BEACH BLANKET LOTTO

The summer movie season doesn't begin in America until this weekend, when the thriller Crimson Tide invades more than 2,000 theaters. But any savvy moviegoer already knows enough to make some confident predictions about Hollywood's hot-weather product.

Biggest Hit: Batman Forever. It's got Jim Carrey as the Riddler (enough said). Plus sex, laughs, swank, acres of heavy leather-and a great logo.

Highest Death Toll: Die Hard with a Vengeance. Evil genius Jeremy Irons wants to kill all of New York City; tough cop Bruce Willis wants to wear a T shirt and get sooty. Subways, trucks, actors' mannerisms-all get blown skyline-high.

Top Mel Gibson Movie: Not the Scottish adventure Braveheart-in that one, Mel talks funny, his hair's too long, and he's literally blue in the face-but Pocahontas, the Disney animated feature for which Gibson supplied the voice of John Smith.

Best Scene Stealer: Armand Assante in Judge Dredd. Sylvester Stallone is the star, but Assante oozes suave comic menace as a villain who seemingly can't be killed. Hey, Mr. Mean, we thought you were dead. "I got betta," he explains.

Most Exotic Accent: A tie, between the obscure one used by Robin Williams as an obstetrician in Nine Months and the Italianate vocalizing of Meryl Streep as the lonely wife romanced by Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County.

Least Attractively Photographed Beautiful People: Richard Gere and Julia Ormond in First Knight. As Lancelot and Guinevere, these two dishy stars look oddly washed out. Quick! Makeup!

Biggest Surprise: Waterworld, the $200 quillion sump that has sucked in Kevin Costner, Universal Pictures and director Kevin Reynolds -- who recently walked off the production, leaving the final editing to Costner and others. It might actually be an entertaining movie. such, at least, is the accumulated wisdom to be gleaned from watching not the actual summer movies-that would be cheating! -- but the films' trailers. Hollywood will be spending more than $2 billion to make and market 50 or so pictures between now and summer's end, and the moguls want you to want to see what they've got. So they flood theaters and TV stations with previews of coming attractions. Clips from the film are seductively arranged to make salami look like steak, and wrapped in a tag line so memorable it will cut through the competing clutter: "On a bad day, he's the best there is" (the Die Hard film); "The most passionately read love story of our time" (Madison County); and don't forget "Congo -- where you are the endangered species."

Movie exhibitors take trailers seriously; they are used as one gauge to determine how many screens a film will play on. From looking at previews of this summer's biggies, many theater owners are enthusiastic. Wall Street is also excited. The Walt Disney Co.'s stock rose this winter after analysts got a peek, in preview form, at the studio's likely hits Crimson Tide and Pocahontas. The rest of the industry would welcome any good news. It has limped through a virtually hit-free first four months of '95; of the year's releases, only Outbreak and Bad Boys have earned more than $50 million at the domestic box office. With receipts down 5% from last year's lackluster presummer, the town needs some quick hits.

One may already be here: the quirky romance While You Were Sleeping opened strongly in the U.S. just before the summer rush, and could earn $60 million to $80 million. But Hollywood counts on big stars, muscular action, high concept-and Disney cartoons-to bring in the really serious money. So here's what Americans will get in six successive weekends after Crimson Tide opens: Die Hard with a Vengeance; Casper (the friendly ghost, now a live-action apparition); Madison County; the killer-ape thriller Congo; Batman Forever; and Pocahontas. Then no fewer than three big-adventure films will go head to head: Judge Dredd; Ron Howard's astronaut drama Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks; and the current TV favorite of eight-year-old martial artists, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.

This summer-as in past summers, falls, winters, springs-Hollywood has two rules:

Rule No. 1: Remake what worked before. So The Flintstones (live-action cartoon) begets Casper; The Crow (movie version of a comic book-sorry, graphic novel) sires Judge Dredd; the Ninja Turtles frenzy of recent yore gives way to Morphin endorphins. Four Hollywood pictures last year (the megahit True Lies, as well as the less successful Intersection, Mixed Nuts and My Father, the Hero) were based on French films; so is Nine Months, a comedy about an expectant couple (Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore). The high grosses of three Michael Crichton novels-into-films in two years (Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure) had something to do with Paramount's decision to explore Congo.

Rule No. 2: Remake what didn't work. Transferring popular video games to the big screen, for example, has proved expensive and unproductive -- witness the Super Mario Brothers and Streetfighter films. Undaunted, New Line is bringing the mano-a-macho belligerents of Mortal Kombat to movie life. And what's with all these kilts? First Rob Roy, then Gibson's Braveheart. It's one more genre, like westerns (and astronaut films), that studios make mostly because veteran stars and directors want to. Walter Hill has a new western, Wild Bill, with Jeff Bridges, and the principals hope it will imitate the popular oater Tombstone and not Wyatt Earp, Costner's pricey flop on the same subject.

Costner surely hopes Waterworld returns him to top-star status. The film's trailer suggests a high-voltage adventure with a mythic overlay; James Earl Jones lends his patriarchal voice to images of hope and horror. Jones can also be heard promoting Judge Dredd. His voice is one of many summer-trailer talismans, along with '60s songs, computer imagery, sexual facetiousness of the sort pioneered by James Bond films, and a lot of urgent I-love-you's. In Fluke, one of the summer's few kids' movies, a boy whispers it to his dog.

The Fluke trailer is also typical of the new previews in that it seems to tell the film's entire story. So does the Crimson Tide preview, plot point by plot point, up to and including the climax. Get your granulated motion picture right here, in three hectic minutes! Anything longer is considered the director's cut.

It's a cynical truism that inside every good trailer is a bad film waiting to open. Trailers are just the sales pitch, so no one can say for sure that this summer will be as boffo as the coming attractions promise. Pocahontas might be too mature for Disney's core children's audience. Batman Forever could tank (anything's possible). And somewhere a sleeper is lurking to upset every smug prediction. Maybe it's Clueless, a goofy parody of California teen life that stars mtv video icon Alicia Silverstone. Is the movie any good? Who knows? But the trailer is bitchin'.