Will Baseball Be Very, Very Good to Fox?

Not much has gone right for Fox to start the new TV season, with the sitcom “Costello” having become the fall’s first cancellation victim and three other Fox comedies looking shaky. Fortunately, the network has the World Series waiting in the on-deck circle. Baseball’s premiere event begins Saturday (co-anchored by Tim McCarver), offering Fox as many as seven high-rated nights to promote current and upcoming shows. Look for plenty of ads touting “King of the Hill,” the return of “The X-Files,” the macabre new drama “Brimstone,” starring Peter Horton, and the network’s telecast of “Jurassic Park: The Lost World.” All those programs should offer some appeal to younger men--an elusive group that broadcasters increasingly rely on their major sports franchises to reach. Beyond that promotional value, airing baseball also buys Fox time regarding possible schedule changes and perhaps a little momentum heading into the November ratings sweeps. Fox’s first big break, meanwhile, would be if the Yankees beat the Indians to win a trip to the World Series. No offense to Cleveland, but New York is the nation’s largest media market, with 6.8 million households, many no doubt occupied by Yankee fans. Cleveland, at No. 13, accounts for fewer than 1.5 million homes.

Rap Keeps the Registers Ringin’

Will it be a rap invasion for the second straight week on the pop charts? That’s what the music industry will be looking to find out when the SoundScan figures are made available Wednesday. New releases by rappers Jay-Z, OutKast and A Tribe Called Quest captured the top three spots on the nation’s sales charts last week with their respective albums, selling a combined 750,000 copies. Will new albums from rappers Mack 10, Kurupt, Twista, Bizzy Bone and Cypress Hill flex the same sales muscle? “I think six of the top 10 albums will be rap this week,” says Kevin Engler, senior music buyer for retail music chain Best Buy. “Bizzy Bone will probably be No. 1 because he’s a member of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, which is a huge act.” According to Engler, all five new albums will benefit from their respective regional fan bases. “Bizzy is big in the Midwest, Kurupt is a West Coast act, and Cypress Hill is popular all over the place.” And this is only the beginning--albums from rap titans such as Ice Cube, RZA, Method Man, and Master P’s new act the Gambino Family should keep cash registers humming well into 1999.

Don’t Worry, She’s Not Related to Jerry

Odette Springer recalls the day five years ago when she first got the idea of making a documentary about Hollywood’s B-movie genre. She was working as music supervisor at Roger Corman’s Concorde/New Horizons Pictures when she saw another parade of buxom women arrive to audition for a role in one of Corman’s trademark erotic/slasher/action films, which feature semi-nude women in peril. “I would sit in my office and the women would pass me on their way to their auditions and they all looked the same,” Springer recalled. “They’d all have these huge breasts and tight miniskirts and all walked the same way. It was kind of frightening.” She followed them to the casting office, where she noticed that “they all reeked of different kinds of perfume.” The combination of smells and images reminded Springer of a Fellini movie. On Friday, Springer’s much-discussed documentary, “Some Nudity Required,” will be released for a one-week limited run at the Laemmle Monica in Santa Monica and the Edwards University Theater in Irvine. It has been a long journey for the 36-year-old New York-born Springer, a classically trained musician and opera singer who knew nothing about making movies when she started her project. “I had no money,” she said. “I never made a film before.” The film, which Springer produced and directed with the assistance of co-director Johanna Demetrakas and editor Kate Amend, features the most prominent players from the B-movie genre, including Corman and veteran “scream queens” Maria Ford and Julie Strain. Part of the film explores how Springer herself became addicted to the images of sex and violence that had initially horrified her. Springer said Corman, whom she calls a “powerful mentor,” had encouraged her project at first, but all that changed when he viewed the film. “I went to show the film to Roger myself,” she said, “[but] after 20 seconds, he stormed out of the room. . . . He said, ‘I don’t think these films are stupid!’ ” Corman is currently out of the country and unavailable for comment.

--Compiled by Times staff writers and contributors