and the anti-climax of movies like “9 1/2 Weeks.” Then, all of a sudden, there was a flurry of good pictures and unexpected ones.

“Not a year to raise banners, not one to cause gloom,” wrote Irene B. Nicholas, Stamford (Conn.) Advocate.

“A decent year,” concluded Julie Salmon in the Wall Street Journal.

“Pretty swell,” enthused Marsha McCreadie, Arizona Republic.

It may not have been one of Hollywood’s proudest years, critics agreed, but there was an alternative “Eclectic Film Mecca,” according to Sheila Benson of The Times, meaning that there were more than enough excellent independent or unheralded films, documentaries, or foreign imports to fill out most 10 Best lists.

Not that the number “10,” or anything else about annual list-making, is sacred. Critics can opt for the random, the alphabetical, the strictly-in-descending-order list. Merrill Shindler of Los Angeles magazine preferred to select the “five OK and the 50 worst,” no doubt reflecting his curmudgeonly view of the year’s output. Eleanor Ringel of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution picked a high 27 “best” (down from her customary 30); but, no Pollyanna, she put 31 in her worst niche. Mike McGrady of Newsday booted up his list with an 11-way tie for number 10.

Bloc voting was popular, especially for critics eager to campaign on behalf of their iconoclasm. The married critics Andrew Sarris and Molly Haskell of the Village Voice and Vogue magazine, respectively, had identical “best” lists this year.

That was nothing compared to the staff of the Los Angeles Weekly, which weighed in with five separate lists, with, among other peculiarities, a solid five votes for the year’s most controversial film, David Lynch’s small-town guignol, “Blue Velvet.”

Best voting goes over big with studio press agents and the studio publicity machines, since they can provide an assist at the box-office and heighten (or dampen) Oscar prospects. There are always a couple of tasteful hits that everyone agrees on, but after that it’s every man (male film critics still outnumber the women five to one) for himself.

Legitimate “best” movie contenders like “A Room With a View,” the toney adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel, go mano a mano with, uh, more idiosyncratic choices like the Robin Williams-Kurt Russell comedy, “Best of Times.”

Partly because of the video uprising, the number of annual film releases has crept over 500, and it has been a trying year for the self-respecting critic, what with movies to sort out like “Hamburger--The Motion Picture,” “Vasectomy,” “Bloody Birthday” and “Heathcliff: The Movie,” movies you couldn’t pay ordinary folks to sit through.

But that is just the point: Movie critics are paid to see these movies, and they love their jobs, no matter how much they may hate their jobs.

“A few creatively explosive epiphanies each year are sufficient to sustain one’s faith in the medium, and to support a critic’s devotion to duty,” wisely propounded the Voice’s Sarris, one of the elders of the fraternity.

What trends can be gleaned from this year’s retrospective?

The Brat Pack was out, critic-wise. Teen-rebel movies, the bane of many a reviewer, faded at the box office, and any movie starring the fashionably defiant Sean Penn, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, et al., was fair game for the barbed pen.

The Brit Pack was in--with “Room With a View,” “Mona Lisa” (with Bob Hoskin’s riveting performance), the bold and racy “My Beautiful Laundrette” and the visually stunning “Absolute Beginners.” Also, the Aussie Pack, with “Crocodile Dundee.” “Pick of the 1986 litter for nervy, sexy film making were the Brits,” summarized Joanne Rhetts, Charlotte Observer.

Hollywood, in general, was hurting: “At no time since the post-World War II years, when Francis the Talking Mule and Bette Grable’s gams were big box office, had Hollywood been so intent on kowtowing to the masses with yesterday’s formulas,” declaimed Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News.

The lists abounded with such foreign preferences as “Round Midnight,” with Dexter Gordon as a jazz expatriate in Paris; “The Sacrifice,” the last testament of Soviet emigre director Andrei Tarkovsky; “Vagabond,” director Agnes Varda’s bleak chronicle of a runaway adolescent; French director Eric Rohmer’s “Summer”; the three-hour Taviani brothers’ Pirandellian anthology, “Kaos,” and many more.

Not all critics vote numerically, but “Sacrifice,” “Summer” and “Kaos” received almost as many No. 1 votes, combined, as did “Hannah and Her Sisters,” otherwise the year’s runaway vote-getter.

The big critical brouhaha over “Blue Velvet” hasn’t waned. Was the movie a “truly sophomoric exercise in suburbia-bashing” (James Verniere, Boston Herald), or was it a “visionary masterpiece” (People magazine)? Either way, the prose on “Blue” ran to purple. A half-dozen critics felt compelled to consign “Blue Velvet” to the worst category.

The critics of “fly-over” country adored “Hannah and Her Sisters” as much as the official organizations of the L.A. and New York critic associations--both of which groups named “Hannah,” with rare concurrence, as the Movie of the Year.

Quoting the complimentary review of a prestigious critic who said when you walk out of “Blue Velvet” you’re not sure what you’ve seen, Stephen Hunter of the Baltimore Sun riposted, “Alas, that is also true of car wrecks, concentration camps and back-up sewers, all of which ‘Blue Velvet’ resembled.”

“Blue Velvet” was the only one of the Consensus Top 10 to draw any worst votes at all from critics, a rare instance of group congeniality--but there is always some debate, however niggardly.

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the ambitious “The Mission” and “The Mosquito Coast,” “Heartburn,” the singles scene “About Last Night . . .” were among those who fielded an equal number of best and worst votes.

To Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer, avant-garde performance artist Laurie Anderson’s film document of her theater presentation, “Home of the Brave,” undoubtedly was one of the year’s finest. To Lou Lumenick of the Bergen County Record in Hackensack, N.J., not so far away that they couldn’t have a cup of coffee and jaw about it, “Home of the Brave” was one of the worst, a “monotonous--musically, and in every other way--exercise in self-absorption.”

“True Stories” may have won the plaudits of a half dozen critics but to James Verniere, Boston Herald, it was just a plain old ego trip by Talking Head meister David Byrne, who “has obviously taken the ‘Renaissance man’ tone of his own press releases too seriously.”

Federico Fellini may be generally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest living film makers, and his “Ginger and Fred” may have warranted mention on a dozen best lists, but so what? Owen Gleiberman, Boston Phoenix, not only put it as one of the year’s worst, but as the numero uno worst.

And speaking of the worst movies, critics won’t usually admit it,” admit W. Butler and Robert C. Trussel of the Kansas City Star, “but among the joys of the job are awful movies.

“These turkeys can be boring, offensive, sickening or just a monumental waste of time. But they also may provide . . . a chance for the writer to let it all hang out.”

And by some distance, the lack of enthusiasm for 1986 was heaped on “Under the Cherry Moon,” with 28 worst votes. Among critics, the reception was ruthless. To Nat Segaloff of the Boston Herald, the film proved Prince “a pauper in the talent department.” Michael Healy of the Denver Post figured it was one black-and-white film that couldn’t be hurt by colorization.

There are no set rules for picking “the scum de la scum,” as one critic calls them. Some list obvious schlockfare like “Hamburger . . . The Motion Picture” or Stephen King’s “Maximum Overdrive,” which even King admitted was “a moron movie.” Some scribes reserve their bile for otherwise respectable moguls like George Lucas, whose very costly “Howard the Duck” laid last year’s most expensive egg.

As a result, more than 200 films were nominated for the 1986 Worst 10 list. They found plenty of common ground, however. Sly Stallone, who ran away with worst honors last year for his double whammy of “Rambo” and “Rocky IV,” was eagerly welcomed back to the fold in 1986 for “Cobra.”

CONSENSUS TOP 10 . . .

Number of Lists (Total 100) 1. “Hannah and Her Sisters” 78 2. “Room With a View” 61 3. “Blue Velvet” 48 4. Tie: “Aliens” and “ ‘Round Midnight” 40 6. “Mona Lisa” 36 7. Tie: “Color of Money” and “Platoon” 35 9. “The Fly” 30 10. “My Beautiful Laundrette” 29 They also ran: “Salvador” 26; “Stand By Me” 24; “Peggy Sue Got Married” 23; “Crimes of the Heart” 22; Tie: “Something Wild,” “Vagabond,” “Sid & Nancy” and “Children of a Lesser God” 20 each; “Little Shop of Horrors” 18.

. . . AND WORST 10

1. “Under the Cherry Moon”

2. “Howard the Duck”

3. “Shanghai Surprise”

4. “Tai-Pan”

5. “Cobra”

6. “Roman Polanski’s ‘Pirates’ ”

7. “9 1/2 Weeks”

8. “American Anthem”

9. “Maximum Overdrive”

10. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2”

Runners-up: “A Fine Mess,” “Hamburger . . . The Motion Picture,” “Blue City,” “Half Moon Street,” “Solarbabies,” “No Mercy,” “Friday the 13th, Part VI,” and, oh, so many more. . . .