Daily News from New York, New York • 26

TP. Hf0 Mm videoville jcu Mr UV v. BY GERRY PUTZER 7 says woman handed ing me the tiny white cup. "Don't burn yourself. It's hot." Before my first sip, the dark fragrance tells me this isn't espresso.

It's hot chocolate, served neat without whipped cream or marsh-mallows. And it's the best hot chocolate I've ever had. I am in SoHo, at MarieBelle's Fine Treats and Chocolates, a stylish shop with high ceilings and a back room with round marble tables where customers can sit and drink hot chocolate. IV 3r -j Maribel Lieberman's Owner i hi taytl THOMAS MONASTER DAILY NEWS own brand of hot chocolate comes in four flavors: Aztec (or milk chocolate), extra dark, espresso and cinnamon and nut- spiced (with meg). It's $3 for a small cup; $5 apricot, orange and pear ($1 each) and bars of imported chocolate whose wrappers display pinups from the 1930s and '40s The front of the store features the sweets that Lieberman imports from France and Belgium, many of them painted with abstract designs identifying the fillings as hazelnut, coffee, coconut or raspberry.

The same colorful designs, done by Lieberman's husband, Jacques, are on the scarves that dress the mannequin in the front window and are for sale in the shop. r. MarieBelle's Fine Treats and Chocolates. 484 SL, between Wooster and West Broadway. (212) 925-6999.

v'-LVder eeSax for a large. A tin of cocoa powder for making hot chocolate at home is $10. MarieBelle's fine treats include fruit jellies honey, strawberry, iW Motor City murder puts our sleuth in the clutch The supernatural thriller "Dragonfly has opened In theaters, and the horror hit "The Others" is still playing, but stay-at-home scare fans can choose among a handful of yi shockers that came and went quickly a few months ago but arrive on video this week and next "Session 9" (USA, 100 rated also on DVD; in stores Tuesday) had the misfortune of opening the same day as "The Others," but it provides its share of chills. A I five-man team of asbestos removers (led by Peter Mullan and David Caruso, above) arrives to clean up a long-aban- doned mental hospital, but something strange is going on in the eerie Victorian complex. In "Don't Say a Word" (Fox, 112 rated also on DVD), Michael Douglas is back in his familiar thriller persona of the guy who has it all and I watches it taken away.

Douglas plays a Manhattan psychi- atrist whose daughter is kidnapped by men who want him to elicit a mysterious number from a severely disturbed patient (Brittany Murphy). Two teen-oriented shockers also arrive Tuesday. "Soul -Survivors" (Artisan, 85 rated also on DVD) stars Melissa Sagemiller as a college freshman whose boyfriend (Casey Affleck) has died in a car wreck or has he? The film was rated PG-13 in theaters, but is available on tape and DVD only in an R-rated "Killer Cut" And Snoop Dogg joins the horror ranks in "Bones" (New Line, 92 rated also on DVD), playing a ghost out to avenge his shooting death. The hip-hop star adds his thoughts on a DVD commentary. Amos Walker, who has gumshoed his way through more than 15 Loren D.

Estleman novels, has a new gig in "Sinister Heights." And as in other Walker novels, the been-there-done-that loner will uncover more than he bargained for. When Detroit's wealthiest citizen, thirtysomething Rayellen Stutch, hires him to track down the heirs to her late husband Leland's automaking fortune (to square away any inheritance issues), Amos sees an easy job ahead. But if big money is involved, nothing comes easy. A daughter is found. But then the trail hits a snag in a women's shelter, where Amos finds a granddaughter whose estranged husband has a knack for getting drunk and beating her.

She lives at the shelter with her young son. And the story is about to begin. Someone else who had been involved with the 100-year-old Leland Stutch and his billions doesn't want any heirs found, going so far as to commit murder and set up a kidnapping. Suspects come into focus Stutch's beautiful widow, the old man's right-hand man and security chief, an old flame. Walker has to keep his head down as the bullets fly.

Mysterious Press ($24.95, 272 pages) Morgan Goldberg VIDEO RELEASES THIS WEEK 1 JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK (Dimension, 104 rated also on DVD; in stores Tuesday). Writer-director Kevin Smith's stoner heroes (Jason Mewes and Smith) head to LA. to stop Miramax (parent of this film's Dimension label) from making a movie about them. The vulgar comedy, filled with Hollywood irvjokes, comes in a two-DVD set that includes deleted scenes. CLOSE-UP (Facets, 100 not rated, also on DVD) This 1990 Iranian drama, torn from the Tehran headlines, Is about a cinema buff on trial for impersonating the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf It's directed by the equally esteemed Abbas Kiarostami Wind Will Carry and in its unassuming verite style manages to be about much more than Just the Iranian legal system.

The DVD includes an interview with Kiarostami. In Farsi, with subtitles. "Will 1- 'It! HSv.f"'- NEW ON DVD One of New York City's last public bathhouses is on the east side of Asser Levy Place (formerly Avenue A), between 23rd and 25th Sts. Now known as the Asser Levy Recreation Center, the handsome Roman Revival building looks very much the way it did in 1908, when it opened in a neighborhood where indoor plumbing was a luxury most could only dream about. In 1901 with waves of immigrants crowding into unsanitary, disease-breeding tenements the city built its first free public bathhouse on Rivington St.

By 1914, 25 bathhouses, each with a swimming pool and gymnasium, were scattered among the five boroughs. Architects Arnold W. Brunner and William Martin Aiken chose to evoke the ancient Roman baths when they designed the red-brick- TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (New Line, 134 mins. plus extras, rated in stores Tuesday) David Lynch' 1992 prequel to his TV series is abhorred by many, adored by many others. Ten years' distance and the subsequent appearance of "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive" allow a better appreciation of Lynch's bent narrative, which centers around coke-snorting prom queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and her tormented father (Ray Wise).

The disk includes ROBERT BOSAMIUQ DAILY NEWS area with its lion's-head water spout. In 1990, the bathhouse was renamed for Levy, a Jewish civil-rights advocate in 17th-century New Amsterdam, and declared a city landmark. Today, yearly membership includes use of an indoor and outdoor pool (open in summer) and a fitness center. Lorraine B. Dlehl and-limestone structure, originally called the East 23rd Street Bathhouse.

Eight stone urns adorn the roof, and two massive arches punctuated with windows mark what once were separate entrances for men and women. Inside, the atmosphere of a Roman bath is evoked in original tile floors and the unchanged pool a wacky montage of recent interviews with cast members, but alas, none of the many scenes whose deletion contributed to the film's perplexity. E-mail: gputzerQ edltnydailynewa.com.