Awoooooooooooooooooooo! : It was a night for the good guys to howl. ‘Dances With Wolves’ ’ triumph sends a message to Hollywood.

At one point in the long night that was either the 63rd Academy Awards or the second annual Billy Crystal Oscar Special, a videotaped Ronald Reagan said his favorite movies were Westerns because they were such simple tales of good against evil.

That’s what the academy’s 5,000 voting members apparently thought of the movies of 1990, choosing the simple uplifting goodness of Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” over the complex downbeat evil of Martin Scorsese’s “GoodFellas”--the only other nominated movie that might reasonably have been considered a rival.

In the end, “Wolves” got pretty much what was predicted for it; the film won seven of the 12 Oscars for which it had been nominated, including those for best picture and best direction. “Wolves” also won for photography, film editing, sound, musical score and adapted screenplay.

Film buffs can debate now, and film historians later, where “Wolves” ranks in the previously under-appreciated genre of the Western. Certainly, it has to get in line behind a half-dozen or so Westerns made by John Ford, two or three by Howard Hawks, plus an assortment by such directors as Sam Peckinpah, George Stevens and Anthony Mann. But for the moment, it is No. 1--the first “horse opera” to win best picture since “Cimarron” in 1931 and the first ever to win more than four Oscars.

The acceptance of “Wolves,” and its subsequent success in the various awards contests, not only bodes well for the Western, but for retail video dealers everywhere. For that generation of post-”Bonanza” babies whose notion of a classic Western is “Maverick,” great pleasures await on the shelves of their local video stores (check the action-adventure section).

But the Academy Awards heaped on Costner’s film say as much about the mood in Hollywood--and in America--as they do about the revived passion for a cinematic Old West. “Wolves” has a sweeping, epic heart, to be sure, and enough conventional action to keep you alert through its full three-hour running time. But it also has its much-explored humanism, its unapologetic attempt to set the record straight about the true savages of western expansion.

In the newest Hollywood cliche, “Wolves” was the “politically correct” movie of the 1990 elite. It spoke to a better part of ourselves than “GoodFellas” and most of the other quality productions, and that theme--in such films as “Wolves,” “Pretty Woman” and “Ghost”--was rewarded at both the box office and at the Oscars.

Yeah, there will be more Westerns made, but the real message to filmmakers Monday night was: Make more spiritually uplifting movies. So, the balance will probably shift again. We have been inundated recently with gritty, hard-edged films inhabited by social scum and laced with violence. It doesn’t matter that some of them (“GoodFellas,” “The Grifters”) were well-made, that their themes appealed to some of the very best filmmakers; they just don’t wash with the popular mood.

The academy didn’t ignore those films altogether. Joe Pesci played the worst human being in the movies in 1990, a Mafia killer who gleefully chows down on pasta while a dying victim waits outside in a car trunk, but he still won the best supporting actor award. And Kathy Bates, the sledgehammer-wielding romance-novelist fan in “Misery,” won the best actress award, despite Joanne Woodward’s turn as an earnest matriarch in “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge.”

“Wolves’ ” dominance left little room for other winners, but the three Oscars presented to “Dick Tracy” make Warren Beatty a distant runner-up, at least. “Dick Tracy” was one of the year’s most stunning-looking movies, and was rewarded with Oscars for both best art direction and makeup.

Broadway songwriter Stephen Sondheim, who earned “Dick Tracy’s” third Oscar, can be thankful the election for best original song isn’t held until after they’re performed. Madonna’s off-key, shake-your-bootie rendition of “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” would have sunk that entry. “The NC-17 portion of our really big show,” Billy Crystal said, in introducing Madonna’s number. Right. No Class.