For some reason I can't possibly fathom, people hate rats. I'm not sure why. I mean, sure, they spread the Black Plague through Europe casing a famine that wiped out thirty millions people over the course of several centuries, but come on! Were those peasants really all that important to history? I ask you. . .
I've never had a problem with rats myself. Not as long as they're relatively clean. Those big brown ones that crawl around in industrial waste can just stay the hell away from me, thank you very much. Thankfully, rats in today's movie are some of the cleanest vermin I've ever seen.
Willard centers around a boy named (did you guess?) Willard (Bruce "Senator Kelly" Davison). Willard is, in technical, psychological terminology, about ready to fucking snap. His Evil Boss, Mr. Martin (Ernest Borgnine) stole the shipping company Willard works for from Willard's father . . .somehow. Consequently, he hates the boy with a passion. Also, Willard's mother (Elsa Lanchester) is a dotting leech woman who (gladly) dies before the half way mark.
Friendless and hopeless, a loser to the nth degree, Willard does the only thing he can do: make friends with the rats in his backyard.
And make friends he does. Gradually (but not too gradually, thanks to the miracle of jump-cuts), the rats become his friends, his pets, and his students. With some dubious training methods, he schools the rats to recognize basic words. Maybe. Since Willard is the only human who "understands" them it's hard to tell whether the rats actually learn, or if it's all in Willard's head.
Regardless, after his mother dies, Willard lets the rats crash in his basement, soon learning that rats are worse than rabbits when it comes to multiplicity (one wonders what a rat's creation myth would be like). It's okay, though, as only two rats (the star pupils, Socrates and Ben) are allowed upstairs.
Meanwhile, Mr. Evil - er, Martin is plotting to cheat Willard out of his house. Why? So he can bulldoze the house down and build an apartment building. Why would the head of a shipping company want to make an apartment building? Color me shrugging.
When an unfeeling Mr. Martin kills Socrates at work, Willard finally does what we've known he'd do since the credits: use his rodent friends to kill, kill, kill. Mr. Martin is the first, and only, victim of the Vermin Brigade. Afterward, sickened by his own actions (surprisingly human of him, that) Willard tries to kill his rodents pals and fails. Predictable results follow. The end.
Predictable is a word that fits Willard like a condom. Hell, the back of the video box gives away more plot than you should know going in. The only real surprise to be had is the amount of time it takes this movie to give us, the B-movie audience, the pay-off we paid our two bucks for.
If you rent Willard expecting a movie about a boy using his rodents as an Unholy Army of the Night, well, too bad. A better name for this movie would be A Boy and His Rats. Sorry, Charlie, but Willard is not a splatter movie. It was based on a novel, after all.
That novel (by screenwriter Gilbert Ralston) shows itself gratuitously. First we have Willard, the POV character, and the only character that even approaches three dimensions. Other important characters like Mr. Evil and Willard's love interest, Joan (Sondra Locke) are nothing more than placeholders. The novel was probably written in the first person. If anyone has a copy of Ratman's Notebooks growing dust bunnies on the shelf, tell me if I'm right.
Regardless, Ralston dropped the ball with the supporting characters. Thankfully, the movie is saved somewhat, thanks to Davison's performance. Much like Vice-President-elect Dick Cheney, Davison plays "just-about-to-fucking-snap" well. Even better, he plays it believably. I cheered when Willard kicked his mother's nosy, mulling, neurotic friends out of his house. I rooted for him when he (clumsily) tried to woo Joan (piece of cardboard though she may be) and I raised an eyebrow when I saw him sleeping with his white rat, Socrates.
Yes, Socrates is white and Ben is black. Guess which one is the evil one.
Davison's acting aside, the movie is pretty inept (thank you script). And slow, too. It takes 90 minutes to get to an on-screen death, and even that's hidden in darkness. The better to hide the fact that some stage hand is throwing rats onto Ernest Borgnine, and that these rats are the kind of rats that make you grab them and press them to your clothing as you flail around in pain.
Still, seeing Willard, in his business suit, standing ankle deep in a swarm of rodents is a discomforting image. And seeing a brown mass of flesh scurry across a room will make some people I know mess their pants. There is a creepiness to this story, finally brought to life in the last 20 minutes of screen time.
Too bad the money shots are hidden. After all that build up, a really ugly death scene would pack some extra emotional punch.
Not a horror flick in the slash-and-kill, take-off-your-clothes-and-die sense, Willard is more a character study. The problem is, none of the characters are strong enough for that. However, some good acting on the part of the protagonist, and a hell of a lot of trained rodents, make the experience worth something.
If you want to see a two-dimensional character interact with a bunch of one-dimensional characters until he's ripped apart by the rodents he loves so dearly, here's the movie for you.
Gs (out of a possible five)
MOCK O' METER
