SCREEN: 'FIRESTARTER,' A STEPHEN KING STORY

nicknamed Charlie - McGee doesn't want to set the world on fire but, with increasing frequency, she does. Sometimes something just comes over her, and what she wills in her mind actually happens. Once, standing in an airport lobby, she sees a young soldier telling his pregnant, tearful girlfriend that he doesn't want to settle down yet. Charlie gets carried away, and the soldier's shoes miraculously burst into flame.

''Firestarter,'' this month's screen adaptation of a Stephen King novel, is a good, stylish mixture of the kind of hokey horror and science-fiction elements in which Mr. King specializes. It has a first-rate cast headed by the small, extremely self-assured Drew Barrymore (''E. T.''), who plays Charlie, supported by David Keith, who appears as her troubled dad, and George C. Scott, wearing a graying pony tail and one glass eye, who is the film's manic villain. Mr. Scott is supposed to covet Charlie's special ''power,'' here called pyrokinesis, but he is such a forceful presence that he could probably teach Charlie a thing or two.

The screenplay, by Stanley Mann, bears more than a little resemblance to ''The Fury,'' which was directed by Brian De Palma, who made his first big commercial hit by directing the screen version of Mr. King's ''Carrie,'' which also had to do with brain power. Can you follow? In any case, ''Firestarter'' is about a top-secret Government agency and its experiments in what might be called remote-control extermination.

About half the film is a chase, in which Charlie and her father are pursued by Government agents, and the rest is set on the agency's elegant Virginia plantation, where Charlie is forced to perform dreadful demonstrations of her talents. These are explained by the fact that Charlie's mother and father, when they were nice, ordinary college kids, participated in Government-financed experiments that did terrible things to their pituitary glands.

In this sort of movie, explanations are less important than what happens and how. Mark L. Lester, the director, and the special-effects people keep the film moving at a fiery clip, and in such graphic detail that the film's R rating is thoroughly deserved.

Also prominent in the supporting cast are Art Carney, Louise Fletcher, Martin Sheen and Moses Gunn. The film opens today at the Rivoli and other theaters.

Pituitary Pangs FIRESTARTER, directed by Mark L. Lester; screenplay by Stanley Mann, based on the novel by Stephen King; director of photography, Giuseppe Ruzzolini; edited by David Rawlins; music by Tangerine Dream; produced by Frank Capra Jr. At the Rivoli, Broadway and 49th Street; Gramercy, 23d Street, near Lexington Avenue; New Yorker Twin, Broadway and 88th Street; 86th Street East, at Third Avenue, and other theaters. Running time: 116 minutes. This film is rated R. Andrew McGeeDavid Keith Charlie McGeeDrew Barrymore Dr. Joseph WanlessFreddie Jones Vicky McGeeHeather Locklear Captain HollisterMartin Sheen John RainbirdGeorge C. Scott Irv MandersArt Carney Norma MandersLouise Fletcher Dr. PynchotMoses Gunn Taxi DriverAntonio Fargas