‘Star Trek IV’ and ‘Lady and Tramp’ Available; ‘Platoon,’ Priced at $99.95, Raises Flak With Dealers

This is one of the best months of the year for home-video debuts. Two movies that figure to be best sellers during the Christmas shopping season--”Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (Paramount, $29.95) and “Lady and the Tramp” (Disney, $29.95)--are just out.

“Platoon,” which should be one of the year’s rental smashes, will be out on HBO Video next week. It remains to be seen whether some retailers--outraged by the $99.95 retail price tag--will stick to their promise of purchasing fewer copies of “Platoon.” If they do, it will make it tougher to find rental copies.

The other new releases next week are the Beatles’ animated “Yellow Submarine,” from MGM/UA, RCA/Columbia’s “84 Charing Cross Road,” with Anne Bancroft, and Media’s “Street Smart,” a thriller about an unethical journalist, who’s played by Christopher Reeve.

The last week of the month is the biggest for home-video debuts--highlighted by Warner Video’s cop thriller, “Lethal Weapon,” starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, and Touchstone’s “Tin Men,” with Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito.

Also on the agenda for the week beginning Oct. 25: “The River’s Edge,” “Project X,” “Creepshow 2,” “Malone” and “Making Mr. Right.”

NEW RELEASES: Disney’s 1955 animated feature “Lady and the Tramp” is an endearing, sentimental tale of a canine romance that crosses class boundaries. Lady is a classy, cuddly cocker spaniel that lives with a well-to-do family. While pouting because her owners’ new baby is getting all the attention, Lady takes up with Tramp, a cocky mongrel whose home is the streets. This movie is essentially a love story laced with occasional dramatic incidents--like Tramp fighting off dogs who are attacking Lady. Disney animated films usually feature some sequences that are likely to terrify some toddlers. But the only real scary moment in this one is Tramp’s climactic battle with a very tough rat.

Lightning’s “Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn” is the spooky sequel to the 1983 slash-and-splatter classic--both directed by Sam Raimi, who has a knack for mixing humor and horror. This sequel, which includes some gross-out gore, has a strange slapstick quality. When’s the last time you saw a dismembered hand making an obscene gesture? Bruce Campbell, in his worst B-movie form, returns as the bedeviled hero who spends the whole movie in a remote cabin (wouldn’t he have the sense to avoid such places by now?) battling ghouls and assorted monsters unleashed by a scholar who’s been tampering with incantations from the Book of the Dead. The ending has a clever, comic touch.

Paramount’s “Wild Thing,” written by John Sayles, is about a grunting, good-hearted ghetto Tarzan who champions the downtrodden. Wild Thing (Rob Knepper) even swings by rope from building to building and has a girlfriend--a helpless social worker--named Jane (Kathleen Quinlan). Orphaned by drug dealers, he’s raised by a bitter bag-lady (Betty Buckley) who teaches him distrust as well as survival in the urban jungle. This mysterious hero hides out in the nooks and crannies of the slums until he’s needed. Like Tarzan, Wild Thing spends a lot of time rescuing Jane, who has zero street-savvy and a nose for trouble. The consensus about this movie, which did dismal box-office business, was that it’s a great idea whose potential wasn’t fully explored. Ultimately, it turns into just another tale of vengeance against ghetto drug dealers.

Key Video’s “Waiting for the Moon,” which got some good reviews but attracted almost no moviegoers, may even be too dry for the art-house crowd--this movie’s target audience. It centers on the affair between Gertrude Stein (Linda Bassett) and Alice B. Toklas (Linda Hunt) when they were living together in Paris earlier in the century. As presented by director Jill Godmilow, their relationship is both passionless and humorless. There’s almost no tension between these two. They drink tea, go on picnics, discuss Stein’s work--all in a detached manner. A series of episodes in search of a dramatic center, the movie often grinds to a halt. Only when the companions are interacting with that fun-loving, drunken scamp Ernest Hemingway (Bruce McGill) is there relief from the overbearing solemnity.

Warner Video’s “The Hanoi Hilton” isn’t in a class with the great POW movies--”Stalag 17” (1953) and “King Rat” (1965)--which feature well-developed, interesting characters and intriguing plots. “The Hanoi Hilton,” written and directed by Lionel Chetwynd, is limited by sketchy characters and the absence of an absorbing plot. The movie details the day-to-day survival of American POWs in a North Vietnam prison camp in the mid-’60s. The members of the vicious prison staff are stereotypes you’ve seen in countless war movies. In one of the few hair-raising moments, a tied-up, terrified prisoner awakes to find rats roaming over his body. Still, the movie’s grimness isn’t riveting. It sorely needs dramatic tension. Michael Moriarty, Paul Le Mat, David Soul and Lawrence Pressman star as the prisoners. Box-offices grosses were nil.

RCA/Columbia’s “Jocks” is a silly, occasionally funny, teen-oriented comedy about a college tennis team in a tournament in Las Vegas. Headed by a long-suffering coach (Richard Roundtree), the team is made up of skilled rowdies who prefer partying and goofing off to practicing. Can these rascals get serious long enough to win the tournament and save the endangered tennis program? Of course they can. With Scott Strader, Perry Lang and Mariska Hargitay--Jayne Mansfield’s daughter.

OLD MOVIES: “The Red Shoes” (Paramount, 1948, $19.95), photographed in stunning color, is both one of the best dramas ever made about the world of ballet and one of the finest movies of the ‘40s. Moira Shearer stars as the ballerina torn between art and love. A tyrannical impresario (Anton Walbrook) browbeats her into dedication to art while a gifted young composer (Marius Goring) tugs at her heart strings. This tug-of-war tears her apart. One of the highlights is her performance of “The Red Shoes” ballet--based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale--that figures in her fate. Directed by Michael Powell, the movie, nominated for a best picture Oscar, is unpredictable at every turn. The ending is a shocker.

CHARTS (Complied by Billboard magazine) TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, RENTALS 1--” ’Crocodile’ Dundee” (Paramount). 2--”Mannequin” (Media). 3--”An American Tail” (MCA). 4--”Hoosiers” (HBO). 5--”Blind Date” (RCA/Columbia). 6--”Burglar” (CBS-Fox). 7--”The Bedroom Window” (Vestron). 8--”Black Widow” (CBS-Fox). 9--”Light of Day” (Vestron). 10--”From the Hip” (Lorimar). TOP VIDEOCASSETTES, SALES 1--”An American Tail” (MCA). 2--” ’Crocodile’ Dundee” (Paramount). 3--”Top Gun” (Paramount). 4--”Callanetics” (MCA). 5--”Jane Fonda’s New Workout” (Lorimar). 6--”Jane Fonda’s Low-Impact Aerobic Workout” (Lorimar). 7--”Here’s Mickey!” (Disney). 8--”Return of the Jedi” (CBS-Fox). 9--”Kathy Smith’s Body Basics” (JCI). 10--”Playboy Video Centerfold 6” (Lorimar).