Step Into the Video Way-Back Machine : Hey, what are these movies starring Jim Carrey and Hugh Grant? Just the latest examples of marketers pulling properties from hot stars’ celluloid closets.

Who’s hot in Hollywood? Box-office grosses and media buzz are strong indicators. Another barometer is the direct-to-video rental market and the determined excavation of an actor’s early films, career curios or recent projects that did not have the benefit of theatrical release.

Watching a favorite actor’s first film is like paging through a high-school yearbook. What gives such titles as “Rubberface,” “A Fool and His Money” and “Going Overboard” such rental potential is that they offer time capsule glimpses of pre-stardom Jim Carrey, Sandra Bullock and Adam Sandler.

“Finding these films is like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Barry Barnholtz, senior vice president of Trimark Pictures, who acquired these titles for the Vidmark Entertainment label.

Vidmark has been aggressive in bringing to market these embryonic glimpses of actors who are now established stars.

“A lot of people love Jim Carrey and want to see what he did before he was famous,” said Tim Swain, Trimark senior vice president, domestic distribution.

To video retailers, Carrey means business. In video sales--a category dominated by children’s films--”Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “The Mask” are among the top 45 videos of all time; two months after its release, “Dumb and Dumber” remains one of the top five most-rented videos, Video Store magazine reports.

Such demand can lead to overzealous marketing. Last year, ABC Video trumpeted Carrey’s appearance in friend Steve Oedekerk’s “High Strung,” even though Carrey was in the film for under 10 minutes.

Carrey has substantially more screen time in Vidmark’s “Rubberface,” which is being pitched to the “Dumb and Dumber” audience (“Big head. Thin skin. Numb skull”). It is actually a very sweet 48-minute featurette that was produced in 1981 for Canadian television as “Introducing Janet” and is more appropriate for families than any of his PG-rated blockbusters. Carrey stars as struggling comedian Tony Maroni, who receives coaching from a lonely high-school girl researching a paper on comedy.

Just how high Carrey’s star has risen can be seen in the repackaging of the 1985 vampire comedy “Once Bitten,” which will be re-released later this month on Hallmark Home Entertainment. The second-billed “newcomer,” as he was described on the original video release, is now prominently pictured front and center with the film’s star, Lauren Hutton.

Timing is everything. Vidmark scrapped plans to release the direct-to-video title “True Crime” in October. What happened? Its star, Alicia Silverstone, did. The critical and box-office success of “Clueless” has inspired Trimark to go ahead with its original plans for a theatrical release that will now most likely coincide with the video release of “Clueless.”

“We just got a bit lucky,” Swain said. “The movie is still good, but now we have a star who is more popular and much bigger than she was a month ago.”

Vidmark released Sandler’s “Going Overboard” (a 1989 comedy originally titled “Babes Ahoy”) one week after the video release of “Billy Madison.” It is more common for a direct-to-video title with a bankable star to piggyback on a related theatrical release and ride the crest of its multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.

LIVE Home Video’s “Eyes of an Angel,” starring John Travolta, was released in the wake of the “Pulp Fiction” phenomenon and was re-released to the sell-through market for $19.95 retail on Tuesday, the day “Pulp” made its long-awaited video debut.

There are some things marketing departments cannot anticipate. Coming from LIVE next month is “Nightscare,” a horror film that happens to star Elizabeth Hurley, Hugh Grant’s beleaguered companion. (LIVE also distributes “Night Train to Venice,” a 1993 drama starring Grant that was acquired while its star was still enjoying a media honeymoon with the success of “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”)

“We look for certain periods that tie in to a particular genre,” said Jeff Fink, LIVE’s senior vice president of sales and distribution. “We picked up ‘Nightscare’ for Halloween, and then there was this huge publicity about Grant. We found ourselves with a movie that now has two things going for it: It is a good Halloween title, and it has Elizabeth Hurley.”

I s any of this a factor in whether video buyers and retailers decide to stock these titles?

“It depends on the star,” said John Thrasher, vice president of video purchasing and distribution for Tower Records. “The newer films tend to generate more business. People want to see the latest thing an actor did just prior to their career taking off.”

It also depends on whether the release is, to use Thrasher’s word, “exploitive.” One of the most infamous examples was the 1989 video release of a 1981 drama, “Chasing Dreams.” The box art capitalized on the fleeting appearance of Kevin Costner, who had just scored a hit with “Field of Dreams.”

“That was just such a blatant manipulation,” Thrasher recalled with amusement. “We declined to carry it. You don’t want the public to feel ripped off.”

(A more truth-in-advertising approach was used for Bullseye Video’s “Me and the Mob,” which features “a special appearance by Sandra Bullock.”)

“We’re ordering ‘Rubberface,’ ” said Marupong Chuladul of Vidiots in Santa Monica. “I’m a big Jim Carrey fan, so I am interested in seeing something with him that is more obscure.” Another recent Vidiots acquisition was “Line of Fire,” one of customer favorite Robert De Niro’s first films (originally titled “Sam’s Song”).

That these films are rescued from obscurity is a testament to “the uniqueness of the video marketplace,” said LIVE’s Jeff Fink. “The hits drive people into the stores, but like drive-in theaters 20 and 30 years ago, there is a large variety of product that you can’t see anywhere else. And you never know, someone can get hot at a moment’s notice.”