Nightmares are frightening because they make the bizarre inescapably logical, and any work of art dealing in horror and suspense must try to do the same. Dream-logic is clearly the goal in Repulsion, Roman Polanski's second feature-length film, but a clumsy visual style, dull acting, and a rudimentary script prevent the characters from ever seeming real. We are not afraid because we see through the illusion, and the best one can say of Polanski is that at least he is enough of a magician to keep us from laughing.

For the movie's plot is almost ridiculous. A moody French girl, never very fond of men, goes insane and bashes in the head of a well-meaning suitor who breaks into her barricaded apartment. Next her landlord shows up with a plan to free her of the burden of rent and unwisely attempts to implement it. When an older sister and her lover return from a vacation, they find the beau's corpse in the bathtub, the landlord's under the living-room couch, and the girl herself, nearly cataonic, under their bed. This is pretty febrile stuff, but the mood Polanski creates--with dark chaotic rooms, dripping water, buzzing flies, and the girl's own Ophelia-like singing compels you to take the film seriously.

What it doesn't do, and what a well-designed set and clever soundtrack can never do, is make you believe it. Though the film is largely shot from the girl's viewpoint, we share her imagination and not, alas, her thoughts. The only sense of breakdown stems from her increasingly lurid hallucinations: walls turn to putty or open in great cracks; hands poke through to feel her breasts, and rapists wait patiently in her bed. Photographed in deep shadow, often with a swinging camera, such scenes look old-fashioned and crude. Films have developed more sensitive means of conveying states of consciousness than expressionism.

Because the girl's mind is ultimately inaccessible, her actions too often conflict with what little we know of her, or seem to lack any motivation at all, however psychotic While working as a manicurist she jabs her scissors into a woman's hand, and later her purse opens to reveal the shriveled head of a skinned rabbit. We are shocked, admittedly, but hardly enlightened.

The secondary characters are no less puzzling than the girl, for many of them seem quite different every time they appear. None is developed fully enough so that the facets of his personality cohere; and since Polanski, a Pole, is directing in a language foreign to him, the English dialogue doesn't add much. (Catherine Deneuve, who plays the girl, and Yvette Furneaux, who plays her sister, are speaking in a foreign language too.) Repulsion is undeniably interesting, and should give most people frisson or two. But like the opening credits, which glide up and down Miss Deneuve's glistening eyeball, the movie as whole is silly and uninspired.