MOVIES - Feb. 13, 1987

The author of a noteworthy history of black soldiers in Vietnam called best picture-nominee “Platoon” an “abysmal racist disaster” Wednesday. Writer Wallace Terry, who covered Vietnam for Time magazine and wrote “Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans,” said director Oliver Stone’s critically acclaimed and popular Vietnam War film is a fine movie in some respects but fails miserably in its treatment of black soldiers. “Blacks are portrayed, for the most part, as malingerers, afraid of combat, drug abusers and eager to get out of the fighting,” Terry said. “That goes against what I know of the black experience in Vietnam.”