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With reservations, I generally admire the late John Cassavetes' raw-boned psychodramas in which actors such as himself, wife Gena Rowlands, chums Ben Gazzara, Seymour Cassel and Peter Falk improvise from Cassavetes' scripts to create ultra-spontaneous dramas of ordinary life.

Moments in some of the best, including "Faces," "Minnie and Moskowitz" and "Gloria," are breathtaking in their exposure of unguarded souls and psyches.

"A Woman Under the Influence" (1974), which will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 23 at Regent Square Theater, contains an unforgettable scene in which Rowlands returns home after hospitalization for a nervous breakdown only to encounter all of the overbearing personalities who drove her there.

But I'm amused to find Cassavetes' "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" (1976) running in the Cassavetes series at 7:30 tonight.

An unmarketable mess, it was first shown in Pittsburgh at the old Warner Theater, Downtown, with a newspaper ad campaign that made it look like a guy's kind of crime film.

It wasn't previewed for the media in advance, usually a bad sign -- and especially odd for a Cassavetes film, since he was a critics' darling.

The first performance the first day attracted the Downtown action crowd that frequented horror, blaxploitation and martial arts movies.

Boy, was it not a movie for them. It wasn't for anyone, as it turned out, but that's another story.

As "Chinese Bookie" rambled on and on with improvised conversations that went nowhere, and with minimal evidence of crime or suspense or action, the audience became memorably the second most hostile with which I've ever seen a movie.

They hollered unprintable vituperation at the screen, as though it would help shake up Gazzara and get the movie going. Although some straggled in late, which was common in the days of continuous showings, they also bolted out throughout.

Granted, this was not an audience that would have sat still for "Faces" or "A Woman Under the Influence," either. But the hatred for "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" was palpable.

The most hostile audience I've been with, by the way, was when the old Shadyside Theater had as its main feature Sidney Lumet's film of Anton Chekhov's "The Sea Gull" (1968) with James Mason, Vanessa Redgrave, Simone Signoret and a fabulous supporting cast.

On the final Saturday night of the engagement, the Shadyside pumped up business a little by advertising a sneak preview, which in those days truly was an undisclosed title.

The sneak, although poor by any standards, was horribly mismatched with Chekhov. It was "Blue Surf-ari," a godawful ripoff of the popular "Endless Summer." "Blue Surf-ari" seemed to have been shot and slapped together by a couple of surfers during lunch one day. The picture was so bad it never was released theatrically nor heard from again.

It was also so annoying that the Chekhov audience grumbled louder and louder, breaking into mutually empathetic discussion groups among strangers and then storming the lobby en masse.

The manager, who probably had no involvement in booking the sneak and surely hadn't seen it, was besieged with loud, hostile complaints. I had no intention of leaving, but I wandered out to see what was going on.

The abused manager, Dave Smith, had lost his cool and was barking back. He wasn't defending the movie. He was just overwhelmed by the unanimity of the mob.

The audience wanted him to turn off the sneak and let them get started with "The Sea Gull" immediately.

He protested that he couldn't do that -- and he was correct -- because the evening's final showing of "The Sea Gull" had been advertised for 10 p.m.

Smith couldn't just start it at 8:45 or 9:05 or whatever because then he'd alienate the folks who drove out to Shadyside for the scheduled 10 p.m. showing and parked -- many paying to do so -- only to learn the picture had started an hour early. Hey, unfair to them, then.

He began writing out free passes for dozens of hostile people. I think he was still at it by the time "Blue Surf-ari" had run its course.

Smith, who doubled as a driver for an Oakland funeral home during the day, died a few years later and was laid out at a nearby Shadyside funeral home.

Despite having patronized the Shadyside Theater hundreds of times as a child -- it was a regular neighborhood theater in its pre-art days, playing two double features a week -- and then as a critic covering first-run art films, when I visited the funeral home, memories of Smith coping with "Blue Surf-ari" washed over me.

I hope he never had an unhappier day.

Classics vaporize

The recent box-office failures of "The Merchant of Venice," with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," with Robert De Niro and Kathy Bates, and Roman Polanski's current "Oliver Twist," with Ben Kingsley, bodes poorly for more works of classic theater and literature being filmed.

Irrespective of the quality of the films, which was variable from one to the next, the message is that even the upscale audience for movies based on classic works is unlikely to be supportive of them, few as they are these days.

The next acid classic test will occur with the release of a new "Pride and Prejudice," whose opening date here is Nov. 23 at the moment.

Steven Spielberg's recent blockbuster version of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" doesn't count, by the way. Its success wasn't predicated on being rooted in a classic novel but in being a huge-budgeted, highly hyped sci-fi special effects movie that happens to have been well done, too. Oh, yeah, and the names, faces and fingerprints of director Spielberg and star Tom Cruise were all over it.

Oh yeah? Who's she?

When it was announced that former child star Shirley Temple Black is to receive the 12th annual Screen Actors Guild Award on Jan. 29, I wonder how many performers and craftspeople in the film industry said, "Shirley who?"

No matter how many times it happens, I never cease to be astounded and appalled how ignorant many people in today's film industry are of their Hollywood heritage.

I remember a few years ago reading a showbiz tradepaper column in which the writer -- someone such as Robert Osborne or the late Radie Harris -- reported chatting with veteran actress Celeste Holm when one of the day's most popular young actors happened along.

The columnist introduced Holm to the young actor, who clearly was clueless.

The columnist explained that Holm was an Academy Award winner whose many outstanding movies included two Oscar-winning best pictures, "Gentlemen's Agreement" and "All About Eve."

"I never saw them," the young said indifferently. To which I've thought ever since, "Then why are you wasting our time?"

Movies are what they are today because the people who make them are inbred. They concentrate almost exclusively on what's been made lately and what's popular on TV instead of on the greatest achievements in their crafts.

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