Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison) is a reserved young man who works as a clerk for the company his now-deceased father founded, which has been taken over by Martin (Ernest Borgnine), a barbaric businessman who constantly taunts Willard and forces him into submission regularly, as a way of reminding him that he’s nothing more than a socially-awkward milquetoast. Willard also lives with his mother (Elsa Lanchester), a bitter, frail woman who constantly pesters her son, whether it’s for menial household chores or to actively pursue a career that he deserves, rather than the one he constantly labours through. Under extreme pressure from everyone in his life, and wanting nothing more than just to be alone, Willard soon makes a very unexpected pair of friends – Socrates and Ben, a pair of rats that take residence in the gloomy mansion that Willard calls home. The pests become companions to the lonely protagonist, and slowly he begins to realize these creatures – as well as their hoards of relatives that all soon are welcomed into the home – understand him in a way human beings seemingly cannot. However, some very unfortunate events and Willard’s rapidly declining mental state eventually result in the rats becoming not only friends but weapons that the main character is able to use to assert dominance on those that had previously underestimated his abilities, with sometimes grisly results.

Willard belongs to the long tradition of horror films being constructed from the most unexpected of sources.  The 1970s were a time when some strange and absurd films were made, where the villains were not anything close to the conventional figures we were used to. The premise is almost too ludicrous, and one of the merits of this film is that it understands how ridiculous such a concept is, and while it does take itself seriously enough as a horror film, it is also clearly in on the joke, even when it doesn’t work as well as it should. An incredibly unique dark comedy that relies very much on the grotesque nature of the story, and a firm understanding of the images and ideas that will make any audience member squirm in both pleasure and disgust all go into the genesis of this film, one that would result in sequels, remakes and a variety of other imitation films which took on similar subjects, pandering to a more visceral side of human fear. You don’t need to be afraid of rats to find Willard suitably creepy – the film takes care of every bit of apprehension the viewer has and makes sure that absolutely none of us leave this film feeling particularly great. Just about as entertaining as a film about killer rats can be, Willard is a unique and singular work that finds itself incapable of reaching the heights it thinks it does, even if it does try with great conviction to incite an almost revolutionary genre of horror film, one that hasn’t quite taken off, but not for lack of trying.

The film is not always successful, but it is at the very least interesting enough to hold the viewer’s attention, even if it begins to falter towards the end. Based on the novel Ratman’s Notebooks, the film approaches its central storyline through the amalgamation of dark comedy and corporeal horror. The rise of exploitation cinema had facilitated a movement away from gothic or otherworldly horror and brought attention to the fact that a film didn’t need to venture too far out of the realm of plausibility to incite terror, and that sometimes the most unsettling of concepts are a lot closer to home than we think. I’ve often admired horror films that go against the grain, even if they don’t always work, and Willard was a film that always fascinated me – I had previously seen the 2003 remake, and was surprised at how unexpectedly compelling it was – and naturally, the original film was bound to feature the same kind of unconventional compassion. This tends to be true, even if this film doesn’t quite live up to its premise, and has far too many discrepancies in the story, particularly in the final act, to make it the renegade masterpiece it had the potential to be. My problems with Willard don’t lie within the storyline – as far as I’m concerned, the decision to make a film of this nature should be praised, because we rarely see such absurd concepts manifest into successful films – but rather the fact that it becomes increasingly boring as it goes along, and the character development of nearly everyone, especially the protagonist, falls by the wayside, resulting in something that often just misses the mark of greatness by the smallest amount, which is frustrating but unsurprising.

Bruce Davison had a difficult task in his capacity of playing the lead character – for the majority of the film, Davison has to act across from a variety of rats, which makes Willard essentially a one-man film, with only brief interludes that see him interacting with human characters. His performance is undeniably impressive and only bolstered by his clear dedication to the role – as we’ve said already, while Willard is a very funny film, its approached not from the perspective of being a dark comedy, but a serious horror, which is reflected in this performance. Davison is oddly compelling as Willard, taking on the character with great conviction and managing to effectively portray not only his intense loneliness but his profound idiosyncracies without ever having to resort to being a bundle of quirks. Willard is certainly not the first film about lonely people seeking solace in unexpected places, but while most will present us with a character that is clearly misunderstood and seeking the pity of a sympathetic audience, this film is far more intent on showing that the titular young man is far from deserving of our empathy – he’s quite unlikeable (but in the way that works), but his personality is one that is naturally combative and resistant to change. There were moments in the film which I expected to be fantasy sequences, as far too many characters in this film are too friendly to Willard to justify his behaviour. It’s a wonderful moment when you realize that the film isn’t trying to present us with the archetypal protagonist that is constructed as an endearing, pleasant character that is just wronged by society, but just a malicious young man who has forcibly distanced himself from society. We begin to realize at some point that Willard himself is the villain, not the people he seeks to punish, and as the haunting final moments of the film show, he is too going to fall victim to his own creation.

Davison is terrific in Willard, and in many ways the film relies extensively on his performance to sell itself as an effective horror. Without it, we start to realize some of the more inexcusable flaws. Most notably, the film seems to change direction towards the end of the film and seems to lack the insight it thinks it does. The main character’s motivations are far too ambigious for a film like this – naturally, you’d expect him to form a deep bond with these rats, but he frequently seems to resent them and has no qualms in punishing them or exterminating them – he turns on his friends much too quickly, and brings into question the fact that throughout the film, we never actually saw anything close to a convincing bond being formed between Willard and his friends. This may have deeper meaning, but it’s doubtful that it was anything other than narrative indolence, where the filmmakers didn’t find the space to develop the character all that much. Davison does sell the performance well enough to distract from some of these problems, but ultimately the film falls just short of being all that effective. It lacks a lot of direction and seems to be incapable of deciding on an approach, which prevents it from ever actually finding its voice. It doesn’t mean its a bad film, but rather one that squandered some of its most promising potential.

Willard is an interesting case of a film. It may not always work, and it could definitely be seen as something of a failure – how else do you explain the fact that it takes something quite unique, a concept that had rarely been executed in a film like this, and failed to deliver something close to as good as it should be. However, if we take it on its own merits and ignore some of the more absurd elements, we start to realize that Willard is a daring film, and much like the majority of experimental genre pieces, it sometimes falters, as it doesn’t have much behind it in terms of similar films to guide it. It is a relatively forgettable film, but one with many terrific moments that suggest that there was a really good film beneath it – and how one feels about the film depends entirely on the part of the film we think is the most predominant – is it the first half, which is funny, perverted and audacious, or the second half, which was somewhat misguided and failed to bring forth some of the ideas that a more cohesive film wouldn’t have dared to ignore. Yet, this film is still something that stands as a worthwhile piece of horror filmmaking, perhaps not on its own, but rather as the first in a series of similar works that try and get to the root of the human condition through presenting us with a very different kind of terror that is often far more unsettling than anything the most far-fetched of works could ever do.