WILLARD chewed its way into 1971 as one of the year’s sleepers, a shaggy dog—er, rat—horror flick that, like one of the immortal The Killer Shrews, consumed many times its budget-weight, mouse-trapping $28,200,000, the year’s 11th most-attended piece of cheese. It’s silly, not even close to being scary (unless you’re an elephant) and the annoying behavior material wears out its payback-is-a-furred & famished-horde premise before the 95 minutes are over. That it still works as well as it does is due to the two humans with the largest roles—one new fellow and a wily pro—and the residual curiosity factor of watching litters of little rodents put thru their whisker-twitching paces. One of the more successful advertising tag lines of the era came from the adios salvo to the bad guy:  “Tear him up!”

‘Willard Stiles’ (Bruce Davison) is not a happy clerk. He’s 27, friendless, living with his suffocating mama (Elsa Lanchester), clucked over and chided by her aged and nosy friends. He works at the company his deceased father had ripped out from under him by ‘Al Martin’ (Ernest Borgnine), Willard’s coarse and bullying boss. Tasked by his mom to get rid of some resident rodents, Willard instead is charmed by one of them enough that he cares for him, names him ‘Socrates’ and before you can say “Get a girlfriend! Any girlfriend!” there are rats galore, replicating by the score. They include alpha ‘Ben’, and Willard trains them like his own private Proud Rats. It’s only a matter of time before Willard’s buttons are pushed to the swarming point.

Directed by hit & miss Daniel Mann, the script by Gilbert Ralston (guilty that year for The Hunting Party) was based on Stephen Gilbert’s 178-page novel “Ratman’s Notebooks”. The in-his-face (and ours) hectoring Willard is subjected to is loud and wearying, and the rodentic activities are backed by insistently ‘cute’ scoring from Alex North, surprising considering the composer’s track record. The only person who is nice to Willard is a temp worker, played by Sondra Locke. Appearing as a favor to Davison (with whom the married actress was having an extramarital relationship), it’s a nothing role after her breakthrough in The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter .*

Salvage is at hand from Davison, Borgnine and the special guest creatures. Davison, 24, who leapt into the fray with Last Summer and The Strawberry Statement, does an excellent job as the pushed-into-madness loser; he doesn’t overplay it as someone like Anthony Perkins might and load the trapped and timid character up with see-me-act-weird (again) tics. Ernie B naturally goes bigger, per his character, with enough force to make Al a believable jerk (begging for an animal attack) to whom casual cruelty is simple practicality. And the scurrying critters are fitfully amusing. Just don’t go barefoot in the basement in the dark. **

Giving grief to Willard: Jody Gilbert (obnoxious on steroids), Michael Dante, John Myhers, Joan Shawlee, J. Pat O’Malley, Alan Baxter.

* Composer Alex North boasted glorious scores for such as Spartacus and Cleopatra, so it’s unusual to knock him. For some reason he gets credited at both the beginning and ending of the picture. Then again, the year’s most popular movie was Billy Jack, proof that anything was possible in The Year Of Our Nixon 19 & 71.

Those needing to nibble further found crumbs in Ben, 1972’s flea-bearing sequel. Then, just when you thought fumigation was successful, the remake scurried into 2003, starring rodentia-on-hind-feet Crispin Glover. We will eventually set out a review trap.

** Personal Ala Anecdote Time—in this site’s look at the lousy 1972 western The Revengers, we name-drop that, due to my brother-in-law having worked with Ernest Borgnine in that tanker, I was able to chance-meet with the man briefly, at the famous, long-gone Vince’s Gym in Studio City. He could not have been friendlier, especially to a 17 year-old kid who asked him about The Wild Bunch and, yes, Willard. Slight paraphrase: “Well, Mark, I’ll tell ya. Y’know, they dabbed peanut butter all over me and dumped a box load of rats on me. They just went for the peanut butter and didn’t bite me once.”  Nice man, class act, cherished memory.