There's quite a few horror movies dealing with killer rats, but the story of good old Willard Stiles (based on the novel Ratman's Notebooks by Gilbert Ralston) is still very unique, because it mainly revolves on the communicative link between the vicious rodents and a human being. This is actually a predecessor to all the films centering on (young) people that use special powers to extract vengeance on all those that have wronged them, like "Jennifer", "Stanley" and even Stephen King/Brian De Palma's "Carrie". Hmm, how strange I only just notice now how all these film have the protagonists' names as a title. Anyway, the titular character here is an extremely introvert, nerdy and oppressed 27-year-old guy whose life is truly worthless. His domineering mother invites her own friends to Willard's birthday parties (also because he hasn't got any), he has an inferior job in the factory his own father founded and the boss Mr. Martin treats him like a slave. The only person in the world who respects Willard is his temp secretary, but he doesn't even notice that himself. Willard finally finds some happiness in life when he befriends a handful of rats in his backyard. As the number of rats rapidly increases, Willard learns how to correspond with them and even succeeds in controlling their actions. He keeps his two favorite rodents (a white one called Socrates and a big fat mean-spirited black one called Ben) with him at all times and uses the hundreds of others as a personal army of retribution. "Willard" is not a scary or gory film, but it does feature some admirably atmospheric sequences, dark & grim set pieces and a masterfully tense climax. The hectically crawling rats are eerie to behold, but still the film primarily relies on good old-fashioned human acting performances. Bruce Davison, Elsa Lanchester and Sandra Locke are great but it is as always Ernest Borgnine who steals the show. His character Mr. Martin is a sleazy, corrupt, greedy and preposterous SOB you simply love to hate. Borgnine depicted quite a few memorably villainous types in his long & terrific career (like the satanic cult-leader in "The Devil's Rain" and the uncanny Amish patriarch in "Deadly Blessing") and Mr. Martin definitely ranks high on top, too! In 2003, "Willard" received the widely feared remake treatment, but against all odd the new version, starring cult favorite Crispin Glover as Willard and R. Lee Ermey as Mr. Martin, turned out to be a genuine winner. There's also a direct sequel called "Ben", which is actually more of a spin-off with the evil rat as the anti-hero, but that film was too Disney for my likings and only worth seeing because a young Michael Jackson sung the title song.
