Reviewed By-Sean Patrick Dolan
Director: Daniel Mann
Cast: Bruce Davison, Elsa Lanchester, Ernest Borgnine, Sondra Locke
Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison) is a young man with a lot of problems. He
lives alone in a large, rundown house with his shrewish mother, Henrietta (Elsa
Lanchester), who is constantly berating him for not keeping up the property and
for not having the ambition to get ahead at work. At the office, his life
is even more miserable. Willard is a lowly cashier working for the man, Al
Martin (Ernest Borgnine), who stole the company from his late father.
Willard is overworked and underpaid, and Martin never misses an opportunity to
chew out Willard in front of his coworkers. When Willard finally does get
up the nerve to ask for a raise, Martin laughs in his face and tells him he is
lucky just to have a job. The only sympathetic person in Willard's life is
an office temp, Joan (Sondra Locke), who Martin hired to help Willard catch up
on his massive backlog
of work.
By the time Willard leaves the office, he is too tired to do the repairs on the
house. He does go out to the backyard to get rid of the rats there that
Mother has been particularly vocal about. But as Willard begins to fill a
hole with water to drown the rats, he realizes he can't do it. Instead, he
begins to talk to the rats and seems comforted by just having someone to listen
to him. He moves the rats into the cellar and begins to feed them and
teach them tricks. Soon he has two favorites, an intelligent white rat he
names "Socrates" and a mischievous black rat he names Ben. He
grows so attached to the pair that he even begins taking them to work with him,
hiding them in the supply closet. After a particularly nasty meeting with
boss Martin, Willard decides to use his new friends to get some measure of
revenge. That night Martin is hosting a party which he has invited many of
his most important clients to attend. Willard sneaks into the backyard and
releases a few dozen of his pets, who immediately go after the food laid out on
the tables. The guests panic and flee the backyard while an enraged Martin
smashes the place up with a chair trying to dispatch the rodents.
However, Willard does not have long to savor this small victory. The next
day Mother dies, and while this is on one hand a weight off his back, it brings
more problems. He learns that his mother left him very little money and a
heavily mortgaged house. On his current salary, Willard will not even be
able to keep up with the property taxes. He begs his relatives and friends
to lend him some money, but they are all either unwilling or unable to help him.
Desperate, Willard decides to use his friends to rob one of Martin's wealthy
clients. The heist is successful, and relieves the pressure on Willard for
a little while. But things quickly go from bad to worse. Martin has
his eye on Willard's house- he wants to buy it and raze it to make room for an
apartment building and a parking lot. When Willard stubbornly refuses to
sell, he decides to use strong-arm tactics. He fires Willard, placing him
on thirty days notice, knowing that with no income he will be forced to sell.
That same day, tragedy strikes Willard again. A secretary discovers Ben
and Socrates in the supply closet and freaks out. Martin charges in and
Willard is helpless to do anything but watch as his boss kills his best friend
Socrates. Willard goes home that night and we can see that he is cracking
up. The rats in the basement have multiplied several times over and he can
no longer afford to feed them. He knows he is about to lose the house as
well. He enters Mother's old room and talks to her, telling her how Martin
is trying to ruin him just like he ruined his father, and how he killed his best
friend. But Willard has decided to finally take a stand- "Don't
worry- I make the decisions now, I make the decisions now," he tells
Mother.
That night Willard, with an army of furry friends, returns to the office where
Martin is working alone. He finally gives the boss a piece of his mind and
when Martin attacks him, the rats respond. Martin is covered by rats who
viciously scratch and bite him until he ultimately falls out the window to his
death. At this point Willard decides to hide the evidence. He says
good-bye to Ben, leaving him and the rest of the four legged assassins at the
scene of the crime, and at home he drowns all the remaining rats. The next
day he invites Joan over for dinner. He seems to be a changed man- much
more confident and even cheerful. "I'm going to start all over,"
he announces, "I'm not afraid anymore." But they have barely
even begun to eat when he notices Ben glaring at him menacingly from atop the
mantelpiece. He tells Joan to leave, and only then notices dozens of rats
streaming up the cellar stairs- Ben led them back from the office. Willard
tries to negotiate with Ben, promising to give all the rats food. He then
attempts to poison the food, but Ben is too smart- he sounds an alarm (a high
pitched squeal) and the rats devour their former master. The film ends as
the credits roll and Ben glares maliciously into the camera, his little nose
twitching.
This is a movie that anyone with a rat phobia will likely find unwatchable, as
there are numerous scenes with scores of the little guys. But this is also
a movie that has a nearly universal appeal- the triumph of the put-upon common
working man over the abusive son of a bitch he calls "boss".
Bruce Davison plays the slightly built, babyfaced, shy "momma's boy"
Willard to perfection- he is truly pathetic, but never so much so that he
crosses the line and is no longer a sympathetic character. Ernest
Borgnine's Al Martin is smarmy when dealing with clients and sleazy behind
closed doors, whether we are talking about his affair with his secretary or his
underhanded attempts to steal Willard's family home. He is a mean old
bastard and most will cheer when the rats devour him. Elsa Lanchester as
the shrewish Mother and Sondra Locke (before her more famous roles in Clint
Eastwood films) as Willard's love interest round out the cast. But one
should not forget the true stars of this film- the dozens of trained rats and,
in particular, Ben. The Secret of Nimh-like intelligence these faithful
friends exhibit is what makes this a truly mesmerizing story.
This film is one of my all time favorites since childhood. However, there
are two things about it that bothered me and marred its near perfection.
The first is rather trivial- Alex North's score, which he composed and
conducted. Now granted, this film is over thirty years old (and it is a
Bing Crosby Production), but North's whimsical, lightweight soundtrack belongs
in a Disney film It may work in a few early scenes, which take place in
Willard's sunny backyard as he first befriends the rats, but as Willard and the
film itself turn darker, it sticks out like a sore thumb. What's worse is
that it is completely one-dimensional- it hardly changes at all no matter the
mood of the scene.
The other flaw I find in this film is the ending, which takes this film from
approaching greatness as a social allegory and threatens to reduces it to merely
a very entertaining, creepy cult favorite. Throughout the first
three-fourths of the film, Martin is the villain and Willard is the emerging
hero, who triumphs by finding the guts to stand up for himself. The fact
that his friendship with Ben and the other rats is the unique vehicle through
which he will achieve this end is irrelevant, other than the fact that it is
what makes this film so memorable. When Willard abandons Ben and the
others after his victory over Martin, this is a betrayal not only of his only
friends but, also, of the audience and the integrity of the film itself.
It instantly turns Willard from a hero to a villain, precipitating his now
inevitable destruction. This movie is more than just a simple case of a
Frankenstein creating a monster he ultimately cannot control- Ben and the others
were Willard's equals, who contributed to his success and were holding up their
part of a mutually beneficial relationship. While they were literally
rats, Willard was just a figurative one "in the rat race".
Martin had no more respect for Willard than the majority of humanity has for
rats. Willard's metamorphosis from a sniveling weakling to a confident
young man ready to take control of his future was a great positive metaphor for
the working class standing up for itself and not allowing itself to be taken
advantage of by anyone seeking to exploit its labor and potential. I would
have preferred that the film had ended without a resolution- perhaps after
Martin's death, or even with Willard finding a better job and buying a house big
enough for himself, Joan, and all of his rodent friends. Anything but the
predictable formulaic ending that betrays the film's message and has the hero
Willard getting a comeuppance that he and, moreover, the audience do not
deserve.
This film spawned a forgettable sequel, 1972 's BEN. It is a tale about
the surviving rat from Willard's army finding refuge in the home of a
chronically ill young boy confined to a wheelchair because of a heart condition.
When not providing companionship for the sick boy, Ben also leads a murderous
team of rats through a violent rampage in the city. The two become fast
friends and the boy writes a song about him which was then covered by Michael
Jackson for the soundtrack and became one of his early solo hits. This
eerie song about the love between a boy and his rat is the only highlight of the
film, and a prophetic foreshadowing of just how strange the former Jackson 5
star would ultimately turn out to be.
I reviewed the 1989 Prism Entertainment VHS release, the only version of this
film that I am aware of having been released in North America. This film
has been out of print for years. I checked several auction sites over the
past week or so, and the film is now going for as much as $90, but a $10- $20
bargain can still be found if you are patient and hit it right. The recent
release of the remake starring Crispin Glover will hopefully result in the film
being reissued on VHS and brought to DVD soon. Until then, find a friend
with a copy and see the original- it is quite a different film than the newer
version and although it is definitely dated in terms of production values and
special effects, it is still a classic. Which version do I feel is the
better horror film? You'll have to check out the other review of the 2003
remake to find out . . . .
I give this film 4.0 Bitch Slaps, mostly because of the unfortunate ending.