Anybody who thinks all movies should be deep-think masterpieces by visionary auteurs probably won't be camping out at the Nuart Theatre for its ongoing American International Pictures festival. Max von Sydow won't be playing chess with Death there.

But other games--less taxing perhaps--are being played. Beach blanket bingo, for example. And Death is certainly not being overlooked. In "The Amazing Colossal Man," a dyspeptic bald guy with a major attitude problem--he's having a \o7 no\f7 hair day--skewers a pint-sized medic with a syringe. In the trailer for "The Amazing Colossal Beast"--\o7 colossal \f7 was always big at AIP--a rubberized, vegetabilized serpentoid thingie shorts out on a string of high-tension wires.

Death, in fact, will be a staple on the Nuart's screen, often accompanied by the high-pitched yowls of nubile dainties or the aarghs of manly men. So will incredible two-headed transplants, saucer men, psycho beatniks, vampires and, most terrible of all, tripped-out hippies!

The Nuart's AIP series, which opened Sunday with a lineup of beach party and Edgar Allan Poe films, extends through Saturday with 26 more titles and then, beginning July 15, with double-feature Friday late shows through Aug. 19.

AIP was started by Samuel Z. Arkoff and the late James Nicholson in 1954. The company went on to produce, co-finance or distribute more than 500 movies, right up to its last one, Brian DePalma's 1980 thriller "Dressed to Kill." Nicholson, who, in the early years came up with many of the company's classic titles, such as "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," left the company in 1972 to become an independent producer and died the same year; Arkoff remained until near the end, when a merger with Filmways accelerated the company down the unadvisable path to major studio statehood and prompted his resignation. AIP--as a Filmways subsidiary--became a steroid-pumped David with a Goliath-sized headache and almost two years later was gulped down by Orion.

*

Still, Arkoff's reign was one of the longest and, one of the most comparatively profitable in the annals of American film production. His No. 1 commandment, as reported in his 1991 autobiography "Flying Through Hollywood on the Seat of my Pants," sums it all up for him: "Thou shalt not put too much money into any one picture." (Arkoff, most likely preceded by one of his jumbo-sized cigars, will appear in person at the Nuart with surprise AIP alumni on Friday, Saturday and July 27.)