Howling Dog

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

SEPTEMBER 30, 1955

Directed and Written by James Bridges

The date has, shall we say, limited resonance; it is the day on which James Dean, the sometime teen-age movie idol and potential rival to Brando, died in an auto accident. This movie, which is about how the news of his untimely demise affected a college student and his friends, has even less resonance--except, perhaps, as the most ridiculously bad movie in recent memory.

Writer-Director Bridges apparently wants to evoke nostalgia for provincial days gone by as well as make a comment--as if one were needed--on how passionate idolatry can briefly unbalance youthful minds. To that end he requires poor Richard Thomas, known herein as Jimmy J., to strip, smear himself with river mud and encourage his pals to join him in a fake primitive rite designed to put them in touch with the departed spirit. A dog's howl seems to him a sign that he has been heard, though a more objective observer might imagine the hound to be the world's first furry movie critic. A little later there is a candlelit attempt to summon Dean via ouija board, which spills over into a raid on a lover's lane to frighten non believing neckers into joining the mourning. The girl who most deeply shares Jimmy J.'s excessive regard for Dean is horribly burned when the candle she is carrying ignites her costume. In the end, she has retreated into a psychopathic silence, and Jimmy J., expelled from college, is telling her the plot of Rebel Without a Cause. It does little to perk up her spirits. Undaunted by the misery that he has caused, this idiot climbs on his motorcycle and heads for his idol's haunts in California. Doubtless he toils even now in the movie industry, approving projects like this one.

The film's failure stems from the desperate seriousness with which it regards its subject. It keeps insisting that Jimmy J.'s behavior is a sign of anti-bourgeois sensitivity rather than cretinism. This error is deepened by making him and his friends college-age. One might possibly accept this nonsense if the actors were young teenagers.

Finally, earnest Richard Thomas is badly miscast, since his salient quality is intelligence. You just cannot accept John Boy of The Waltons as a media-maddened lunatic. Just by being himself, he further forces Director Bridges, with his flat, unaccented style, from the only possible attitude one could take to this story, which is comic, or at least profoundly ironic.

-- Richard Schickel

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