University of Virginia Library

Bad Dream

It sounds like the lingering
memory of a bad dream-perhaps
from too much cheese dip at last
night's cock tail party. Actually the
movie was "inspired" by a novel
called Ratman's Notebook
(although that doesn't necessarily
spoil my origins hypothesis). The
story is idiotic and absurd; it stems
from the quality of imagination
that produced the Disney
"flubber" epics, but the source has
gone putrid, or perverse, or mad.

I am not saying that a movie is
necessarily bad because its premise
is improbable; "The Birds" proves
that. But improbability must be
artfully overcome; we must be
lulled into a willing suspension of
disbelief, et cetera. "Willard's"
very subject matter precludes art;
the film is mired in its own
inherent repulsiveness. The awful,
majestic terror of angry, swooping
birds is not, believe me, duplicated
by the sight of a swarm of
fang-toothed rats. "Willard"
doesn't submerge its
improbability, but lurches
grotesquely against it.