The rule of thumb is, a movie that isn't shown to the press before it opens is dollars-to-doughnuts going to be a dud that wouldn't even make the cut with the professional blurbsters who are willing to dither "Thrill-a-minute rollercoaster ride!" in print for "Meet Joe Black."

Usually these unpreviewed stinkers are lame comedies along the quality lines of, say, Carrot Top's "Chairman of the Board" or Norm MacDonald's "Dirty Work." "Virus," though, also opened this past weekend with no fanfare whatever -- no screenings, no reviews, no nothing for an expensive sci-fi thriller completed long ago and held until a deadsville January weekend at the box office when Universal could best dump it as a business loss. This marketing decision is odd, though. Especially if you consider that "Virus" is supposed to be "Alien" meets "Titanic." And that it stars Jamie Lee Curtis. And that it was produced by Gale Anne Hurd.

It's also odd because "Virus" isn't so terrible as genre cheese goes: The creepy Things that take over a Russian spy ship are kind of cool gizmos, half Erector Set, half human bodies, with lightbulb eyes. Donald Sutherland plays a nutty sea captain channeling the eccentricities of Robert Shaw in "Jaws." The music is vaguely Stravinsky-ish. One character shouts, "We gotta sink this ship!" Jamie Lee screams.

"Virus" has a kind of familiar, alien-menace awfulness going for it. You can see where it's headed, lumbering heavily, miles away; every scene is a crude, shaky copy of a better sci-fi thriller that has gone before, but that's part of its rotten charm. It's peachy "MST3K" fodder; I'd love Tom Servo to supply the dialogue to go with Sutherland's operatic sneers. Marketed right, it could have been an "Anaconda"-size event.

Of course, I'm not a marketing guy. After all, I'm one who would have voted to skip screenings of "Patch Adams," since word-of-mouth is obviously propelling it very nicely without any critical backing. Somebody today told me that she ADORED "Patch Adams," and if I didn't love it, then I had no heart. I assured her I did (have a heart, that is). But I can't swear I'm not infected by an alien virus that finds no joy in enema bulbs.

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