WHAT’S THE REAL PICTURE BEHIND SCREENING POLICY?

“With rare exceptions,” the novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry said recently, “the pictures coming out of Hollywood today are the last resorts of the gutless.”

My colleagues who regularly review those movies recently compiled a list of more than three dozen titles that were not made available for press screenings in 1987.

Those who pay heed to this kind of thing will have noticed an increasing number of movie reviews in the Monday newspaper, almost always an indication that the critics had to see them at their Friday commercial openings, too late for the Saturday editions or Sunday Calendar, which because of its size is printed early.

Is there a connection between McMurtry’s no-punches-pulled indictment and the decline of press screenings? Are you kidding?

The grab-the-loot-and-scoot exploitation fare is rarely press-screened, for obvious reasons. The idea is to do one weekend’s business before the searing word of mouth, let alone the reviews, forewarn future customers that what we have here is a piece of schlock found in an abandoned warehouse.

About “Flaming Thighs” and “Curse of the Vampire Mummies” (titles I made up, so far as I know) there isn’t much to be said, although you are occasionally tempted to send a psychiatrist for a second opinion.

Space being forever at a premium, we have debated from time to time whether it makes sense to review the exploitation flicks. They presumably have their automatic audiences, who may or may well not pay heed to reviews, anyway.

But we do continue to review them, on grounds there might be a lurking gem of style in there someplace, or evidence of a new talent struggling to escape the genre, and that readers ought to be alerted pro or con. It goes with our territory.

What has changed is that mainstream films are also being withheld. “Back to the Beach,” the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello revisitation, was press-screened at 10 Friday morning, two hours before the film opened for business. Contrary to what Paramount’s expectations may have been, Kevin Thomas’ review was admiring and positive.

Disney’s “Ernest Goes to Camp” was not press-screened. But a studio spokeswoman said the film simply wasn’t finished in time, and that there was no change in the Disney policy of screening everything.

There’s a long if intermittent tradition of skipping press screenings, often on the argument (sometimes quite valid) that the print isn’t ready. But the suspicion inevitably arises that what the studio has here is a real dog, which is not so much being released as allowed to escape undetected.

The distributors--some distributors anyway--are obviously pre-reviewing their own product and concluding that it will get clobbered by the critics. The irony is that they may or may not be right, as in the case of “Back to the Beach.” Critics are rarely unanimous about anything, and they are notoriously unpredictable in their enthusiasms as well as their devastations.

Delaying the reviews for two or three days seems defeating all the way around. Among other things, it misunderstands the way reviews actually work. There is more to them than thumbs up or thumbs down. A review is a source of information as well as opinion, and a movie may sound appealing despite the critic’s reservations, or occasionally because of them.

The possibility of negative reviews has always seemed to me a trade-off the distributors endure for the credibility and the persuasive power of the positive reviews. You take the bitter with the sweet, especially because chances are that if you have a turkey on your hands, the customers will know it almost as soon as the critics.

Reviews are important to movies, or the ads wouldn’t be so full of quotes. If the quotes themselves have weight, it’s in fact because the critics have acquired some sort of believability, established over a large number of reviews.

The deeper suspicion is that the delaying of reviews by the mainstream distributors may not be about the box office at all, but may primarily be a feeble attempt to give sensitive producer egos one bruise-free weekend before the grosses and the reviews hit.

What ought to be noted is that the critics I read, who have a right to be sore about these attempts to manipulate their work, still call the films as they see them, heroically ignoring the studio’s prejudgments and even sending up the odd, defiant cheer. The halos, if you will, Ms. Dalrymple.

We have pondered running a Friday box simply labeled “Unavailable for Review,” letting the readers know which films may in effect have been prejudged, but not by us. On the other hand, even the chaps operating under McMurtry’s lash may figure out that they’re losing more than they’re gaining by these new maneuvers.