Ice Capades

Three months later, on April 29, Ice-T, Hill, and producer Neil Canton are in a Los Angeles sound studio looping bits of movie dialogue when Ice-T gets a phone call; a friend informs him that the jury has just acquitted the four Los Angeles police officers charged with beating Rodney King. By the next afternoon, when Hill and Canton arrive at Universal for a meeting, Los Angeles has been burning for hours and their film, still called The Looters, has become a marketing nightmare.

''That morning the newspapers had the word looters in the headlines,'' says Canton later. ''So when we came in, everyone sort of said, 'I guess the word is taking on a whole new meaning.'''

The Looters was abruptly pulled from Universal's summer lineup and retitled Trespass. Hill says the renaming was ''painful'' but necessary. Delaying the release, he feels, was another story. ''I'd be a liar if I said (Universal chief) Tom Pollock and I didn't have sharp words about some of these issues,'' says Hill. ''But he was doing what he perceived as best for the movie.''

''Had it been called The Looters and released as scheduled, it would have been perceived as something it wasn't,'' says Pollock. ''This is an action drama, not a racial-conflict story.''

Pollock is right, to a point. Once the violence between the fire fighters and the gang begins, the film takes on unmistakable racial overtones. ''It is undeniable that the two sides have racial attitudes,'' says Hill. ''The characters come from very different places and there is terrific mutual distrust. I don't want to run away from the idea that the movie does have a lot to say about racial tensions.'' And some exhibitors fear those tensions could carry over into their theaters; after all, gang films attract gang members, and in the last two years, New Jack City, Boyz N the Hood, and Juice have all been plagued by opening-night violence.

''We'll look at theaters where we've had concerns in the past,'' says John Neal of United Artists Theater Circuit, ''and we'll probably put additional security on.'' But Cineplex Odeon's Howard Lichtman downplays those worries. ''Just because something has violence in it doesn't mean there will automatically be problems.''

In line with its standing policy, Universal will share the cost of added security with any theaters that desire it, though Pollock says there have been no requests as yet. Now that the studio has screened the film for exhibitors, he adds, ''I think all nervousness has disappeared.''

For his part, Ice Cube thinks Trespass is less about race relations than it is about morality. ''If you get greedy, you'll probably get killed,'' he says simply. ''That's the message.''