Let the Invasion Begin

Outlined against a silver multiplex screen, the Four Horsemen ride again. In dramatic lore, they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Schwarzenegger, Williams, Carrey and Cruise.

With apologies to Grantland Rice and Notre Dame, Hollywood’s big guns are about to thunder across the plains. The summer movie season is upon us, even if summer isn’t, and we will soon be inundated with everything from killer tornadoes (no, not tomatoes), to invasions from outer space (possibly even cyberspace), to a chase through post-apocalypse Los Angeles (but not in a white Bronco).

We’ll see John Travolta in “Phenomenon” playing an ordinary man struck smart by a mysterious light, and a family so stupid, their mail is simply addressed to . . . “The Stupids.” Demi Moore will take it off, take it all off, as a single mom in a go-go mode in “Striptease.” Rosie Perez will hit the boards as a taxi dancer in “Somebody to Love,” and in “Joe’s Apartment,” a mini-musical if there ever was one, we’ll see a chorus of 50,000 song-and-dance cockroaches.

There will be aquatic pets (“Flipper”), metaphorical birds (“The Crow: City of Angels”), cuddly polar bears (“Alaska”) and a 10th century dragon so cool he will sound like Sean Connery (“Dragonheart”).

There will be big things, like the elephant in “Larger Than Life,” the genie played by Shaquille O’Neal in “Kazaam,” the creature from the museum of natural history in “The Relic” and Eddie Murphy as “The Nutty Professor.” And, as a summer ’96 special, an entire sports section. We’ll golf with Kevin Costner and Don Johnson in “Tin Cup,” play some basketball for fan-turned-coach Whoopi Goldberg in “Eddie,” go bowling with Woody Harrelson and Randy Quaid in “Kingpin” and learn from obsessed baseball buff Robert De Niro why “The Fan” is short for “fanatic.”

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But the real news, or most of the profits, should come from a handful of movies led by the Four Horsemen of the Box-Office Blitz. Tom Cruise hits first, as the team leader for Brian De Palma’s adaptation of TV’s “Mission: Impossible,” opening May 22. Jim Carrey follows as the repairman from hell in “The Cable Guy,” June 14. Arnold Schwarzenegger arrives the next week, as G-man John Kruger, whose talent for protecting people in the federal witness protection program has earned him the nickname “Eraser.” And in August, Robin Williams stars in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Jack” as a man stricken with a malady that causes him to age at four times the normal human rate.

The biggest gun of all, however, is likely to be no one at all. Not from the live-action world, anyway. The Disney folks have another animated musical coming in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” and the last time their animators drew a hunchback, it was for “Beauty and the Beast.” The idea of seeing Esmeralda and Quasimodo cut a rug around the belfry may not make your heart flutter now, but wait till you hear the music sure to give Alan Menken another set of Oscars for his trophy case.

Also competing for the big bucks will be Edward Zwick’s “Courage Under Fire,” starring Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, and Joel Schumacher’s “A Time to Kill,” adapted from the first of the John Grisham lawyer-lit trove that has already produced hit screen versions of “The Firm,” “Pelican Brief” and “The Client.”

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As for themes, the summer is weighted in favor of fantasy, but there are still some action films. Kurt Russell returns, 15 years after “Escape From New York,” to reprise his John Wayne-inspired Snake Plissken in “John Carpenter’s Escape From Los Angeles.” And Leslie Nielsen spoofs action films in “Spy Hard.”

There are plenty of buddy action films, too. Morgan Freeman and Keanu Reeves team up in “Chain Reaction,” a high-tech thriller directed by the Andrew Davis (“The Fugitive”). Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage are unlikely allies, an ex-con and an FBI agent, trying to reclaim Alcatraz from terrorists, in “The Rock.” Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin are chums on the run, escaped cons, in “Fled.” And, in the “Thelma & Louise” class, or maybe not, Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon plot together to swindle the mob in “Bound.”

But it’s going to be hard to avoid the array of science fiction, mythology, meteorology and horror fantasies clogging the summer pipeline. We’ve already mentioned several. “Dragonheart,” “Phenomenon,” “Kazaam,” “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Children can also look forward to a live-action version of “The Adventures of Pinocchio,” with Martin Landau as Gepetto and Jonathan Taylor Thomas as his living handicraft, and “Harriet the Spy,” a Nickelodeon-Viacom co-production starring Michelle Trachtenberg (“The Adventures of Pete & Pete”) as an 11-year-old girl spying on her parents.

The box-office buzz, however, has been focused on 20th Century Fox’s “Independence Day,” ever since bits of the film were shown to exhibitors at their annual Las Vegas convention in March, and the other studios have given it wide berth on the premium July 4 weekend.

From the coming attractions, “Independence Day” looks like a combination of “War of the Worlds,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “Star Wars.” It’s the flip side of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” What if that mother ship had hovered over Washington, played a few bars of “Bad to the Bone” and blew the hell out of everything?

Those of us who remember what “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters” wrought, a decade’s worth of imitative video-arcade crap, will watch this summer’s returns closely. Apart from “Independence Day,” the alien invasion continues with “The Arrival,” in which Charlie Sheen plays a NASA astronomer trying to isolate the source of a space-rattling sound wave. In “Solo,” Mario Van Peebles plays a state-of-the-art warrior robot who--stop me if this sounds familiar--can think and learn and begin to feel . . . human. (You forgot to stop me.)

Many of the sci-fi-themed films are, encouragingly, comedies. In “The Frighteners,” directed by New Zealander Peter Jackson (“Heavenly Creatures”), Michael J. Fox plays a bogus ghostbuster who has the tables turned on him when a serial killer from the other side shows up. In “Multiplicity,” Michael Keaton does what any sensible person would do if he’s spread too thin: He has himself cloned. And in “Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood,”HBO’s school of cool ghouls sends detective Dennis Miller to a cathouse for the undead.

Of a more urgent nature, both because of its release date and its subject, is Jan De Bont’s “Twister,” which launched the summer season Friday. Talk about gonzo marketing. In the press notes for “Twister,” tornadoes take on mythic poetic dimension: “Tornadoes are a singular phenomenon, at once breathtaking in their beauty and unspeakable in their ruin.” It goes on to say that in their capricious nature, the same tornado that lays waste to acres of property will scoop up a baby and gently release it, unharmed, miles away. It will flatten one house, while leaving one a few feet away untouched.

It takes nerve to release a disaster movie in the middle of the disaster. Everybody gambles in the summer, but it doesn’t take much imagination--well, a little wicked imagination--to see a Page 1 wire service photo of a mall laid to ruin in a tornado’s path, shapeless rubble spread over a vast parking lot, except for the facade of its movie theater, and its perfectly untouched marquee.

“Now showing--Twister.”

Have a nice summer.

* SNEAKS ‘96, THE LINEUP

Every movie coming out through August, beginning on Page 12, plus features on “Independence Day’s” Will Smith, Page 4; “Eraser’s” Vanessa Williams, Page 5; “Twister” director Jan De Bont, Page 6; “Mission: Impossible” star Tom Cruise, Page 10; and the latest wave of foreign directors lured by Hollywood, Page 18.

* AND ALL THE REST . . .

There’s more to life (and this issue) than movies. For an index to the week’s offerings in theater, performing arts, art, pop, jazz and family, see Page 20.