The voice is urgent.

“It’s a woman. It looks like … it’s Helen! Open the gate!”

Two 30-foot walls part, and a blond woman with Tank Girl clothes zips into a lagoon on a tiny outboard boat. She carries a bag of dirt, the hope of dry land for a water-logged people. Cue the theme from “Peter Gunn,” and enter a bullet-spraying bandit in a gunboat from hell.

The battle has begun.

The scene is a rehearsal for “WaterWorld - A Live Sea War Spectacular,” a slick stunt show overflowing with rattling gunfire, fiery blazes and water-scooter stunts. It’s Universal Studios’ latest attempt to immerse a movie-mad public in Hollywood-style action.

“The idea is to put the audience into the ‘Waterworld’ experience. It allows us to ride the wave of the awareness of that motion picture,” park president Bob Gault said.

The picture, of course, is “Waterworld,” the $172 million aquaaction adventure starring Kevin Costner as a web-footed mariner. The story is set in a future when the Earth’s polar icecaps have melted, flooding the continents. The survivors keep their heads above water by building floating cities from driftwood and debris.

The $15 million live show is based on a key scene in the film, when a band of villains known as smokers raids an atoll. Organizers had to adapt special effects and stunts performed on the open ocean to a 1.4 million-gallon lagoon at the park. The process took a little more than a year.

“We tried to replicate the visual imagery and scale of (the movie). When the whole set explodes at the end of the show, it’s a conflagration not unlike the Mariner’s escape in the movie. We tried to retain the ‘Oh my god’ kind of visuals of the movie in the live show,” Gault said.

Which means that the audience - at least those in the first three rows - should be prepared to get wet and feel the heat from stage explosions. Visitors will wind through a maze of props from the movie before entering the 2,500-seat arena. The set is a floating island of barges, spare tires, fishnets and more corrugated metal than a junk yard.

The production maintains four casts of eight actors, 21 crew members and 15 computers for a planned schedule of 1,400 shows per year.

There’s no mistaking the star of the show - a 1,400-pound seaplane that is catapulted over a 30-foot wall from behind the stage. Organizers weren’t sure they could pull off the stunt, but a team of engineers produced what project manager Norm Kahn calls “the only plane designed and built to crash 10 times a day.”