Mutant Mania -- The Big Screen's Teenage Turtles Battle Evil And Scarf Big Bucks From Little Fans

Back in the olden days, Turtles were members of a wimpy pop-folk-rock group responsible for the hit ``Happy Together.''

Or little chocolate-covered candy blobs filled with nuts and caramel.

Or a pet that would die if you left it lying on its back in the driveway under the summer sun.

Name a cartoon turtle? Easy. Yertle the Turtle, of Dr. Seuss fame.

Ancient history, dude.

These days, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rule. This cartoon quartet of pizza-scarfing, nunchuck-swinging, surfer lingo-slinging reptiles was hatched in a 1984 black-and-white comic book. More - many more - comic books followed. By 1988 the Turtles, ``TMNT'' for short, were appearing in their own daily syndicated half-hour TV show.

The Turtles begat a slew of spinoff merchandise, including plastic action figures and kids' clothing and cereal.

Then, last Friday, the live-action ``Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'' movie - with the cartoon terrapins brought to life by Muppet genius Jim Henson - opened in theaters across the country.

Imagine the ``chchnng'' sound of a cash register here.

Moviegoers shelled out $25.4 million to see ``TMNT'' opening weekend. That made it the biggest non-summer, non-holiday premiere of all time.

With local schools on spring break this week, Turtlemania continues to rage.

Yesterday afternoon at the Grand Cinemas in Lynnwood, a queue of children and parents snaked from the box office out into the parking lot. Fifty, 75, almost 100 people lined up half an hour before the first matinee began.

``As soon as they started broadcasting the cartoon show on Channel 13 I started watching it a lot,'' said 9-year-old Colin Booy, who stepped out from the line to speak of his deep interest in the Ninja Turtles. ``Now I go to a day care after school, so I have to set the VCR and tape it.''

On the same block as the multiplex, Delight Collectibles was selling ``TMNT'' comic books, T-shirts, trading cards, stickers and 5-foot tall cardboard cutouts - a small sampling of the 600 products to which the ``TMNT'' name has been licensed.

``We cannot keep the stuff in,'' said manager Dan Taylor II. ``It's always been big, but since the movie we've seen a 75 to 90 percent increase in Turtle sales. After the movie lets out we get 30 or 40 people coming in, in droves, looking for Turtle stuff.''

``Ooooh, I don't know,'' said Colin Booy's mother, Anita, back at the theater, reflecting on the Turtle craze. She drove Colin and his younger brother and a half-dozen other Tiger Cub Scouts in a pilgrimage from Lake Forest Park.

``These kids just really like it. It's the next fad. It's a little violent, although the good guys win. I sometimes have trouble with it, but here I am.''

Anita Booy is not alone in worrying about the violence in the Turtle movie and the cartoons that preceded it. Some children's TV critics have been troubled by the world the Ninja Turtles inhabit, one where problems are solved by drop-kicks and karate chops.

Other grown-ups with degrees in child psychology have pointed out the Turtles' admirable attributes. They are, after all, the good guys in an ongoing battle with the forces of evil. They give children a sense of power. They make children laugh. Plus, the only foul language they use in the movie is an occasional ``damn.''

Which was enough to crack up many of the young members of yesterday's 1 p.m. matinee at the Grand Cinema.

Other crowd favorites:

The part where one of the Turtles gets his head plunged into an aquarium by a bad ninja, then spits water into the bad ninja's face.

The part where a bad ninja plays the piano with one of the Turtles' head; another Turtle then plays the bad ninja's head with a cymbal.

The part where the human crime-busting good guy Casey Jones tees off on the bad ninja master's head with a golf club.

During less engrossing parts of the movie, audience reactions varied. Some children talked, bounced on their theater seats, rattled the ice cubes in their soda pop cups or munched popcorn with a volume to match a swarm of locusts devouring a cornfield.

For an adult without children who, until now, has pulled his head into his shell and remained unaware of the Ninja Turtles, the movie raised several questions:

How did the Turtles get so tall, and learn how to walk on two legs and talk?

``Retromutagen,'' explained Lauren Latrell, 6, of Snohomish, swiveling in her theater seat to name the radioactive goo responsible for the Turtle's humanoid qualities. The subject had come up during the car trip to the cinema, when Lauren and her brother and two friends were playing a game of 20 Questions covering Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lore.

``The turtles were just ordinary,'' Lauren continued, with the fervor of a Hollywood agent pitching a concept. ``Then this boy dropped their bowl into the sewer and they fell into this stuff and they kind of turned into human turtles.''

Enough said.

Except to note that CBS is developing its own ``Turtles'' Saturday-morning cartoon. And if this second week's box-office receipts do not flag, a movie sequel will reportedly get the green light so that it can appear in theaters by Thanksgiving weekend, 1991.