Enter the Willard.
A legacy begins. Continues. Extends in all directions like a Rat King Vishnu.
Okay folks.
This is going to largely cover the plot of the 1971 horror film Willard (again, young loner finds friend among rats, meets a fairly predictable ending if you’re a rat) rather than perform much filmic reading. So please, don’t think I’m spoiling the thing for you on THAT front.
I rewatched Willard last week, and I’d forgotten how Psycho-esque the beginning is. Not, God knows, through any virtue of directing, but through its focus on an odd young loner who lives at home with a single mother who is cosseting and castrating by turn.
(He doesn’t, but this is very funny.)
So this is the lot of one Willard Stiles: seemingly friendless, he endures his mother’s little frenzies as well as a pretty heavy amount of abuse from his boss, Mr. Martin (Ernest Borgnine). Things might have simply gone on in this way if he had never met Queenie.
Willard finds (and names) Queenie in his garden, and he brings her and her small posse to the basement to avoid the drowning death his mother has prescribed for them. Reluctantly, he sets off for work.
Ole Boss doesn’t like Willard or Willard’s pallid job performance, so he’s thrown the lad a Hitchcock blonde to help him along with his papers or whatever.
I’ve already forgotten this character’s name, so we’ll just go with Tippi if we talk about her again.
The rat empire grows quickly in the basement. There’s Willard’s silver lining; he’s been breeding the rats, so he’s now got a pretty sizable stable. Most important, he’s got Socrates (white rat) and Ben (common rat), his two trusted counselors.
When Mr. Martin throws a work party and invites everyone but Willard, Willard crashes with some guests.
I want to stop here and point out - these rats aren’t scary, and this movie knows it. Just in terms of rat casting, this movie cast, I don’t know, Brittany Murphy to do a Kathy Bates job. These rats wouldn’t last one second in a New York bodega found in, like, You’ve Got Mail. These rats would die from a Tom Hanks sneeze.
Some of that will be important later.
Well, Willard’s ma kicks her sainted heels some time later, and Willard is left with nothing but their sprawling house - under mortgage, it turns out - and some back taxes. This is where things get a bit weird, motivationally; Boss is just *dying* to possess Willard’s home, leaning on the poor boy (man? I don’t know) to sell it off.
Boss lays off Willard (to motivate him to sell) and Tippi (just ‘cause). Tippi feels very sorry for Willard, so buys him a cat as a consolation gift (?). Willard deals with the cat handily:
While serving out his 30 days’ notice at work, Willard begins to bring his rats to work; just his main guys, Ben and Socrates. Which leads to the inevitable:
In the kerfuffle, Socrates meets his end. Ben survives, and we get one of *so many* tight closeups of Ben, who is not pleased:
Drunk or insane or both, Willard hits the house long enough to pile his rat army into his car’s backseat and tootle off to his boss’ house, bent on revenge.
Willard rats his boss to death and heads out, leaving Ben at the scene. Mistake, W.
Later, Willard is discussing his newly bright future with Tippi (who remains ignorant of all, and believes her cat-gift is out hunting), and looks up to see Ben.
The tight squint. The meaningfully clutched paws. This movie finally made a rat scary, and look how they did it: they made. The rat. Act. (I know they probably drugged it and this rat is flying through Andromeda right now, but YOU know what I mean.) This is a Pacino stare! Tiny, devilish little Bette Davis hands! And a villain’s closeup tight enough to make Hitchcock blush.
This is a movie that, insane and hamfisted and cock-eyed though it may be, does know that to make an animal truly scary, you make the animal human.
Willard knows this, too. He shoos Tippi from the house and attempts a deal with Ben: lots of millet, off you go, none the worse for wear! But the idiot brings a pesticide box to the table, which, of course, Ben recognizes for his own reasons that are none of our business. Ben calls a hit, and the rat army comes to his call:
So long, Willard.
So long, Willard.
Willard (1971) is streaming on Amazon Prime, Peacock and Plex. TIME for some scattered thoughts!
Context reminder: this came out in 1971, 4 years before Jaws. It was also 8 years after The Birds, though I believe it owes no debt to that film. There is a moral code, accessible to humans, in these rats; the birds of the ‘63 film operate through random though planned violence, which is the locus of their scare power.
So it was during a creature feature boom that it issued, though again, I feel there’s a big difference from Willard to one of the Jaws, say. Wild animals can be a threat, obviously; they can scare you; but I don’t find, like, a shark with a shark brain to be horror-inducing.
Also, I was incorrect that the novel upon which it is based, Ratman’s Notebooks, was never published. It was, but I’m only interested, really, in the very odd film legacy of Willard. If you DO read it, tell me.
I’m off the rat beat for the rest of the month. You will be getting some primo holiday content next week, one believes.