By Scott Hettrick

ROSEWOOD (Warner, priced for rental, rated R) 1997. Directed by John Singleton. Starring Jon Voight, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Bruce McGill, Loren Dean, Esther Rolle and Michael Rooker.

One of the reasons "Rosewood" isn't as powerful as director John Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood" is because it deals with a real incident, which occurred in Florida in 1923, instead of the real drama being played out in today's city streets that more people can relate to. But this story of racial prejudice is no less disturbing than his earlier portrait of urban violence.

Sparked by a false report of rape from a disturbed, abused white woman not unlike the fictional situation presented in "To Kill a Mockingbird," which is set in a similar time and geographic region, the malicious accusation becomes the flash point for growing tension between an unusually thriving town of blacks, Rosewood, and its neighboring town made up primarily of less-thriving whites.

The primary story in this two-hour, 20-minute drama involves the frightening actions of the white posse, which escalate as their numbers grow. As they search for a stranger assumed to be the alleged rapist, the angry mob thinks nothing of brutally killing black residents of Rosewood in cold blood. At this point the pursuit has escalated into an exhilarating fox hunt of madness, with participants enjoying the chase so much that they bring their kids along to witness the hanging and mutilations of their victims and eventual burning of the entire town.

It's a gruesome and disturbing account but one that needed telling.

What makes the story even more powerful is the development of many fine characters, such as the high-minded stranger, played by Ving Rhames, and two well-meaning whites, played by Jon Voight and Michael Rooker. Both the shopkeeper (Voight) and the sheriff (Rooker) struggle with their consciences and sympathies for the blacks to find the strength of character to take a stand against their peers. While Voight's shopkeeper ultimately musters the courage to help rescue some of the town's remaining survivors, the sheriff misses opportunity after opportunity to bring a halt to the massacre.

LASER TIP: How pleasant it is to find a movie that still holds up to one's memories of it, in this case, nearly two decades' old.

"On Golden Pond" is such a movie, as realized through the new special Pioneer laserdisc edition ($69.98) of the 1981 film.

Because the story of an aging couple coming to grips with their limitations, and a father mending his relationship with his daughter, paralleled so closely the real-life personal lives of stars Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda, the 45-minute original documentary, "Loving Against Time," which accompanies the picture, is particularly fascinating.

Jane Fonda wells up more than once as she recalls her moments acting opposite her father, moments when he would say something that would instantly humiliate her in front of the cast and crew. She also recalls with fondness a moment after her father had done such a thing and Hepburn came to her later to say, "He has no idea that he hurt you." Hepburn shared similar stories of humiliation at the hands of her then-secret beau, Spencer Tracy.

Director Mark Rydell eloquently offers a contrasting anecdote about Henry Fonda: After the failing, frail actor sat through a screening of the movie, he whispered to Rydell that the director had just given Fonda the happiest moment of his life. "It quickly became the proudest moment of mine," Rydell recalls as he fights back tears of his own.

Rydell also describes Hepburn's strong personality, which led to her challenging his authority several times during the production. But her personality also manifested itself in positive situations, such as when the actress insisted on diving off the front of the boat herself to rescue her character's husband instead of letting the stunt woman do it.

On the other hand, Rydell recalls Hepburn saying she would never forgive him for editing out a scene in which Hepburn lifted a canoe by herself, about which Rydell pleads in the documentary for her forgiveness. That brief deleted scene is included in the documentary.

Also included in the documentary are interviews with co-stars Dabney Coleman, Doug McKeon and Ernest Thompson, the latter of whom wrote the play on which the movie is based as well as the screenplay and who shortly thereafter moved his family away from Southern California to a house near a lake similar to Golden Pond.

Rydell provides many other interesting anecdotes about the production in an audio commentary that runs on an alternate audio track during the movie, including how Hepburn insisted on continuing her work even after breaking her shoulder.

The documentary and this special edition accomplish the difficult challenge of enhancing the impact of this already powerful movie starring three of cinema's finest actors.

DVD TIP: New Line Home Video continues to be the only company doing anything innovative with the versatile DVD format. The company's release of "Shine" ($24.98) features several supplemental features on the second side of the disc. For instance, although it's more of a novelty than a practical innovation, the user can select one of several questions for director Scott Hicks that he then answers in a video interview. Also, there is an audio track of David Helfgott playing "Flight of the Bumblebee." The movie is presented only in the widescreen (letterbox) format to present the full film frame, which is 1.85 times wider than it is tall.

(c) 1997, Scott Hettrick. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate