‘Pacific Heights’ Tops Box Office; ‘GoodFellas’ 2nd : Movies: ‘Ghost,’ third place in ticket sales, shows no signs of dying.

The Yuppie thriller “Pacific Heights” claimed the No. 1 spot during its opening weekend at the box office, with ticket sales of approximately $7.1 million.

Starring Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine as landlords who wind up wishing they hadn’t rented their San Francisco apartment to a cunningly deranged Michael Keaton, the 20th Century Fox film--directed by John Schlesinger--opened at 1,284 theaters for a per-screen average of approximately $5,529.

With ticket sales of about $6 million, the gangster epic “GoodFellas” slid to second place--but it dropped just 6% from the film’s previous opening weekend. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta, the film had a per-screen average of about $4,647 on 1,291 screens.

In third place, with no sign of dying, was Paramount Pictures’ “Ghost.” Indeed, ticket sales of $5.4 million--during the film’s 12th weekend--were up 8% over the previous week, with the film averaging a sturdy $3,057 on 1,766 screens.

By comparison, Columbia Pictures’ “Postcards From the Edge” earned approximately $4.1 million in its third week, and averaged $3,099 on 1,323 screens, for fourth place.

The fifth-ranked film was Tri-Star Pictures’ thriller, “Narrow Margin,” which had ticket sales of some $2.1 million--a downward spiral of more than 40% from the previous weekend. At 1,253 screen, it averaged just $1,675 per-screen.

Among the weekend openers, Epic/Triumph’s science-fiction thriller “I Come in Peace,” starring Dolph Lundgren as a detective on the trail of a murderous alien, had ticket sales of about $1.9 million on 1,073 screens, for an average of $1,770 and seventh place. And Peter Bogdanovich’s heavily promoted “Texasville” had ticket sales of about $900,000 on 354 screens--for a poor average of $2,542--and 11th place. From Columbia, it is the sequel to his 1971 landmark, “The Last Picture Show.”

Rounding out the weekend’s top 10, in approximate figures, were: MGM/UA’s “Death Warrant,” sixth place, with ticket sales of $1.9 million; Paramount’s “Funny About Love,” eighth, $1.6 million; Columbia’s “Flatliners,” ninth, $1.6 million; Warner Bros.’ “Presumed Innocent,” 10th, $1.3 million.