Back in 1983 a group of relatively unknown young actors starred in a movie called The Outsiders. Directed by the very known Francis Ford Coppola, the film had a budget of about $9 million. Today that sum would pay for the services of one of The Outsiders' alums: Tom Cruise. And although Cruise may pull down the biggest per-picture nut, his fellow cast members are hardly huddling in the shadows of obscurity. Ever hear of Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon or Ralph Macchio?

Fast-forward to the present. Inside Universal's Stage 1, a group of relatively unknown young actors is working on an episode of The Outsiders, the new dramatic Sunday-night series debuting on the Fox network March 25. Like the film and its source, S.E. Hinton's classic teen novel, the series is set in the mid-Sixties and centers on conflicts between kids from the wrong side of the tracks, called Greasers, and their monied schoolmates, the Socs (pronounced soashes.)

As Ponyboy Curtis, Jay R. Ferguson is compressing all of his 15 years of life experience into an intense heart-to-heart scene with his brother Sodapop, played by 21-year-old Rodney Harvey. Outside the stage set, two minutes later, the dramatic tension gives way to horseplay. Harvey has Ferguson locked in a half nelson and is "dinking" him mercilessly on the shoulder. Ferguson, convulsed in giggles, finally breaks free and escapes to his dressing room.

What can't be as easily escaped are the comparisons between this Outsiders cast and that other Outsiders cast. Which isn't to say that this cast doesn't try. "We're not competing," says Sean Kanan, 23, who plays Greg, the Greasers' preppie nemesis. "The movie launched the careers of all those guys who are megastars now. We're hoping it's going to do the same for us, but we're also hoping we're going to do something that's like nothing else."

Not quite famous yet, the show's players aren't quite outsiders to Hollywood either: Kanan was featured in The Karate Kid Part III; David Arquette, 18, taking over Emilio Estevez' role as Two-Bit Matthews, is the younger brother of Rosanna Arquette; Heather McComb, 13, who plays the tomboy Belida "Scout" Jenkins, starred as Zoe in Coppola's segment of New York Stories; her sister, Jennifer McComb, 18, who plays the Soc Marcia, costarred in Lean on Me; Kim Walker, 21, who portrays Cherry Valance, was the lead Heather in Heathers; and both Scott Coffey, 22, and Robert Rusler, 24, were featured in last summer's Shag: The Movie.

Making his TV debut as Ponyboy, Ferguson is the dramatic center of the show. But if Ferguson, whose personal passions include camping and Guns n' Roses, expected that this would win him some status on the set, he might be a trifle disappointed. In the frathouse atmosphere that pervades the soundstage, Ferguson is treated like a lowly pledge. And that means, in the latest teen talk, a lot of dinking, otherwise known as getting beaten up. "They handle me - they keep me in line," Ferguson says of his fellow actors. "I'm like a punching bag."

The party line among The Outsiders players is that this is an ensemble show. Everyone in the cast is equal. Okay, but if someone were to be pointed to as just a tad more equal than the rest, that person would have to be Rusler, who plays the knife-toting ex-con Tim Shepard. In a series glutted with good-looking young people, Rusler has the kind of intense attractiveness and low plaintive voice that makes him the odds-on favorite to end up on posters glued to the walls of teen bedrooms across the country. Rusler describes his character as a bad boy, and he's already learned that there are advantages to being identified with a role that has a touch of danger about it.

"You know how they say the good girls like the bad boys?" he pauses playfully, then adds, "I think that's true."

Nor does Rusler seem shy about exercising his bad-boy appeal on the set. Along with 24-year-old Boyd Kestner who plays the self-sacrificing Darrel Curtis (Swayze's part in the film), he is sort of the troupe's leader. The cast - or, at least the male half of it - renders a split decision when it comes to assessing how romance and role-playing mix. Harvey, Arquette and Harold Pruett, 20, who plays Greaser Steve Randle, say the show has already cost them their girlfriends: Arquette and Pruett because they wanted to "concentrate more on work," Harvey because "she couldn't deal with the attention I got from all the girls." Ferguson agrees with Harvey, claiming that landing a part in The Outsiders has given him an inside track with girls who used to nearly flee at the sight of him. At a party recently, he says, some who "didn't care diddly-squat" for him when they were going to school together, have suddenly become his admirers. "A lot of them hated me," he says disbelievingly. "Hated me. It makes me mad, but then it makes me happy that they like me."

What is all this feverish revelry like for someone who has actually been around the block once or twice? Ask Billy Bob Thornton, who, at 34, is the oldest member of the cast. Thornton plays Buck Merrill, the owner of the saloon and gas station where the Greasers hang out, and he finds himself inspired by all the fun his young costars have working on the show. "It still is fun to me, too," he says, "but a lot of actors my age have lost that zeal, that spunk, you have when you're first going into acting."

If there's an outsider among The Outsiders, it's 22-year-old Scott Coffey, cast as a Soc named Randy. Not only does Coffey avoid socializing with his costars, he expresses a distaste for joining the ranks of teen stardom. "I'm not interested in being a teen idol or famous or cool or any of those things that are meaningless and just distance you from other people," he says, brooding. "The genre of the show is usually sort of exploitative - a teenybopper, teen-oriented sort of thing. I'm hoping I'll be able to bring some integrity to that."

Integrity is one thing the show's executive producers, Francis Ford Coppola and his longtime partner Fred Roos, are known for. "There's no way in the world they're going to let this show become like Happy Days," Coffey says. Kanan agrees: "This is going to be a really gritty, sexy, hard-line show."

Whether the TV public falls for that hard line or casts The Outsiders out is something no one knows. But Fox is betting heavily on its gaggle of dink-happy heartthrobs, and - just look at them - who'd want to bet against them?