If you don't like rats, then you should stay away from this lengthened review. Andrew reviews Willard, Ben, and the 2003 remake of the classic.
In 1971, a horror film emerged which
would change the face of movie protagonists and antagonists for years to
come. No longer were the forces of good
and evil fought merely between men or the kinds of monsters you’d find in a
local drive in. Here, the forces of darkness
would be found within the forces of nature, either a natural earth disaster or
an epidemic involving animals. In the
case of Willard, the stampede against
humanity would be fought by rats with the social human outcast title character
as their ringleader and guide. Inspiring
everything from Jaws, Cujo, and even the ridiculous Night of the Lepus, Willard proved natural animals starring in horror films had
enormous box office potential. A year
later a sequel named Ben was made and
even managed to garner an Academy Award nomination for its Michael Jackson song
of the same name. Sadly, both films
disappeared almost completely from the marketplace and have never been released
on DVD. Almost 32 years later, Willard was remade with Crispin Glover
in the title role and even managed to use Michael Jackson’s song in addition to
a new, bizarre rendition by Glover. With
this article, I will attempt to purvey this unnamed trilogy of rats as man’s
best friend (or fiend, depending on your point of view).
Willard
(1971 – directed by Daniel Mann)
 |
| "Dear god!!! You've been reincarnated as a circus rat!!" |
Loosely based on the novel Ratman’s Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert, Willard stars Bruce Davison as a social
misfit working a small time office job for his domineering boss Al Martin
(Ernest Borgnine) while living at home with his aged, cantankerous mother in
her decrepit home. A constant subject of
humiliation from his mother and berated endlessly by his boss, he finds solace
in a family of rats nesting in his backyard.
He takes a liking to one particular white rat he names Socrates. Soon after, more and more rodents appear
including an oversized black rat he names Ben.
It doesn’t take long for the withdrawn, increasingly sociopathic Willard
to build a private army of rats with which he can unleash havoc on an
unassuming public at large.
Simultaneously a tale of
psychological horror while preying on the everyman’s fear of pestilence, Willard was a massive commercial hit
when first released in 1971 and promptly spawned a sequel which would follow the
exploits of Ben, the most devious and violent rat of the bunch. Not so much for its creepy rat infestation as
its hapless protagonist, Willard
struck a chord with viewers who saw in it their own feelings of alienation and
social ineptitude. It gave face to the
geek, the outsider who longs to fit in and finds acceptance with a group even
less tolerable than he. Bruce Davison,
as Willard, perfectly embodies the socially inept antihero who transforms from
the receiver of wrongdoing to the giver.
Ernest Borgnine, of course, has boundless fun hamming it up as the
loudmouthed blowhard boss, shouting his lines and opening his wild eyes
wide.
Willard
was hugely successful upon release in 1971 and managed to garner critical
acclaim as well as production on a sequel which would follow the exploits of
Ben. However, Willard hasn’t aged well in the eyes of cinephiles and the film, to
this day, remains unreleased on DVD.
While many will dispute it’s validity against the 2003 remake with
Crispin Glover, I myself am of the opinion that Daniel Mann’s Willard is inferior to the remake and
feels far more dated than other films of the same era. When production began on Ben began a year later, Daniel Mann stepped down from the
director’s chair, and perhaps in the process, the quality of Ben would step down with him.
Ben (1972 –
directed by Phil Karlson)
 |
| "My name is Michael and I support RAHK, rats against human kind. Please donate." |
Picking up where Willard left off with the ending
re-purposed into the film’s prologue, Ben
follows the title’s leading rat as he leaves Willard and his army of rats
behind and befriends a young boy named Danny.
Danny, like Willard, is an outcast and struggles daily with bullying and
a debilitating heart condition.
Unbeknownst to Danny, Ben has a checkered past of murder and mayhem.
Ben
is best remembered for being a bad movie with an Academy Award nominated
original song by Michael Jackson of the same name. In the years that followed Ben’s release, Jackson would perform the
song at the height of his career and in the TV movie The Jacksons: An American Dream, light would be shed on Michael’s
own story involving a childhood love for a pet rat.
Despite the popularity at the box
office and recent fascination with Michael Jackson’s career and the song in
question, Ben is an exploitation
film. It weakly repeats the same
trajectory of its predecessor while failing to provide an interesting human
character to carry the picture. We’re
stuck with a poor little boy we could care less about, all the while Ben and
his rats cover and kill more humans. It’s
a forgettable effort which could only have appealed to fans of Willard at the time and is only
remembered for the Michael Jackson song.
Willard (2003 –
directed by Glen Morgan)
 |
| "I'm very upset right now. My only friend is riding on my shoulder." |
In the new millennia of remakes of
old classics being the norm at modern multiplex, it was fitting that Willard would eventually receive the
same treatment. In 2003, the story was
retold with Crispin Glover in the lead role as the withdrawn, mercurial titular
character, with former drill sergeant R. Lee Ermey taking the reigns of
Willard’s corrupt boss. With the remake
came newfound interest in the predecessors, and a resurgence of interest in
casting Crispin Glover in mainstream movies.
The film also makes the welcome casting choice of Mulholland Drive star Laura Elena Harring as Willard’s
affectionate, caring co-worker who even tries to show kindness to the outsider
by providing him with a pet cat, much to the delight of his ravenous rat
populous.
A rare break with tradition, the
2003 Willard manages to combine the
best elements of both original films and build upon them in a way that feels
new and fulfilling in ways the other films aren’t. In addition to reusing the Michael Jackson
song, the 2003 Willard also gives us
a cover of the song by Crispin Glover, performed with gusto in all of his
eccentric, unsettling glory. Although
the remake makes overt references to the original, with Bruce Davison in a
family photo as Willard’s father, it’s a bit shocking to see how much more
complexity Glover imbues the character with.
While most only know Glover as George McFly from the Back to the Future films and some of his
personal oddities, simply put, he’s absolutely spectacular here. Contrary to the Davison character, the new Willard seems to suggest the rat
infestation may in fact be purely psychological and not just a modern day
plague.
-Andrew Kotwicki