You know, I don’t generally have any rhyme or reason for picking some of the movies I sit down to watch on days when I have the time to do so. Sometimes I feel like something deep and meaningful. Other times I feel like some weird oddity of a movie that may be something of a cult classic and has something of a reputation, and that’s about it.
Willard is definitely in the latter category there. How else do you classify a movie about a boy and his rats?
Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison) is a socially awkward young man working for Mr. Martin (Ernest Borgnine at his sleaziest) at a company that was, at one time, owned by Willard’s father. Willard is constantly henpecked and hassled by Martin who apparently only keeps Willard around as a favor to the boy’s overbearing mother (Elsa Lanchester). The pair live in a dilapidated mansion where Willard has to take care of all of the upkeep as well, and neither of them have any money to fix things up. Between the upkeep of the house, care for his ailing mother, and Martin’s demands, Willard doesn’t have time to finish everything he is expected to do, and the only friends he has are clearly his mothers.
By the by, I have no idea if this was intentional or if it was just how my HDTV made it look, but an early scene when Willard comes home to a surprise birthday party where a succession of older women with a lot of make-up give him kisses sure did look a bit on the grotesque side.
Willard’s fortunes begin to change a little bit when he finds a rat in the backyard. His mother wants him to kill it. Instead, Willard starts to care for and train it, along with a growing swarm of the animals. He takes special care of a white albino he named Socrates, but then there’s the black rat Ben, a less obedient rodent who may be a bit on the malevolent side. Willard slowly learns how to use his new friends to take care of his needs, and it may not be too long before he uses them to get back at Martin for everything the man has done to Willard and his family.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: this is basically a B-movie sort of film with a crazy premise. No one is going to win an award over something like this, and we shouldn’t begin to pretend it’s that kind of movie. The cast is made up of either actors who are past the highpoints of their careers or very young up and comers who will go on to more later. However, the movie does have a good, slow build-up. It’s not like Willard jumps immediately to using the rats for murder, and the more sinister side of Ben only comes out later in the movie. Early on, he’s just disobedient. Willard’s efforts to gain control of his life only lead him to violence late in the movie. His mother, someone a lesser movie might have made another target for Willard’s dark side, never suffers at his hand, and love interest Joan (Sondra Locke) never freaks out at the sight of a rat. Heck, Joan gifts Willard with a cat at one point, and any concern the feline might come to a bad end are misplaced as Willard finds an almost comical way to take care of the cat without hurting anything. It’s basically the kind of movie where the person who gets it in the end really earned it.
And, quite frankly, given the ending, so does Willard himself.
As for the rats, well, they do fine. This is from an era where live rats would have to be used, and the animals don’t seem too terrifying because, well, these are certainly specially trained tame rats. The movie does try to use some shots of “Ben” to make him look sinister (see above), but they mostly make him look more comical than anything else. But this isn’t that sort of movie. It’s well-paced, a little silly without being overly comedic, and while it was almost certainly intended to be a horror movie, it’s not what I would call scary. What I would call it is something of a character piece for the Willard character, showing his rise from picked-on schlub to someone who will at least try to stand up for himself. It’s more like his choices on how to do that are maybe not the smartest plans around. Ultimately, I had fun with this, but I wouldn’t recommend taking it even the slightest bit seriously.
Grade: B
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