In the Pipeline

By DAVID ELLIS

In a town with few rules, producers can let their imaginations -- and development budgets -- run wild. A few of the stranger projects that are kicking around Hollywood:

THE HEAD (20th Century Fox) A bizarre comedy about a wisecracking, bodyless scientist and his eccentric brother and how they foil a plot to steal their secret hair-growth formula.

LITTLE ODESSA (Hollywood Pictures) A thriller where Madonna winds up in the Soviet Union and gets into trouble with the KGB. Calling Dick Tracy . . .

CHARLIE FINLEY -- M.C. HAMMER PROJECT (Imagine) The true-life story of the colorful owner of the Oakland A's, who hired the future rapmaster as the team's "executive assistant" at the age of 11.

MY LIFE AS A WHALE (Interscope) A New York City literary agent who's been dumped by his girlfriend finds himself chased by marriage-hungry women.

VOODOO (Disney) An innocent middle-class family returns from vacation in Jamaica with a voodoo witch doctor who turns New York upside down with his bag of tricks.

OCEAN (Columbia) A somewhat autobiographical look at Jack Nicholson's days as a lifeguard in the late 1950s, to be produced by Penny Marshall. But how will Jack fit into those swim trunks?

With reporting by Georgia Harbison