A commercial rocket loaded with industrial experiments was scheduled to carry a $500,000 advertisement for Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Last Action Hero" into space last spring.

The launch was delayed by mechanical difficulties. Now the rocket, the title of the much-mocked movie emblazoned on its side, is beginning to look like the first orbiting faux pas.

The NASA-launched advertisement may finally blast off in August, more than a month after the movie's lackluster American premiere and critical drubbing, and amidst a tumbling domestic box office heading into free fall.

To film industry insiders, the rocket's symbolism for the $82 million movie, ultimately undermined by Columbia Picture's overweening expectations, could not be more appropriate.

"It's so embarrassing. It's like a joke," said one Columbia executive. "It's like putting `Howard the Duck' on the side of your rocket."

In Hollywood, no epithet could be more cruel-except perhaps a comparison to other notorious filmland bombs like "Ishtar" or "Hudson Hawk."

Those are harsh words for Schwarzenegger's latest film, a movie that still has managed to earn $44 million in domestic gross revenues and is expected to garner another $50 million to $55 million at the American box office. Columbia executives predict the film can earn another $100 million abroad, but that is doubted by many in the industry.

The bad-mouthing has been so extensive-some would say exaggerated-that

even President Clinton was apologetic for liking the Schwarzenegger flick.

"I don't understand why the critics were so hard on this movie," Clinton was quoted as saying last week. "I liked it myself."

What did go wrong and how wrong did it really go for Sony-owned Columbia Pictures and studio head Mark Canton? Only yesterday Canton was hailed as a wunderkind for successes such as "Dracula," "A Few Good Men" and "Groundhog Day."

Hollywood and Columbia insiders have attributed the film's failure to a combination of overhyped marketing, a bloated budget and rushed filmmaking to meet an unrealistic June deadline. For good measure, there was a confused screenplay too sophisticated for young viewers and bad competitive timing against the behemoth "Jurassic Park."

"Last Action Hero," a light-hearted fantasy about an 11-year-old magically transported into a movie starring his favorite screen hero, played by Schwarzenegger, opened to a critical slaughter.

Lacking in "fun or magic" and "garish, loopy and much too long" were just some assessments of the semi-sendup, semi-elegy to action movies.

The film was dubbed a huge failure after its first weekend gross of $15.3 million; audience attendance dropped more than 47 percent its second weekend.

The movie's main rival, "Jurassic Park," bulldozed through its first weekend with $50.16 million in box office and soon will exceed the $250 million mark.

Still, the box-office take of "Last Action Hero" appears stronger when compared with Columbia's latest release, "In the Line of Fire," starring Clint Eastwood.

The Eastwood film was called a big success after pulling in $15.2 million its first weekend, nearly equal to "Last Action Hero."

As usual in Hollywood, the balance sheet tells the story. To break even, a movie must pull in at least double what it cost to make, which the $32 million "In the Line of Fire" will do easily.

Originally budgeted at $45 million, "Last Action Hero" ballooned to a cost of $82 million as the filmmakers raced to complete the project for their June 18 opening. Columbia spent $27 million to market the film, plus $15 million that Burger King contributed for tie-in promotions.

Columbia executives believe the film still can be profitable with a big box office overseas-where Schwarzenegger always has been popular-and in video rentals. After all, one of the most-watched movies of all time, Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," was no box-office burner when it came out in 1946.

But most financial analysts doubt "Last Action Hero" will have those kinds of legs.

"It's likely Columbia will take a significant writeoff on the film," said David Davis, an analyst for Paul Kagan Associates, a Los Angeles-based media research firm.

"But the movie still opened with a larger opening gross than all but two of Arnold's last 10 movies. Let's put this in relative perspective. . . . It still can't be considered an outright bomb."

From the outset, Columbia executives were banking on Schwarzenegger's past phenomenal box-office performances.

Schwarzenegger's previous film, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," grossed an estimated $204 million domestically and $200 million overseas. "Total Recall" and "Twins" also earned more than an estimated $210 million each at the box office, almost equally split domestically and abroad, according to Paul Kagan Associates.

Since nabbing Schwarzenegger for $15 million to star in their movie, Columbia executives gleefully predicted-many would say boasted-that they had a mega-hit.

Their super-confidence was the basis for their marketing slogan, "The Big Ticket for 1993," which appeared in "Hero" teasers that began playing in movie theaters last Christmas.

The arrogance of that ad campaign, according to Columbia and Hollywood insiders, may have planted the first seed that grew into the weed of critical, then public disapproval.

"There's a fine line between cockiness and arrogance, and maybe we crossed that line," said the movie's co-screenwriter, David Arnott.

"The public doesn't like to be oversold," said one studio head. "They were excessive. The film actually is not bad."

Columbia executives stand by their marketing campaign, at least in public. They believe that a vengeful Hollywood and entertainment media spewing bad word of mouth long before the film opened created the public's lack of interest.

"The town turned on us. They went after us, and who knows why," said Steve Roth, the Columbia producer who discovered the original screenplay written by recent Wesleyan University graduates Zak Penn and Adam Leff.

Later, at least four veteran screenwriters, including Shane Black ("Lethal Weapon"), were hired to overhaul the script, for a total screenwriting cost of more than $2 million.

"What's the old famous line in Hollywood? (It's) not good enough for you to succeed; your friends must fail," Roth said. "The screw turned. There's a certain glee in seeing a hero (Schwarzenegger) fail."