THE RATING GAME

Here's an interesting twist: After two years of filmmakers furiously fighting the NC-17 rating, director Abel Ferrara (King of New York) has actually demanded that his upcoming $1.5 million drama, Bad Lieutenant, be rated NC-17. According to producer Edward R. Pressman, that's even in the director's contract. ''I wanted to go full tilt, pedal to the metal,'' Ferrara says. ''I wanted it to be XXX, pornographic. That's why it took so long to finance, even at this price.'' Bad Lieutenant, inspired by an infamous 1987 case involving a nun's rape in a Spanish Harlem church, showcases Harvey Keitel as a policeman who is one very bad dude: He steals, sells, inhales, and injects drugs; molests underage girls; gambles recklessly; and tracks down the nun's assailants only for the reward. ''The mob put up the reward. Cops in every precinct wanted to get this guy,'' Ferrara says. It might have been better, admits Paul Cohen, president of Aries Film Releasing, to have left Bad Lieutenant unrated-''The film should be judged on its own merits,'' he says. But somehow another violent pic, Reservoir Dogs, the upcoming stylized action film from first-time director Quentin Tarantino that also stars Keitel, snuck in under the wire and received an R-surprising, considering that a scene involves the graphic torture of a cop. ''The film does have a great deal of impact,'' says Gerry Rich, senior vice president for Miramax, its distributor. ''But the viewer often feels more violence than actually is on screen; some is implied rather than blatant.'' Audiences can decide for themselves when the films open this fall.