ridiculous rating

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet (1921) *** (out of 4)Winsor McCay classic that makes you feel that the filmmakers of THE LOST WORLD and KING KONG might have been influenced by this. A husband brags about eating a delicious rarebit but this food always gives him weird dreams. In the dream, the wife takes in a cute animal and soon after it just keeps eating and eating while getting bigger and bigger. The thing eventually grows to the size where it begins to terrorize the city. McCay made three different "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend" films in 1921 and this here is certainly the best of the bunch. One could argue the creative issues seeing as how all three were pretty much the same story with different dreams but this here is so creative that you can't help but fall for it. The entire film has a very bizarre atmosphere working for it and a lot of credit has to go to McCay for coming up with such a strange looking animal. It's part pig, part dog and part teddy bear but it's certainly something impossible to forget. I thought the animation was a major step up from his previous films and just check out the scene where the animals is eating what appears to be beans off the floor. Just pay attention to the way the pile goes down as the creature eats them. Fans of McCay will certainly want to check this one out but fans of the surreal and bizarre should enjoy it as well.

The Pet is another entry in Winsor McCay's animated series Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend. In this one, a man has just eaten a rarebit of the title. His wife has warned him about having bad dreams for doing so to no avail. As he dreams, we see outside of the house a small animal that's hard to identify but-according to the word put on screen-says, "Meow." The woman picks him up and decides to keep him. She gives him a bath and feeds him milk on a saucer a little bigger than him. After he's done, however, he becomes a little bigger than the bowl which turns over on his entire body as he leans his head forward. He later eats a cat under the table and then an electric lamp on it (and doesn't even get electrocuted!). The husband then goes to the store to get a barrel of rat poison in order to kill this "pet". After the pet eats it, he develops some splotches on his body but they disappear quickly as he keeps growing. He eventually grows as tall as the tallest building in the city as more than dozens and dozens of planes appear and shoot him to pieces as the man finally wakes up...As always, McCay gives great detail in backgrounds that make you almost forget you're watching animation. Many humorous touches throughout as when the "pet" swallows a hose before spewing water through a neighbor's window at a neighbor! And that final sequence with all those pieces of the "pet" falling down. Wow! As with anything that McCay has done, The Pet is certainly essential viewing for animation fans.

This is an amusing and imaginative 'Rarebit Fiend' feature that makes good use out of one basic idea to provide material for a number of good moments. Most of it is simple elaboration on the basic premise, but the way that Winsor McCay steadily builds things up makes it work pretty well.This time, the rarebit-induced dream concerns an unusual pet that quickly gets out of control. As its rampage gets worse and worse, some of the shots bring to mind similar sequences from numerous later movies, such as "King Kong" and "The Lost World", and this gives "The Pet" even extra interest.In itself, it's pretty good as well. The animation is of McCay's usual high quality, and it works quite well for its era.

Based on McCay's cartoon strip, DREAMS OF THE RAREBIT FIEND, this concerns a tiny creature that eats everything and grows until it threatens the entire city. A seminal work, its influence shows up in Heinlein's novel THE STAR BEAST, Tex Avery's KING SIZE CANARY and in the final sequence of KING KONG! Bizarre and brilliant!