''YOU talkin' to me? You talkin' to ME? ''Arrggghhhh! Grunt! Uggghh!'' We haven't read the new Frank Darabont-Steph Lady script for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein yet, but now that Robert De Niro has signed on to play the towering cadaverous monster in the Francis Ford Coppola-produced remake, the possibilities seem, well, horrific.
De Niro with stitches up and down his face and those big electrical conductors jutting out of his neck, lumbering around Europe scaring the bejesus out of innocent girls and angry mobs? Please. (And while TriStar is making a lot of noise about signing De Niro, the fact is that the actor was the producers' second choice for the role previously - and definitively - played by Boris Karloff. The new Frankenstein team first pitched their request to Gallic thespian Gerard Depardieu. Imagine: ''Je suis le monstre.'') Kenneth Branagh, that prolific Orson Welles-wannabe, will direct this big-budget production of the horror classic, to be shot in England this summer - and aiming towards a 1994 release.
Branagh will also star as Victor, the good doctor - well, demented doctor - who scours graveyards looking for compatible body parts for his laboratory creation.
In all the fuss surrounding ABC's bitter dispute with Roseanne and Tom Arnold, with the accompanying disappearance of The Jackie Thomas Show from ABC's fall schedule, several prominent cancellation victims may have been overlooked.
Among the series it failed to renew recently, ABC gave the boot to Homefront, Life Goes On, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Civil Wars . All four will be missed.
Each in its own way attempted to create weekly drama that was a clear cut above the usual stuff, to offer TV a bit of intelligence, wit and compassion.