Jabbering Doll in Theaters the Talk of the Town : Marketing: The sexy cardboard cutout is the lastest ploy being used to promote a film. But the jury is still out on its effectiveness.

She’s the talk, talk, talk of the movie marketing business.

Of course, it’s not just what the 6-foot, lifelike cardboard cutout is saying that is raising eyebrows. It’s how the high-tech, machine-gun-toting likeness of Dutch actress Renee Soutendijk seems to seductively speak to anyone who stands near her.

Concealed in the belt wrapped around her racy, red miniskirt is a special photoelectric device that senses light changes. When anyone gets within five feet of the display, it automatically sets off an unseen tape recorder that warns: “Please stop staring at me. I’m very sensitive.”

That is the phrase the robot-woman-gone-haywire utters just before she kills her victims in the upcoming Orion film, “Eve of Destruction,” due to open nationwide Jan. 18. Gregory Hines co-stars as the man whose mission is to catch her before a nuclear device hidden inside the lifelike robot detonates.

Meanwhile, 1,000 of the cardboard likenesses of Soutendijk are jabbering away in theater lobbies nationwide--including the giant Cineplex Odeon at Universal City.

“The biggest problem is kids who try to find out what makes her talk,” said Mark Wolfe, director of post-production at Nelson Entertainment, the film’s producer. “They go into the back of the machine and rip out the guts of it,” said Wolfe, who noted the company has already lost 15 to 20 of the tape recorders to thievery.

“That’s the best indication of how effective this promotion is,” said George Horton, partner at Sunset Marketing, the Van Nuys specialty advertising firm that concocted the device. And partner Richard Cohn is already thinking about putting similar devices in video rental stores. “Most people who go into video stores don’t know what they want,” said Cohn. “This could help them decide.”

These latest creations cost about $83 each. Sunset has previously made numerous lobby standees that don’t talk, including one for the film “Rude Awakening.” Other firms have also made cardboard likenesses that do talk, such as one of Steve Martin for the 1982 Universal film, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.” But until now, none have been designed to speak automatically when someone stands near them.

In one sense, the film industry’s marketing arm is just mimicking others. The chatty theater lobby displays follow things like talking greeting cards, singing print advertisements and even grocery store shelf displays with microchips that ask shoppers to buy certain products.

Marketing experts give the contraption mixed reviews.

“It’s very attention-getting,” said Dr. Carol Moog, an advertising consultant based in Bala-Cynwyd, Pa. “The device titillates and creates the fantasy that this female Rambo is real and can communicate. It has the earmarks of being a successful marketing tool.”

Far less impressed is Rick Carpenter, creative director at the Los Angeles office of the agency DDB Needham Worldwide. “It’s just a novelty,” he said. But it could really raise eyebrows, he said, if anyone were to remove the tape recorder and replace it with that provocative new adult toy, “The Final Word,” a pocket-size contraption with a prerecorded tape that repeats lots of face-reddening profanity.

Producers say that hasn’t happened--yet.