LEAD: IT'S hard to resist a movie that lists a Gumby maker and a Gumby adviser in the credits.

IT'S hard to resist a movie that lists a Gumby maker and a Gumby adviser in the credits.

The familiar little green fellow leads off ''The Puppetoon Movie,'' introducing this collection of nine films by George Pal; animated shorts from the 1930's and 40's, their technique influenced the creators of similar characters from Gumby to the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Pal, who died in 1980, may be better known as the producer or director of pioneering science-fiction films such as ''War of the Worlds'' and ''The Time Machine.'' But he also masterminded these cartoonlike films, in which the camera shoots hundreds of minutely different three-dimensional objects rather than drawings.

Though Pal's puppetoons seem strikingly artificial today, these stiffly moving toys take on a quaint, stylized charm as they emerge from the past, full of music and brilliant color, with flashes of wit and politics. A big-band crooner sings ''Harbor Lights'' on an ocean liner, against a glistening skyline that makes us marvel at the visual beauty Pal achieved. Busby Berkeley-type dancers are shot from above; Sleeping Beauty wakes to the sound of a radio as Prince Charming drives up in a flashy car.

Pal's political concerns are evident in ''The Tulips Will Always Grow'' (a reminder that Pal, who was born in Hungary, fled Europe during World War II), in which a Dutch boy and girl survive the destruction of their windmill and their tulip garden by fascists.

But while the tulips spring up magically in row after row, our awe at this once-new technique fades fast; soon we're apt to yearn for some narrative continuity, and to be distracted by the unnatural movement of the puppets as their mouths gape and their eyes roll around. Eventually, even some of the classic Pal shorts - such as ''Tubby the Tuba,'' with Victor Jory telling the story of the tuba who longs to play a melody - are reduced to curiosities; like Cinerama travelogues or early 3-D movies, they needn't do more than exploit what was then an innovation.

Arnold Leibovit, who produced ''The Puppetoon Movie,'' also wrote its cutesy narrative frame: Gumby returns at the film's close, joined by Mr. Peanut, the monster from the movie ''Gremlins'' and dozens of other characters who are puppetoon descendants. ''George made it possible for all of us to be stars,'' says Speedy Alka-Seltzer.

Clearly, ''The Puppetoon Movie'' is a labor of love, burdened with all the weight of that cliche; it's a hagiography that inadvertently does a disservice to Pal. He may have kept his Puppetoons short for practical reasons - those hundreds and thousands of figures were exorbitantly expensive - but he did, after all, mean them to last a few minutes. Stringing them together in this long chain creates feature-length demands they were never meant to carry. Despite its moments of irresistible charm, ''The Puppetoon Movie,'' which opens today at the Bleecker Street Cinema, is more a film archivist's dream than an entertainment. Artificial Stars THE PUPPETOON MOVIE, animated by Peter Kleinow; voice direction, screenplay and editing by Arnold Leibovit; music by Buddy Baker; director of photography, Gene Warren Jr.; produced by Mr. Leibovit; an Expanded Entertainment Release of an International Tournee of Animation Presentation. At Bleecker Street Cinema, 144 Bleecker Street. Running time: 80 minutes. This film has no rating.