GONE BUGGY

When some of the stars of the horror pic “The Nest” walked off the set in Venice, the producers didn’t call their agents to get them back.

Instead, the stars were killed.

Some people might say that this is a neat way of dealing with recalcitrant actors . . . but in this case the actors were a troupe of 2,000 crawling, hissing, flying cockroaches. On occasion a few “got loose,” due to the clumsiness of human actors who handled the bugs, according to Jerry Eye, the man who provided the critters through his World of Animals.

According to Eye, he and his children (who assist him on the set) had personally “iced” the occasional escapee. (Eye doesn’t like to use the word “kill” in conjunction with his charges.) One such “icing” followed a scene in a car in which an insect crawled on an actor (as per direction) and then (ignoring direction) departed the scene.

A production assistant called the American Humane Assn. to find out what to do about the fleeing actors, but AHA president Carmelita Pope told the assistant, “That’s your problem, not mine.”

The reason: The AHA, which supervises the treatment of “living things”--including insects--on movie sets, is supposed to be contacted about critters prior to production.

In the case of the Julie Corman-produced “The Nest,” the AHA wasn’t contacted until filming was nearly wrapped. By that time, the concern wasn’t with the treatment of the cockroaches. Instead, said Pope, the caller wanted to know what to do about the roaches that had somehow gotten into dressing rooms.

Shot at Quicksilver Studios, “The Nest” is about a species of genetically engineered roaches that begin to prey on humans. Terrence H. Winkless directs Terri Treas, Robert Lansing, Lisa Langelois, Franc Luz and Stephen Davies. In the end, all the roaches are exterminated.

Eye, who once worked with “man-eating” rabbits, isn’t deterred from working again with such temperamental types: “They’re talking sequel.”