Hollywood’s Horrormeister : Movies: Charles Band bypasses theaters with his films, unleashing the Leech Woman, Torch and Pin Head directly to video stores.

He stands on stage, microphone in hand, his boyish grin and friendly demeanor only adding proof to the adage that appearances are deceiving.

After all, this is the man who conceived of Leech Woman, who spews leeches from her mouth onto her victims; Torch, who has bullets for teeth and incinerates people by shooting 10-foot flames from his outstretched arm, and Tunneler, who uses his drill-shaped head to tunnel into things--like human foreheads.

These are just a few of the murderous characters created by Charles Band, who in four years has built his company--Full Moon Entertainment--into one of Hollywood’s most prolific producers of fantasy, science-fiction and horror films.

But instead of opening his films in theaters, the producer who once gained attention with “Re-Animator” and “Ghoulies,” today markets Full Moon’s B-movies directly to video stores.

It is for this reason that the 40-year-old filmmaker took the stage one recent evening at the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood. Using a montage of his movies, special lighting effects and creepy creature models, Band is on an unusual 20-city tour to introduce himself and Full Moon to the people who run the nation’s video retail outlets.

“We’re making feature films that several years ago would have played theatrically,” Band told the crowd, “but today’s theatrical marketplace is so unforgiving that if you bomb, that could be the end of the company. So, in my opinion, there is no shame in releasing a film in a premiere situation directly to home video.”

For the retailers, Band’s tour is not only a chance to learn about Full Moon but it provides a rare opportunity to talk face-to-face to a Hollywood producer about the kinds of storylines and characters their customers want to see.

“It’s unprecedented in our business for a filmmaker to literally reach out and meet and listen to his customers in a very intimate setting,” said Eric Doctorow, executive vice president of Paramount Home Video, a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures, which distributes Full Moon’s films.

Because retailers normally must choose from among 200 releases a month, Band said, competition for shelf space is fierce. “With the exception of a few big titles that come out every month,” he said, “the B-movie caldron includes everything from $20-$30-million major films that didn’t make the grade theatrically all the way to some guys who for $100,000 on 16-mm film whipped out a slasher movie.”

To call Full Moon merely a movie company is misleading. Band has developed a line of Full Moon merchandise that includes comic books, trading cards, T-shirts, sweat shirts and even model kits (priced at $89.95 each) so fans can build their own foot-tall Tunneler, Torch (without the flames, of course) or other murderous puppets.

Band said that characters who develop a following among fans (there is a 30,000-member Full Moon Fan Club) are brought back in sequels.

“We’re creating the comic books of the ‘90s,” Band said.

As the retailers asked Band questions, the producer-director displayed some of the creatures that have appeared in Full Moon’s three “Puppet Master” videos: Six Shooter, who has six arms and six guns; Jester, a kind of puppet ringleader whose head spins in alternating directions; Blade, a cool, sophisticated killer in a trench coat with a knife for one hand and a hook for the other, and Pin Head, who has a massive body but a tiny head.

“Puppet Master” introduced viewers to Toulon, the puppeteer who uses a magic potion to bring his homicidal mannequins to life. In “Puppet Master II,” the creatures raise Toulon from the grave and then go on a rampage of burning, slashing and drilling their victims. In “Puppet Master III,” a “prequel” to the other films, the puppets clash with Nazis.

Another series has been spun off from an earlier film called “Trancers.” It involves a time-traveling cop named Jack Deth (actor Tim Thomerson) who is sent back to the present, almost like the Terminator, to prevent zombie-like Trancers from taking over the world.

In “Trancers II,” for example, we find Deth living in semi-retirement in present-day Malibu with his bride. But one of Deth’s buddies from the future, disguised as a cigar-smoking Valley Girl, arrives to warn him about the latest invasion of Trancers. The plot thickens when Deth’s wife from the future follows him back and discovers he’s already married.

In addition to Trancers and puppets, these are some of the other bizarre--sometimes camp--villains from Full Moon:

* Subspecies. A demon horde who appear in the movie of the same name, Subspecies come to life when the vampire Radu breaks off his fingers at the joint. The fingers fall to the floor and Subspecies begin to grow.

* Jack-in-the-Box, Baby Doll and Teddy Bear. These killers, who appear in the film “Demonic Toys,” come to life and terrorize five adults who are trapped in an abandoned warehouse.

* The Seedpeople. From the movie of the same name, the Seedpeople are alien plant life who come to Earth and inhabit human bodies while trying to pollinate the world.

* Sprug. A floating head-type alien flees to Earth and is followed there by a cop named Brick Bardo. The only trouble is, on Earth, Bardo is only 13 inches tall but, as the ads say, “Thirteen inches . . . with an attitude.”

Many of Full Moon’s films feature stop-action animation, the same kind of techniques that Band said he was drawn to as a kid when he saw such classics as “King Kong” and “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.”

“To get five seconds of film takes close to a week’s work,” Band said. “The creature has to be moved incrementally one frame at a time.” The stop-action animation, which has become almost a dying art, is supervised by David Allen Productions.

In “Dr. Modrid,” a film that will be released this fall, a wizard fights another sorcerer named Kabal from the fourth dimension. In one scene of stop-action animation, the skeletons of a tyrannosaurus rex and a mastodon come to life and do battle inside a museum.

Band grew up in the motion picture industry. He was 9 when his family moved to Italy, where his father, Albert Band, made a number of Italian epics and spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s. The son said his love of fantasy began as a child, when he read Marvel comics with such superheroes as Spiderman, the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk.

Band’s father put him to work on the movie sets, where he gained experience in everything from numbering negatives to assisting with cameras and sound equipment.

At 21, he returned to the United States and made his first feature film, “Mansion of the Doomed,” starring the late Richard Basehart. He then went on to produce and direct a pair of 3-D features, “Parasite,” Demi Moore’s first feature, for Avco Embassy and “Metalstorm” for Universal. By 1983, Band had formed Empire Entertainment, releasing such films as “Re-Animator,” “Ghoulies” and “Trancers.”

But Band said he found that buying pictures from other suppliers tended to dilute the company’s overall product, so in 1988 he formed Full Moon.

The company now releases eight to 10 films a year, each ranging in cost from $1.5 million to $3 million. “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Full Moon’s biggest film to date, cost $6 million.

“A couple years from now,” Band said, “I would like to see Full Moon be to fantasy what Disney is to family fare.”