Miss Fonda may hold a corner on the video workout market, but exercise tapes are hardly plain Jane anymore. From metacarpals to metaphysics, health tapes are flexing a lot of creativity as they target increasingly offbeat fitness goals.

Among the plethora of upcoming tapes are workout cassettes aimed at grandmothers, fitness walkers, 6-year-olds, New Age followers and arthritis sufferers.Scores of general aerobic tapes have been battered by the dominance of Miss Fonda, Kathy Smith and Callan Pinckney's Callanetics, considered the three leading video instructors. Competitors in the exercise genre are exploring narrowly targeted niches to gain a foothold in the fitness market.

"You gotta have a gimmick," said Arlene Winnick of Best Film and Video. "It's getting tougher but people want variety."

Recent tapes from Best include the "Dance Away" series, where routines are set to rock 'n' roll songs of various decades. The '50s tape features moves to "Venus" by Frankie Avalon, and The New Edition's "Cool It Now" is on the '80s cassette.

Exercise tapes made up 9 percent of the $2.4 billion worth of tapes sold in 1989, the last year for which numbers are available. So-called special interest video, including exercise and arts and how-to titles, has grown nearly 600 percent in the last five years, with the group claiming $625 million in revenues for 1990. The success has brought a glut of tapes.

"It's no longer enough to say, `Here's an aerobics tape for women age 35-40,' " said Carol Greenberg of Wood Knapp Video. The company is releasing a stress-reducing cassette starring Morgan Fairchild and also has "Sandy Duncan's 5 Minute Workout," in which viewers learn how to reduce muscle tension and stiffness.

Other Wood Knapp titles include "The Larger Woman's Workout," "Steel Stomachs" with actor Dirk Benedict and "Positive Moves," an exercise program hosted by veteran actress Angela Lansbury.

"Dancin' Grannies," from the Maier Group, is another tape aimed at older women. "Exercise videos are very caught up with the youth market," said Vicki Tomas, manager of the group of 25 high-stepping women whose oldest member is 70. "The motto of the Dancin' Grannies is `These grannies don't bake no pies.' "

The first "Dancin' Grannies" tape sold a robust 200,000 copies, and a followup cassette is due early next year.

"What the older woman is saying is that she's overlooked and ignored," Thomas said. "Grannies need a new image. We need healthy bodies to take us from one adventure to the next."

Youth fitness isn't being overlooked, either. Miss Fonda produces and introduces two tapes aimed at children ranging from age 6 to 13. The Warner Home Video tapes are called "Swamp Stomp" and "Funhouse Fitness." Miss Fonda will announce a new workout tape for her older audience later this year.

Other exercise video producers have pursued specific types of workouts. Since about half of all gyms now offer step aerobics classes, Cory Everson (who plays a villain in Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Double Impact") has made a step workout tape for KVC Entertainment. Parade Video is selling three tapes aimed at fitness walkers and sells one cassette named "Bun-netics."

Pinckney of Callanetics fame has three new quick-workout tapes for the fall: one aimed at the stomach, one the legs and the last focusing on "hips and behind."VIDEO QUESTION

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Q: When will the video companies release more movies on Super VHS?

A: There are still too few people who own Super VHS VCRs to interest the studios in the format, and the situation won't change soon. Although S-VHS has been around since 1987, fewer than 30 movies are available. The latest is "Misery," coming July 11 at $39.95. For a complete list, write to Super Source Video, Box 410777, San Francisco, Calif., 94141, or call 800-331-6304. - Andy Wickstrom (Knight-Ridder)VIDEO REVIEWS

STRESS MANAGEMENT WITH MORGAN FAIRCHILD - Pretend you are Dorothy, caught in a whirlwind of stress, and Morgan Fairchild is your guide along the yellow brick road to stress relief. Like the Good Witch of the North, she'll point out the pitfalls and share her secrets - "This next section is for those of us who have careers that demand so much of our time." Fairchild does not look stressed-out; she's wearing a cheery magenta business suit with high-necked collar. You'd better dress differently for your trip toward stress-free Oz: shorts and a T-shirt or other workout attire is more appropriate. What you'll get is an hour of physical and mental exercises, ranging from low-impact aerobics to easy office exercises. Fairchild wanders in and out of the proceedings like a good guide. Her voice, especially compared with those on many self-help videos, is surprisingly pleasant and void of perkiness. Now, click your heels together three times. Wood Knapp Video. - Diane Connolly (Dallas Morning News)

A MOVEABLE FEAST - To look at Joyce Carol Oates, a skinny little woman with owlish shades and wary eyes, you'd never peg her as a writer more harrowing than Stephen King. But here she is, reading a scene from her latest novel, in which an hysterical wife attacks her husband with a knife and ends up in a bloody heap after plunging through a glass door. "Joyce Carol Oates: American Appetites" is part of an eight-video series, "A Moveable Feast," which profiles contemporary American authors. The half-hour videos are hosted by National Public Radio's Tom Vitale. The series visits poet Allen Ginsberg in his apartment on New York's Lower East Side, listens to him read from "Howl," probes his memories of Jack Kerouac and Beat Generation cronies. Interesting artist, but overexposed. Oates is less familiar and more intriguing. Other authors profiled include W.S. Merwin, Sonia Sanchez, T.R. Pearson and T. Corraghessan Boyle. The videos, $19.95 each, can be ordered from Atlas Video Inc. by calling 1-800-999-0212. - Russell Smith (Dallas Morning News)

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